This is part of a series where I briefly talk about the Lindenbaum Prize winners and runners-up. This is a friendly gamebook writing competition, organised yearly by Stuart Lloyd. The entry discussed below was submitted for the 2021/2022 competition and won a Commendation Award. You can find the details of the competition here, links to all entries here, and the announcement of the winners here. Needless to say, all of these are available for free in PDF. In this gamebook you play a master thief who must steal a dangerous artefact known as the Eldritch Key. Although there are multiple routes t ..read more

Barbarian Prince is a great little game from 1981. James Maliszewski over at Grognardia posted a short retrospective in 2011, and in 2020 Anne from DIY and Dragons wrote an excellent three-part analysis (Map and Layout; Main Menu; Characters, Followers, Encounters, and Combat). It has been recently on my mind partly because of the Drifter series (see my review of the first game here) and a four-part actual play series by the Lone Adventurer. Today I only want to look at one specific aspect of Barbarian Prince: the combat result table. The gist of it is this: roll 2d6, add your Combat score, su ..read more

I usually don't participate in any sort of community blog event for several reasons, but last year's RPGaDay questions seemed interesting enough to tackle. However, I quite dislike releasing a bunch of small posts so I combined all the questions and answers into this one. Day 1: FIRST RPG played (in 2023) It was early January that we started a new campaign of Werewolf: the Forsaken (1st edition). Although my love for the Storytelling System has waned considerably (compared to the late 00s when it was our most played system), the animistic nature of Werewolf and the particular implementation of ..read more

This is part of a series where I briefly talk about the Lindenbaum Prize winners and runners-up. This is a friendly gamebook-writing competition, organised yearly by Stuart Lloyd. The entry discussed below was submitted for the 2021/2022 competition and won a Commendation Award. You can find the details of the competition here, links to all entries here, and the announcement of the winners here. Needless to say, all of these are available for free in PDF. In this one you play a young hunter. You need to gather the funds to enter an archery competition and be ranked among the best three to have ..read more

Disclaimer: Note that some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher). In 2023, we are truly spoiled when it comes to dungeon crawling. A plethora of games focus on or have a robust system dedicated to delving the deeps, from computer games to board games and RPGs. There have been many solo options, but the pandemic really helped developers new and old to find a market starved for the strange alchemy of killing monsters, avoiding traps, and finding treasure — like the subject of today's review, Four Against D ..read more

Disclaimer: Note that some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher). Last year I only played a handful of RPG sessions overall (about 10, according to my notes). However, in addition to picking up solo wargames and painting miniatures as a new hobby, I also played a fair amount of solitaire board games. Some of these were rules-light thematic games (mostly of the roll-and-write variety), while others were of the more involved, almost RPG-lite kind. I slowly intend to write about a few of these games, starti ..read more

Disclaimer: Note that some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher). Wow, it's been a hot minute since I last posted here. I didn't run or play that many RPGs last year, to be honest. I played a lot of boardgames (simple stuff with my family, like Catan, Codenames, and Mysterium, and a few interesting solo games, like Voyages, D100 Dungeon, and The Drifter) and a handful of miniature games (Five Parsecs from Home, a little bit of Lion Rampant, and even a fairly long session of Cursed City). RPG-wise we move ..read more

Disclaimer: Note that some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher). Maelstrom is a British old-school game written by Alexander Scott and published in 1984. The subject of this review is based on the current edition published by Arion Games. System Summary A lot of the more fiddly or detailed mechanics are presented in the Advanced Rules chapter. To differentiate these from the "normal" rules, I will use blue text. There are 9 percentile attributes (the average score is about 35-40). The attributes are A ..read more

As promised way back, here are the spells in KéK available for Magic-Users and Elves (albeit in an abbreviated form). 1st level Elf and MU spells Burning Hands: caster's hands burn in a 120-degree arc up to 5 ft away, deals 2 hp/level damage, no save Charm Person: 30 ft, permanent, save vs spells or target humanoid falls under control of the caster, upon first request that is suicidal or goes completely against target's principles another save is permitted (but only once) Detect Magic: 60 ft, 2 turns, reveals whether a person, object, or location is enchanted/cursed (but not its nature) Hold ..read more

An old friend of mine and I have been slowly working on a cyberpunk game engine (tentatively called Edgerunner) following our initial disappointment with Cyberpunk Red (which, in our estimation, oversimplified rather than improved an otherwise good combat system). It began as a house rules document, fixing CPRED in ways aligning with our preferences and priorities, but as we thought more and more about the various subsystems, it became clear that a complete overhaul would be necessary. The goal of the system is straightforward: a fairly realistic, simulation-first approach to combat and techno ..read more