A blog (mostly) about tabletop roleplaying games
It has been a while since I took part in the One Page Dungeon Contest. Somehow the last few years (the last decade and a half ) I only realized the contest was on when it was finished, or nearly so. This year I did manage to get into it on time, and I created a [ ]
I created a repository on codeberg collecting free tabletop gaming resources. The list is available as a page here (or just look in the header above), while the repository can be found under: https://codeberg.org/kyonshi/Tabletop-Roleplaying-Resources The idea is to collect all kinds of free resources from all over the web. for all kinds of different systems [ ]
This is one of multiple I have been writing for the next issue of the Grenzland zine. Harlon Szhugivelli, professional nutterCitizenRequired Skills: NoneRequired Equipment: NoneA conspiracy theorist (Harlon Szhugivelli) approaches the PCs. He is convinced there is a secret Hiver cabal on the planet, steering the politics of the world for their tentacly masters from [ ]
With 50odd sessions under the belt my Glimmermark campaign enters the third year. Which is maybe not the longest roleplaying campaign I ever had, but certainly one with the most individual sessions. The secret, it turns out, is to do the right kind of work early on and then consistently offer the game to anyone [ ]
Some rules for firearms for my Glimmermark campaign. Guns are a valid weapon for sieges and defense, but might not be as useful for adventuring. A firearm has a certain punch to it, but it needs a long time to reload, and has some other issues that make it difficult to use in a dungeon. [ ]
I have been tinkering with my own rules for a while now. And while it still isn t finished (will it ever be?) I am getting to the point where I could see it being used in a game. Now mind you, I didn t really come up with this on my own, I just took ideas [ ]
I do like random results in my game, especially effects of reaction and morale rolls. I feel the game is much more interesting if I as the referee do not exactly know what is going to happen with any given NPC. The issue is of course that while I try to come up with reasonable [ ]
Claire Vallas, Shipping Company AdminCitizen, CorporateRequired Skills: NoneRequired Equipment: Transportation Westom-Karr as Shipping is a single-system transport company specializing in non-jump mining transports. One of their large mineral transports from the asteroid belt in the outer system has stopped responding to calls. The ship (the Westom VI) is still there, but gives no response to…
Small houserule I came up with while redoing the my xp awards for my campaign: Attending a church service/religious ceremony of a friendly faith and tithing appropriately to their stature (at least 50gp) gives 50 xp. It also has a chance of bestowing a blessing. The character tithing needs to roll Save vs. Spell to [ ]
My roleplaying stats for 2025: * ran 35 games on Grenzland (of those 2 Hidden Fortress (Star Wars OSR) and 3 Pirates of Drinax (MgT2), the rest was part of my Glimmermark campaign (Labyrinth Lord) * played in 9 games on Grenzland (Dolmenwood and the Montag in Zürich games which were largely not on Monday) [ ]
Elves are well known to be able to see in the dark because they glow. Infravision and darkvision to me never made that much sense for Elves. Why would they be able to see in complete darkness. Every picture of an elf in the woods has them lit by some unearthly glo . ooooooh. Yeah, so [ ]
Random Tables d100 Hireling Hobbies or PC Pastimes (d4 Caltrops) D20x5 Great Grails (Archons March On) d100 Woefully Encysted Creatures (Blog of Forlorn Encystment) Farmer Drama 2 Ethyria Farm Life + (Elfmaids Octopi) Resources 10 Reasons Why the Guild has a Partial Map (Rise Up Comus) Who feeds all these monsters? Monster Keepers [ ]
Grenzland no. 6 appeared in my mailbox last week, and now can also be downloaded from archive.org. A harcopy can be purchased for 5 Euros from Wanderer Bill (as long as copies last that is). It features a mix of mostly English and partially German articles concerning OSR topics, including an expanded article on Campaign [ ]
Random Tables d100 Vignettes for Faerie Other Unseen Lands (d4 Caltrops) d100 Pecuniary Problems, Awful Arrears, Delinquent Debts (d4 Caltrops) D6x6 Grimy Grimlocks (Archons March On) Relationship Complications (Traverse Fantasy) 1d100 Things in the Wizard s Tower (Dice in the North) Resources More Shrine Fluff (Elfmaids Octopi) The Forgotten Hermitage (Dyson s [ ]
I have been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 the last few weeks, which spurred me on (see what I did there!) to give Boot Hill a look again, especially as RDR2, like other Rockstar Games titles, is using alternate American states instead of actual places. Instead of any actual American state this game starts in [ ]
It might have been visible in my post from yesterday, but I don t actually like Oriental Adventures. The original 85 AD D book that is. The book purports to give rules for an oriental setting that wildly and inappropriately mixes together East Asian cultures and doesn t even have the decency to genericize the concepts used like [ ]
Remember those heady days just after Magic: The Gathering came out, when all of a sudden any TTRPG related publisher decided to push out their own trading card game? Well, so does Atlas Games it seems, who have been sitting on unopened On the Edge boxes for the last 30 years and are still selling [ ]
I have been thinking of making this table for a while, and right now am working on it for the Grenzland zine. The inspiration for this is of course the Campaign Event table in Oriental Adventures, which I have to say is one of the few parts of that book that can stand on it s [ ]
Y eah. I mean, I have been doing these things for old DSA scenarios already, so now I get to do them for old Shadowrun ones as well. And Dreamchipper definitely is one of the oldest ones on the block, technically the second of independent scenarios after DNA/DOA (and the fourth after the venerated Food Fight [ ]
Last week we had the 26th session of my Glimmermark Labyrinth Lord game, which makes for a game about every 2 weeks on average since I started in July 2024. Unfortunately sometimes it s just not possible to find enough people to play, even if I offered the game as an open table game. We decided [ ]
Ok, this is only connected with role-playing games in the most tenuous way possible, but there was a Polish chain of gas stations called D D which even had a logo that reminded me of old Basic D D logos. I think they were mostly around Lodz, and even when they were around it never was all [ ]
A recent episode of Retronauts reminded me about the Chicken Stinger (or Chicken Leg, or even Cockatrice although that name sounds wrong), the monster used in both Golden Axe and Altered Beast. Well, mostly Golden Axe I would say, as the first time I came across it was in the Master System port of that [ ]
Random Tables d72 Squires (Bastionland) D6 Social Media Services of the Near-Future (Archons March On) D6x6 Sanguine Sirens (Archons March On) d100 – Wilderness Woes Hinterland Hazards (d4 Caltrops) Chagrinspire Roadside Rubbish (Elfmaids Octopi) Hexcrawling for Ethyria pt 4 d100 Islands (Elfmaids Octopi) Resources The Great List of OD D Games (The [ ]
Last week I found Wanderer Bill s Grenzland 5 in my mailbox. Topic Science Fantasy . The zine costs 5 Euros for a hardcopy, but can be downloaded for free. As the topic goes into the realm of science fiction there s plenty of that in this issue. Most of the articles are in German, some are English [ ]
Calibre, if you are not aware, is an open source ebook management system. It s one of the best and most easily available ways to manage a collection of electronic books. It stores books in a rather transparent library that allows easy editing, tagging, and conversion between different ebook formats. It also allows to easily send [ ]
Random Tables d66 Reasons Why the Castle is Totally Deserted (Blog of Forlorn Encystment) Elemental Heretics (Elfmaids Octopi) d100 Poltergeists (Elfmaids Octopi) Let s Build a Thieves Guild (OSRVault) 100 Urban Quest Hooks (OSRVault) Ideas Babies in Dungeons (Prismatic Wasteland) Random Magic User Generator (Remixes and Revelations) Sandbox Settlements: Downtime (Among Cats and Books) [ ]
Subtitle: Being in the Main a Game of the Life and Times of a Gentleman Adventurer and his Several Companions I was woefully ignorant about En Garde! (mind the exclamation mark) until recently, when I tried to investigate why this roleplaying game seems so popular for play-by-mail games, despite being mostly forgotten in normal tabletop [ ]
This table was inspired by a quote from Robin D. Laws saying When in doubt, blindfold yourself, take any two GURPS sourcebooks off the shelf at random, and combine the results. Ok, this is a bit pointless but also not. I mean, who has a d140 anyway? Or in fact even so many GURPS books? [ ]
Last Thursday we wrapped up the Grenzland Diplomacy play-by-post game we were playing for the last few days. At least for the season.So the Grenzland campaign (tl.: Borderland) is an ODnD campaign run by Wanderer Bill for the last few years. There already was a lot of history that has been happening in this campaign, [ ]
fortune is one of those classic unix programs that are available on basically all unixoid systems. The only thing it does is display a pseudorandom message from a database of quotations , or as the man-page of fortune for debian says: fortune print a random, hopefully interesting, adage . To be fair, the fortune part of [ ]
Ages ago (2011?) I found a Star Wars OSR retroclone called Star Wars Galactic Adventures on the venerable wizardawn.com page, now lost to the wages of net history. ( that was before there was an actual Star Wars product, a kids book, using the same title ) For some reason it never really caught on in [ ]
I currently am running a Labyrinth Lord Open Table every Tuesday at 8.15pm CET for 2 hours on the Grenzland Discord Server. Sign-ups are via the Norn bot in channel #glimmermark. A wiki page for the game exists. The Glimmermark is a is a border march of the Kingdom of Brillon, once a core province [ ]
They say quantity is a quality all on its own, and that certainly fits the artistic output of Johnny Bruck. Johnny Bruck was a German artist mostly working in pulp magazines, most famously Perry Rhodan, that weekly science fiction pulp novel series that is at novel issue 3306 as I write this. In fact until [ ]
So we talked about Drinax and what the UWP implies, but what does life there actually look like on the ground? Well, quite terrible really. There s not too many people around. The population code gives 70.000 people, but I am pretty sure this amount (the size of a small-medium city) is in the Floating Palace. [ ]
Not sure how many people are interested in it considering this is an English-language blog and this is a (largely) German-language campaign newsletter but anyway, here is issue 2 of Glimmermärkische Zeytungen. I decided to create an In-Game chronicle here, as written by the scribe on Castle Aberwacht. Which largely concerns the doings of the [ ]
It s the first time I actually feel the amount of times I played in a year worth mentioning. I had a rather successful 2024 in terms of ttrpg gaming. If my reckoning is correct (and I think I might miss a few) I played 56 sessions of roleplaying games this year. And this doesn t take [ ]
The last few weeks I have been posting pretty often, daily even, which is interesting. I sometimes do get these posting spells for a bit with this blog, and that s quite nice. Anyway, today I had business in Warsaw and wasn t able to write anything before I was on the train back, so this post [ ]
There are no Glimmermark games for the next two weeks. Which means there also are no expeditions into the wilderness or the local dungeons as we are running on a 1:1 campaign time scale, with every week in real life being about a week in the game.But why is that? I mean, why is that [ ]
During my excursions into reaction rolls for Traveller lately I realized that the Traveller book has a template for how to create rumor tables (or just come up with rumors on the fly). Unlike other games (uhm DnD) which never get into this deeper than having a rumor table in some of their scenarios. This [ ]
You have seen his works before if you ever looked at anything regarding space colonization. Rick Guidice was an American illustrator who did some stellar work illustrating some of the things scientists at NASA were working on. Some of his most striking stuff was regarding various ideas for space colonies. And if you look up [ ]