So travel is a big part of adventures. Braving majestic mountains, navigating insidious swamps and traversing foreboding forests. Lord of the Rings, the books as well as the movies, would not be the same without their iconic locations. Minas Tirith’s grandeur is incredible in contrast to the Shire. Interspersed between these grand locations, there are also the lesser locations, such as Bree, the Watchtower, the calcified Trolls, the Argonaths, I could go on forever. Yet, it has often been my experience that journeys in RPGs fall short of this. Often in spite of procedures. I don’t have any solutions… yet. In this post, I will describe some thoughts I’ve had about travel in roleplaying games.   Picture by Frank Winkler , used with permission. Where is the fun? For the most part, I’ve experienced travel roleplay in roughly two forms. One is basically a quick summary of “what happened” as the party went from A to B, with varying degrees of descriptions of the landscape. The other is t...

In this post, I’m going to discuss the most prevalent game mechanic that nobody seems to talk about.  The most important game mechanic in roleplaying games is not about dice rolling and target numbers. It’s about how we share information - the conversation where we describe and act on the world we present. I haven’t landed on a name for it, but I’d like to refer to Chris Engle’s concept of “verbal analysis” - more on that later.  Image by  Pexels , used with permission.

I’ve been running and playing in various 2400 and Into the Odd games lately. These are two games that exist in the rules light part of the roleplaying games spectrum. Both games are quite ruthless in their approach to combat. 2400 doesn’t have combat rules per se, but offers a catch-hall saving throw rule. Into the Odd famously has auto-hit with some damage reduction based on armor. I've got some thoughts about both games. Illustration by Richard Duijnstee , used with permission.  

So part of the conceit of Free Kriegsspiel is that the Referee depends on their experience and knowledge of the world to drive the game. That’s great and all, but what about magic? There’s no way to have live experience with that, so there’s only one way out of that. You have to know something about the world you’re running.  Magic! How hard can it be? Image by GraphicMama , used with permission. A typical corollary question of “how do you do magic?” is “how do you handle damage?” which is also a question that keeps popping up. Many newcomers to the FKR way are often already familiar with roleplaying games that quantify damage, and will likely try to find a one-to-one heuristic to deal with that. To help answer this question, I typically ask another question: “What’s the in-world answer to this?”  Many fantasy worlds already present magic systems of various kinds, such as the channeling in Wheel of Time to the element bending featured in Avatar: The Last Airbender. These world...

Seasonal greetings to you! Like the last year, this year was also strange. It’s the second year in a pandemic and right now things are closing down again. I wish you all warmth, love and safety.     The year in review This year I concluded the Star Wars campaign I ran this year. Now we’ve moved on to play a new campaign set in a universe inspired by the Witcher and Norse mythology. Playing over Discord has become the norm, and I’ve gotten to play lots of exciting games in different mini-campaigns, from Orbital Decay and troika! to OZR. I’ve also played an open table Cyberpunk game inspired by Cyberpunk 2077. Lots of good RPG times this year. I’m happy to report that I’m also making great strides with my small-time rpg publications. I’ve been working on a few different projects. Netherlight is a sword-and-planet setting I’m planning to release soon, inspired by the Warhammer universes and the movie Treasure Planet. I’ve previewed some of the art on this blog already, made by th...

So, I had a little idea the other day. I call it "Dungeon World" just to cause confusion. But it's also literally a world of dungeons 😏 . No, literally . There is no natural landscape in this world. It's all dungeons.  Picture by Rudy and Peter Skitterians , used with permission. It was originally built by unknowable creators in some unknowable time in the past. Since then, mages from various planes of existence discovered the place and decided to add their own touches. Many peoples live here. To them, the thought of a world not made by the Makers is just freaking weird. Mountains of just solid rock? Preposterous. Only the great edifices of the Makers or the Mage-Kings that followed should reach towards the skies. Food is something you get from the Garden-Cemeteries of Ceres. Or maybe you hunt it in the Underworld.  Picture by 132369 , used with permission.  Journey deep enough and you find the Columns That Hold The World. Great hexagonal pillars made of a substance ...

In the last 12 or so months, I’ve been delving deep into the FKR rabbit hole. It has thoroughly changed the way I play and let me focus more on adventures than ever before. For example, writing things like stat blocks and looking up rules are now a thing of the past. But there are some issues that I think also need to be addressed. In this post I’m going to talk about something I call the “Owl Problem”. How hard can it be? Okay, what’s the deal with bringing owls into this? Well, it’s inspired by the meme above, but related to running rules-light games. In my experience, newcomers to the hobby have almost no issue in joining a session and playing as a PC. However, as a newcomer to running a session, most rules-light games offer little to no guidance.  One central idea to free kriegsspiel is that the referee can just dispense with rules and dice in favor of relying on their experience. This worked out a lot for prussian officers, but a beginner in the ttrpg world doesn't have the sa...