R.G. Wood
Bookplate for the Załuski Library, designed by Jan Filipowicz. I realised a long time ago that life's too short for bad books. Reading for leisure is supposed to be fun, not a punitive chore, but somehow I've spent hours finishing books I hated. We feel obliged to finish a book even if we didn't enjoy it, but there's only so many books you can fit into the rapidly vanishing seconds of your time on…
I first read Little, Big (John Crowley, 1981) in the nineties but didn't make it all the way through. As I recall, it was on the reading list for Changeling: the Dreaming (1st edition) but it was probably a bit too mature for me back then. I'm delighted to report that, a quarter of a century later, I have finally completed it and that its virtues are many. Among them: It is charming in a way only…
Engraving of St. Valentine, by Cibera, 1853 The history between the OSR and romantic fantasy roleplaying is a tortuous one. From the crusade against the Blue Rose roleplaying game to the censure of the old Dragonlance adventures, the play styles have often been cast in opposition. I think there are lots of reasons for this (perhaps not all of them pleasant), but mainly because romantic fantasy…
Dolmenwood (Necrotic Gnome, 2025) might be the apotheosis of the OSR. It really doesn't get more sandboxy than this. The setting just brims with player agency. There are no quantum ogres lurking in the woods here. No narrative plots waiting to ensnare players in tiresome railroads. And the whimsy. So much whimsy. The only problem Dolmenwood might have is that it's too perfect. Such flawless…
Do you ever read books that seem to be written with a film adaptation in mind? Bare-bones, script-like prose. Dialogue punchy but bland. Characters so everyday you could shop around for casting. Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak is one such book. I'm not even sure it would make a particularly good film. Maybe an OK one. Perhaps a Netflix thriller with a script saved by a good cast. I'm just not…
Image from "Book of Wisdom" of Francysk Skaryna 1518 An example of the use of wisdom can be given by noting that while the intelligent character will know that smoking is harmful to him, he may well lack the wisdom to stop (this writer may well fall into this category). Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax, 1979 Are you foolish for smoking? Or merely naive? Can you be considered intelligent if…
2025 was a hard pill to swallow. The political ramifications of the year are, quite frankly, horrifying. We're so screwed, but, then, I could say that of every year for the last two decades. It only ever seems to get worse ( 03/01/26 addendum: it did get worse) . However, the subject of global politics is out-of-scope for my silly little blog. So, instead, here is how my year went. The Dismas…
A little while ago, the Discourse focussed on the OSR credentials of Elden Ring , Namco's wildly popular dark-fantasy CRPG. In particular, people admired the minimalist elements of its sandbox. As Jesse Gerroir noted : Elden Ring really does show how the only thing you really need to run an interesting RPG is a bunch of weird locations for the players to muck around in. You don’t really need a…
Last week, my roleplaying table's book club picked Linghun (2023) by Ai Jiang. It's a novella set in a haunted town, that explores themes of grief and home, and how they relate to the lived experiences of immigrants. I obtained a print-on-demand copy with an attractively haunting cover. Usually, Amazon pod books are of middling quality, but the wide-margined layout worked well with the format.…
Have we reached peak zombie? Apparently not. Fever House (2023) by Keith Posson is a new entry in the genre. Truth be told, I'm pretty sick of zombie horror. It feels like we've exhausted all its permutations, reaching a hopeless loop where the same movie gets made every few years. Can Fever House bring something new to the table? The paperback edition I picked up was an attractive volume. The…
Or do we frame a turbulent sky with our fingers and believe that, because we have narrowed our vision to that small sphere, we have captured and contained the elements? Gloriana , Michael Moorcock As part of my prep I've been using tables for all elements of my campaign: rumours, locations, NPCs, etc. Everything is tabulated so that it can be randomly selected at a moment's notice, during play or…
CONT/EXT is a one-shot of cosmic horror for use with Mothership . A britpunk nightmare set aboard a failing research station. You have been recruited by Continued Existence (CONT/EXT for short). CONT/EXT's mission is to ensure humanity can survive extinction-level threats, such as gamma radiation bursts or advanced, hostile aliens. Rescue is optional You've been sent to investigate the…
This post is the second part of a two-part self-essay I wrote on how to portray aliens for games like Mothership . Includes some mild spoilers . Note: you should definitely read part 1 first. After dinner, Steel drifted into the library. He relaxed around his reading desk. Two of him sipped brandy while another smoked southern herbs. This was pleasure but also calculation: Steel knew just what…
This post evolved out of a series of self-essays I wrote on the subject of Mothership while developing CONT/EXT . I present these (incomplete) thoughts here. Please see my previous article on institutional horror . I continue to unpick the intestinal knot in our cultural psyche that is Alien (1979). This article expands on Skerple's Aliens and Alien Design post, focussing on Aliens as objects of…
This post evolved out of a self-essay I wrote while developing CONT/EXT . It turned up some interesting ideas on world design, horror, institutions and British sci-fi, so I present my (incomplete) thoughts here. The PCs have been recruited by a secretive organisation called Continued Existence (CONT/EXT for short). CONT/EXT’s mission is to ensure humanity can survive an Outside Context Event…
Caution this post contains spoilers . The BBC have put the entire, 50 year back catalogue of Doctor Who on iPlayer (UK only). I don't understand why they didn't do this before. Feels like we (the British public, that is) already paid for it and should have been able to watch it whenever we wanted but, whatever, I took the bait and looked up some of my favourite episodes. Remembrance of the Daleks…
This is a piece of world design I've been toying with over the last few years. It's an attempt to create a low fantasy setting that touches on the tropes of traditional fantasy races without requiring the ubiquitous presence of elves, dwarves, etc. It outlines a nameless, implied setting where non-humans are the exception. Several human cultures have been designed as drop-in replacements for the…
Witchcraft is a new magic discipline for sorcerers or druids that includes seven new spells. Buy it now .
d66 grim fantasy careers for Troika! that vibe off the BOSR (British old-school renaissance). Play grubby fools, scoundrels or commoners thrown into an implied setting of farce and endless war. Inspired by the original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay , you can use Wargod! to run your old adventures or plunge into new worlds of dark fantasy. Old-school British hack The book includes: d66 grubby Troika!…
We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves. The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey and Peter Gross Since Forbidden Lands became my go-to system, I've been unable to resist the urge to homebrew . I promised myself that I wouldn't, but here we are. We make our own monsters. The monster in question? Random encounter tables that…
Status: At Concept Being a teenager on a zero-hour contract is tough, but then you get stuck in a remote gas station during a snowstorm. Just as shit starts to get weird. Can you weather the night, or are you just another casualty of the gig economy? An adventure for Liminal Horror and Liminal High School , in the genre of gig work horror. Shift takes place in the Eigenhaus , a new setting for…
Here is a (brief) list of languages for my homebrew setting. As is my wont, I eschew common fantasy languages like Elvish. Instead, the following languages are spoken and written in the Low Kingdoms... The Low Kingdoms I've been tinkering with my homebrew setting, the Low Kingdoms, for a few years now. Mostly through play. This post is part of the process of tidying it up for publication.…
This is a response to Josh’s article on Hexcrawl Dashboards . In that post, he explains how GMs could streamline their games by putting together a dashboard: a custom webpage that composes maps, random tables, etc. into one screen. It’s one of those “wish I’d thought of that” ideas. And it got me thinking. You could do this without having to mess around with HTML. Just using regular desktop apps…
The Brave English Gypsy, an illustration from the A Book of Roxburghe Ballads . The air is hot and dry, devoid of the corrupting odours of the rolling battlefield behind me, but full of another sort of death; its promise in the very dryness of that air moving about a place where there is no water, no food, no shade. I start walking. Iain Banks, The Bridge . Exploration. The first pillar of the…
This is a tale of Fair Paralain, that rotten tooth of a city. It is a story of kings and princesses, catamites and fairy knights. A tale of misfortunes and gallows humour. True Queen is a series of solo play-throughs using Fate Condensed and The Mythic GM Emulator . (To help me come up with scenes and situations). I'm using the series as a way of familiarising myself with the system, for a…
In a fair fight, the don's man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo's blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible. Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora . These are my (very draft) rules for heists in 5E. Based off the infamous Blades in the Dark roleplaying game, they’re mainly written to avoid lengthy, and painful planning sessions.…
This article is part of a series following the design of my low-fantasy 5E hack, Three Meet . The game is free, and you can read the draft now. If you have any feedback, please post on the forum . Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a fighter. Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged. Ah, to be strong of limb, firm of body. To be wrapped in a thick armour of vascular flesh. To slash,…
A common kingfisher sitting on a branch of a tree. Etching by Heath. I am reminded of a parable: a pond skater was admiring his pond. Behold, its perfect curves. How plentiful its food. Enough space for pond skater life to prosper, no more, and no less, he proclaimed. Incapable of conceiving the waters below, or the skies above, he remarked: This universe is truly unique and complete! He was then…
The Keep throws a long shadow over the Borderlands. An even longer one across our hobby. Scribes wax lyrical in hundreds of posts. Eyes wide with child-like wonder, teary with nostalgia. Brows furrowed, lips pursed with righteous fervour. All writing about B2 Keep on the Borderlands . Constantly replayed, re-imagined, and rewritten. In a way, we're all trying to get back to B2. It's Gary Gygax at…
Public domain illustration of Genua from the Nuremberg Chronicle , 1493. If you think about it, most cities are pretty samey. A big river running through the middle. Rich and poor. Noise. Homelessness. Bustle and shops. Buses and suburbs. And so on. The customs, culture and weather might change, but city-life is city-life pretty much wherever you go. Anyway, here are some observations about…
The gods are silent, but not quite gone. You have been marked, exiled. The Blessed introduces two new unique backgrounds as well as rules for low-fantasy characters.
This is the first campaign diary for my 5th Edition campaign, The Last Post . Heavily influenced by Gary Gygax's famous B2 Keep on the Borderlands . The Last Post is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are venturing forth from the forbidding Keep, into the untamed wilderness of the Western Hinterlands. The below is an edited log from of our in-character chat channel.…
You are not a hero. You are not a saint. You are merely human: a sinner, an imperfect creation, mortal, flawed and broken. But you might yet be redeemed... The Grim introduces gritty options for playing humans in low-fantasy campaigns. Includes a variant human race, new backgrounds and tools.
The Assayer's Guild is a preview of a faction from The Compendium of Factions (working title, yet to be released). I developed the Assayers as part of a recent live stream and this is a first draft... Design Notes: The Assayer's Guild started as the Merchant's Guild, but I thought this was too generic. During the live stream we hit upon the name, The Merchant's Consortium . However, consortium is…
Encounter blocks are an attempt to compress information about how to run encounters into a digestible format. This a preview of a as-yet untitled book on non-player characters I'm working on . Here is an example of an encounter block for that common, low-level encounter, the wandering predators: Header As with the monster stat block, the header contains the name and a brief summary of the…
A little magic still lingers at the frayed edges of society. You have uncovered just such a mystical secret, hiding in the shadows. But what price will you pay for such power? The Eldritch introduces four new backgrounds for low-fantasy characters.
This is a follow-up to my preview of Flawed Magic Items and includes two, new flawed magic items: The Head of St. Eras and blood brew . Public Domain image of the Beheading of St. John (courtesy of The Met ). The Head of St. Eras Wondrous item, legendary (requires attunement) This grisly relic is the withered head of St. Eras, a fierce warrior of the faith. St. Eras was beheaded and martyred by…
For centuries the ratfolk have lurked in the sewers and catacombs of the Undercity, unbeknownst to the citizens above. But soon their wretched existence may be revealed... The Vermin introduces the ratfolk, a new monster for 1st-4th level characters. This 11 page supplement includes a detailed description of the ratfolk with illustrations, 4 new monster stats (CR 1/4 to 1), adventure seeds and an…
This is an excerpt from The Wicked , an upcoming monograph about hedge magic and all things witchy and warlocky, full of toil and trouble. This preview includes a new sorcerer origin for your enjoyment: Cooking witches illustration is public domain via Wikipedia . Second Sight Ages ago your ancestors bred with... something else. Perhaps one of the fey, or perhaps something more infernal. Though…
The age of magic wanes and the fey retreat from the mortal world. Yet a few still tarry. Maybe you were left behind? Or perhaps you have felt the last brush of fey magic upon your soul? The Enchanted introduces two new, unique backgrounds as well as rules for low-fantasy characters.
Copyright free woodcut from the History of the Nordic Peoples by Olaus Magnus. These rules for weather are for gritty campaigns where travel is difficult and resources like rations and water are valuable. This is an excerpt from my forthcoming campaign, Black Griffin . Depending on the season, pick a weather die as per the table below. For example, in Spring you would roll a d6. Season Die Spring…
In the 12th instalment of Black Griffin in which the party is court-martialed for assaulting an officer... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 41 of my ongoing playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in the employ of the infamous Company of the Black…
The Dance of Death , public domain image taken from the Nuremberg Chronicles. Damage. It is at the heart of rules for Dungeons & Dragons . Hit points are God and I've been exploring how to make them more versatile. This is an excerpt from my forthcoming monograph, The Harrowed that expands on the variant rules for corruption, sanity and lingering injuries in Chapter 9 of the Dungeon Master's Guide…
In the 11th instalment of Black Griffin in which the party partakes of a double-cross and buys themselves some time... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 40 of my ongoing playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in the employ of the infamous Company of the…
In the tenth instalment of Black Griffin the party interrogate their prisoners, learn little of the mysterious Commonwealth and acquire a new comrade-in-arms... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 38 of my ongoing playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in…
In the ninth instalment of Black Griffin the party interrogate their prisoners, learn little of the mysterious Commonwealth and acquire a new comrade-in-arms... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 38 of my ongoing playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in…
Public domain woodcut from the Hereford Map of the World (Mappa Mundi) . This is my first stab at a location stat block as part of work on my homebrew campaign, Black Griffin . This version could for any campaign where travel is central like sandbox campaigns. Please find a description of the new format and an example location below: Describing Locations Locations are described with a name and…
In the eighth instalment of Black Griffin the party find themselves attending a war council and a new enemy makes their presence felt... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 37 of my ongoing playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in the employ of the…
Recently I ran a new mission for my playtest campaign Black Griffin . In this particular mission, the party have been commanded to patrol their camp for a few nights (as a sort of punishment). On reflection, not the most exciting adventure. So, to spice things up I decided there would multiple factions at play: A group of bailiff’s searching for wanted spies (whose description suspiciously matches…
In the seventh instalment of Black Griffin the party find themselves attending a war council and a new enemy makes their presence felt... This campaign diary taken from the in-character chat channel from session 36 of my playtest campaign, lightly polished and annotated. Black Griffin is a play-by-chat game that runs every week on Roll20. The party are mercenaries in the employ of the infamous…