D&D
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Drama, Tension, and Roleplaying
Drama is difficult decision-making. To quote Mathew Colville it’s “will the heroes…?” Will they defeat the boss monster? Will they escape the dungeon? Will they convince the knight to join them on their quest? Will they survive if they’re armor is about to break? Find out, next time on D&D!!!
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What OSR GMs Can Learn From Open World Video Games
I’m specifically talking about three open world games and a different idea from each that can be taken and applied to an OSR open world/West Marches-style campain. They are: Vantage Outposts, in Mad Max (2015), Most Wanted, in Batman Arkham Knight (2015), Collect-a-thons, in Far Cry 5 (2018)
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Growing the RPG Tradition
D&D is less of a set-of-rules and of a shared tradition. The point of this article isn’t to prove that (I think others before me have done that), the point is to tell us what we need to do with that information.
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Treat Illusions As You Would Any Other Lie: No Rolls
Image credit, Zin on Patreon 3/7/2025 Illusions are strange things. They are absolutely core to fantasy, almost every fantasy story (and many realistic-fiction ones) have dream sequences, hallucinations, or purposeful illusions, but in many respects they are difficult to get across at the table. Do they operate like secret doors? Does simply searching the room…
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Bloodmoon Crypt Review
The plot of the module is really straight forward and actually very interesting at first glance. You are sent to investigate what is essentially Van Helsing’s Tomb, but if he and his whole family hunted werewolves instead of vampires.
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Dark Albion: The Rose War Review
Image credit, Dark Albion: The Rose War by RPG Pundit 2/26/2025 I ran this campaign for about 10 sessions. I’d say I used maybe 8 pages of this book. And that’s stretching it. It is over 275 pages long. It was one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run. But how much of that had…
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The Queen of Dragons: Part I – Overview
In current times, there is an evil, conspiratorial group that seek to rediscover these masks and use them to enslave dragons and rule the world (the group goes by many names as to keep its intentions a secret, one of them is the Cult of the Dragon).
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Hyadic Ghat Review
If you’re map gets drenched and you continue to your destination anyway, you will find yourself in the Hyades, a world-between-worlds where it is constantly raining. It remains me of The Gardens of Yinn by Dying Stylishly Games. It’s just a little demi-plane you can plop into your D&D campaign, heck, it’s essentially a random…
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A Tithe of Sheep and Lamb
A common perception of dragons come’s from Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” They are depicted as sleepy, gold-hoarders that reside in mountains. However, this is not the impression of dragons given in the ancient tale of St. George and the Dragon!
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Why Traps Belong on Random Encounter Tables
“Trap” has two meanings in OSR culture: #1 A Big Dangerous Puzzle, #2 A Sudden Punch in the Face Both the complicated puzzle traps and random-gotcha traps are fun (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), but they can’t be used in the same way without causing frustration.
Ward Against Evil 