The other day I came across the phrase “play with gray” on Reddit, a reference to playing miniatures games without, or before, painting the minis. It immediately resonated with me. The state of the miniature union I’ve pretty much stopped painting minis. The last minis I recall finishing were a couple of Blood Angels Infiltrators ..read more

I’ve been logging RPG sessions on RPGGeek since 2008, and last night’s Basement Game session — AD&D 1st Edition, running the module “Citadel by the Sea” from Dragon #78, in my Godsbarrow setting — was my 1,000th logged session. We ended on a cliffhanger, with the party having attacked a group of large spiders and ..read more

Last night during character creation for our RuneQuest campaign, my group employed a tool we use before almost every new game: CATS. Created by P.R. O’Leary, CATS stands for Concept, Aim, Tone, Subject Matter, and it’s a social contract-adjacent pregame discussion to get everyone on the same page, set expectations, and avoid potential issues. It ..read more

I took stock of all of my Appendix N reading to date, which entailed a mix of staring off into space, combing my shelves, and blowing the dust off my long-dormant Goodreads account. Of the 29 authors in Appendix N (well, 28 plus an editor), I have: I made it further than I thought back ..read more

Back in 2012, as my interest in old-school D&D was returning and flourishing, I started a project to read all of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N. I came up with a detailed plan, researched and assembled a 100-book Appendix N reading list that included recommendations for those authors whose works Gary didn’t note by title ..read more

Back in August my Seattle group started a new campaign we’ve dubbed the Basement Game, and its kickoff AD&D 1st Edition adventure is set in Godsbarrow — making it the third Godsbarrow campaign. The idea here is that this is a freewheeling, no-worries, 1970s/1980s, eating Cheetos in the basement style of game, so we’re planning ..read more

Back in January I posted about my 2024 RPG collecting goal: acquiring the complete game lines for Ars Magica, Delta Green, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. Things are coming along pretty well! July 20, 2024 shelfie. (The mooning gnome is one of my favorite gifts from my kiddo.) Here’s where I’m at with each game, starting on the top shelf and then going left to right on the bottom shelf: RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha: I haven’t picked up Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way yet, and I just added MIG3: The Meints Index to Glorantha and the POD repri ..read more

I was thinking about why I don’t post more on RPGnet (I concluded that while I like it there, I’ve never felt like I fit in; that’s not unusual for me), and looking back through some of the relatively few posts I’ve made, when I stumbled across one that fits right into the “this should be a blog post” philosophy I’ve been trying to live by since G+ shut down. It was originally a response to a thread asking for folks’ experiences with zero-prep GMing. It’s a pretty tidy summary of where my head’s been at for the past few years specifically and the past twenty years more generally. (I’ve lightly ..read more

I started up a Delta Green [affiliate link] campaign last September, and it’s been a blast. It’s become one of my favorite RPGs, and with a few sessions under my belt that means I’ve done some noodling about why that’s the case. One part of it — the bit I want to look at today — is that DG deftly combines superb information design with game mechanics designed to reduce handling time and friction. Two examples of that sit right next to each other in the upper left corner of its GM screen. Two tables from the DG screen, which I’ve called out in redDon’t roll dice DG is far from the first RPG to ..read more

Seventeen years ago, I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo 2007. I was proud to have written it but I didn’t think it was any good. Until tonight, I’d never read it. With the benefit of seventeen years of professional and personal writing experience…it’s not bad at all. I’m honestly shocked. It’s a first draft, is all. Rough around the edges (dreadful in places), but with sound bones and raw creativity that still speaks to me ..read more