participating in the indie web, expressing myself like it's y2k
Previous: Endling II - Departure I was such a naive fool to think I was alone. To be fair, I can't explain how there are still living creatures out here. I'm no biologist, but half the human beings in my bunker died of cancer and that was behind lead lined walls. How the hell did wolves manage to survive? I heard them just as I was falling asleep, next to a pathetic little campfire. A chorus of…
Previous: Endling I - Leaving the Bunker Back before the war, I had a habit of overpacking. I would take a weekend trip to New York or Toronto or Nashville, somewhere plenty civilized enough to have a corner store where anything I forgot to bring could be found, and for some reason I'd take four changes of clothes, extra socks, two phone chargers (just in case one stopped working!), my wallet,…
The more I think about it, the less I care about my name. There is nobody else out there who will ever use it. There's no need to identify me specifically, because there's nobody to tell me apart from. No crowd to get my attention in. I'm the last person. The only person. In the entire world, as far as I know. Maybe somebody else out there had a bunker like ours. With lead lined walls to keep out…
A mirage against the lavender sky flickers and flits. It draws closer and makes itself known to Arric some hundreds of meters on; a flying craft arrayed in the shape of a clover, four gossamer membranes around a central cradle. The salt of the plains vibrates like dust on a drumhead as the Knight Hussar's craft alights fifty paces from Arric's campfire. Arric stands, brushing salt and sand from…
When you roll the dice to do something and you fail, it's not because your character is dumb and bad at what they were doing. It's because the situation didn't allow for it. If you try to break down a door and you fail, it's not cause you're weak and stupid and your axe is dull and you're an embarrassment to barbarians everywhere. It's because the door is too strong for that. Maybe it's…
Just like the last post, if you are party of my normal gaming group, don't read any further! Not until after our gaming getaway weekend, anyway! Recap In our last session, our guild of practically criminal, ethically challenged miscreants flew a rickety glider up to a flying pirate ship, crashed landed on the deck, murdered the invading pirates, attacked their captain, and were attacked by a giant…
I was watching the most recent Quinns Quest Reviews , covering Stonetop, when I was struck with the most important tidbit of wisdom I've yet heard in the RPG hobby at large. Yeah, that's right. The most important thing I've heard about RPGs ever. Am I being dramatic? Probably. My wife tells me I'm a dramatic guy, and I trust her opinion on me. But one thing that Quinns pointed out made me…
If you are party of my normal gaming group, don't read any further! Not until after our gaming getaway weekend, anyway! Setup In the Hammerhead Tavern in the city of Bruhl, our misfit guild of adventurers takes a dismal breakfast of gruel and watery mead. In the midst of their meal, shouts of fear and chaos arise outside. Rushing to the streets, the party sees everyone looking up to the sky, and…
Mythic Garden! Mythic! Mythic GME is how I've come to understand solo games. It was hard for me to really wrap my head around the large structures of solo play until I found mythic and it's incredibly diverse set of tools, techniques, supplements, and advices. It's a very common tool in the Solo RPG world, so I won't belabor my introduction to it. What I struggled with (and this is probably due to…
Suikoden is one of my favorite video games of all time. This quaint, rustic JRPG is based on the oldest Chinese fiction novel, Water Margin , and tells the story of the young son of an imperial general who goes on to lead a revolution against an Emperor who was once a beloved folk hero, but was corrupted by rule and by the influence of nefarious advisors. If you haven't played it, I urge you, nay…
If you are one of the players in my Legend in the Mist game, turn back now! There's nothing here for you! Have they left? Okay good, now I can talk shit about them behind their backs... Kidding. My players are the best. And this game suits them really well. They are very creative, engaged, inventive, and flexible people and Legend in the Mist seems like such a good fit for those attributes. We've…
The study of magic is fraught with perils - but wisdom, caution, and a reliable friend to steer you away from poor decisions are often enough to keep a practitioner from the more catastrophic outcomes. The aged wizard with a map of the world on their face is a testament to those resources and their application. By mundanely growing old she says to the world, "I have danced with the devils above…
I don't know who needs to see this today, but I've been needing to see this for quite some time. The stuff you write for your table doesn't need to follow the same principles, structures, formatting, or even quality that published materials reach for. Because obviously, the stuff you make for your home game and your table is... yours. It's not anybody else's. Nobody else needs to read your stuff,…
Preamble Before we begin, there's a fair amount of cleaning up to do. Firstly, my dogs ate two of my character sheets, so I needed to crawl through my own session reports to try to piece together character stats by looking at rolls and their noted modifiers. Where I didn't have any rolls, I re-rolled their stats. I also printed out new character sheets and transcribed their classes, inventory,…
The swordsman is standing on the furthest edge of the promontory overlooking the Whorl. He can feel the spray of waves against stone on his face, with the Whorl thrashing so violently now at the end of things. The sky flickered lightning in a spray of colors, but no thunder is carried on the wind. A woman's voice calls out through the wind behind him. "It was always going to end this way, Gen.…
In Science Fantasy, one of my favorite tropes is "deep history" or "deep time". I.e., time scales of civilizations that stretch beyond understanding. Hundreds of empires rising and falling. The world changes drastically from one eon to the next, to accommodate its dominant lifeforms and eventually the world changes without their consent and ends that collective civilization. Rinse and repeat as…
Setup After defeating Amelia and scouring the ship for weapons to use against the cosmic beast that is tearing the ship apart, the crew ready themselves to free themselves for good. Unbeknownst to them, a group of pirates below have rallied to retake the ship, and the captain of the ship, injured, waits in the cabin to ambush whoever enters. The entire situation teeters on the brink! At the end of…
Setup In part 1 , our players escaped from captivity when the ship they were imprisoned on, sailing the vast astral sea, was seemingly attacked by a cosmic kraken which threatened to tear the ship apart. There were some hints that there had also been a mutinous event, and it certainly seemed as though the crew were living in terror of the First Mate, named Amelia. While the captive players…
Session 1 Date: 2026-02-19 What the PCs know: You were taken by raiders in a flying ship You've been locked up at least a week, up to a month You've been able to talk in whispers and know a fair bit about each other Your captors are cruel Two captors are the frightful Chef Amelia and the cunning Captain Ca'Resh Just now, yells came from above, then the ship began to shake. The hull buckled and…
Scene 1 Expected Scene: Arriving at Ekkurad and meeting with the Seekers Test: 3, Altered Scene The ruins of Ekkurad are known to local Faa tribes. These dusty, crumbling ceramic structures have given temporary shelter to many nomads. They still reach high above, as much as 40 yards in some places, with hexagonal patterns etched into the sides, eroding into smooth surfaces lower to the blue dunes.…
Setup Pidash is in Moongaze, in a tucked away upper room at the inn. He's known to Hegemony soldiers for some petty crimes, and has no desire to be shipped off to Gnomon. He'll lay low until he can get away from the inn, then figure out something to do to get the soldiers to leave. Scene 1 - Pidash sneaks out of the inn. Test: 9. Expected scene. Are there soldiers in and around the inn in the…
[This is the first in a hopefully long running series of flash fiction that I aim to write as exercises in writing daily. I will not post all of them, but this is the first, and thus feels important. This post, and I imagine many of the ones that follow, are heavily inspired by Caves of Qud (in my opinion one of the great masterpieces of science fiction of our time) and Vaults of Vaarn (which also…
I get into ruts. A lot. I have bursts of passionate playing and working and reading and writing, and then feel drained, disinterested, unmotivated. To try to rejuvenate those lower moments, I have been asking the question, “What do I do when I don’t really want to do anything?” When I don’t have the energy and time and motivation to play a solo session or sit down and do some campaign prepping,…
Hey, players, it’s me again, trying to tell you how to play better. Thanks for putting up with me. I just wanted to share a quick thought on scenes, momentum, and responsibility at the table. I’m getting kinda tired of asking players, “What do you do?” Naturally, once a scene starts to come to a close and players are resolving their last thoughts, delivering the punch line of their last joke, and…
Vaults of Vaarn is one of the coolest, sleekest, most imaginative settings out there for tabletop RPGs. Set in a dying world of blue sands and indigo skies, the eponymous Vaults are the ruins of past civilizations, deep beneath the earth, and the object of lust of many factions of fortune seekers, the curious, and the cruel. I’ve been eager to play Vaults of Vaarn for a long time, but there are…
A perpetual qualm I have with dungeon maps is that I either have to give it to my players (which I normally do), which takes a ton of work on my part to remove all the secrets and hidden passages (and they get the dungeon layout “spoiled” for them), or I have to draw it for them step by step as we navigate the dungeon on a shared map. I don’t like the former cause it’s usually a lot of work on my…
I was reading through Grimwild when I was struck by a lightning bolt of "Oh, duh!" It was one of those revelatory moments that change how you think of games forever. You should create the party before you create the characters! Oh man, what pure genius. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for any new campaign is "why are these people together?" You meet in a tavern, some stuff happens, then you…
If you, as a player, are not ready and eager to fail, then some games might not be for you. The heroic fantasy - the dream of fulfilling the role of the hero, of changing the world, of asserting your will over evil or tyranny - is only one small, narrow form of entertainment. There’s failure involved in those stories, to be sure, but it’s usually managed, handled gently, something to work around…