Inside me are two wolves. One’s favors hyper–minimalist rules, just this side of “let’s play pretend.” The other has been working on-and-off for years on a game with 7 ability scores and over 70 character upgrades. This wolf is wanted dead or alive by the Free Kriegsspiel Revolution. I can’t help it; I am creature […]
I prefer my tabletop RPG rules pared down—just this side of “Let’s Play Pretend.” I still deploy a range of rules, though, because my games often wear their inspirations on their sleeve, and those inspirations influence how I approach design. Here’s how that plays out in practice. I start with a design element that evokes […]
When running D&Dish games, I prefer combat to feel swift and decisive, and I appreciate rules that support this. Keeping all combatants’ hit point totals relatively low discourages it from becoming a slog. Streamlining rolls and arithmetic, as in Into the Odd and Cairn, can also speed things up. Testing enemies’ morale to see if […]
My playtest campaign of Wastoid culminated in an arena battle against a legendary cryptid in front of a massive crowd, competing to win the last well-preserved painting in the local wasteland. The prize was put up by a raider boss in exchange for a cut of the ticket sales—and to make sure his guys didn’t […]
Awhile back, I reflected on my blog, “if I only have limited energy to do a thing or talk about doing a thing, I’m better off skipping the talking.” It’s a useful philosophy, I think, but only to a point: being in conversation about game design can be, in itself, energizing! I had to “skip […]
Figuring out the “best” way to handle arithmetic in a game is my least favorite part of playtesting. I obsess over it anyway because I want to save myself—and GMs/players who feel similarly about math—some trouble down the line. Figuring out the finer points of dice rolling in a D&D-alike is, of course, basically reinventing […]
Someone asked me on Discord recently whether one of my projects labeled “WIP”—work in progress—was still under active development. I said: I intend to finish it, but it can’t say for sure when. I had to put a lot on hold in the wake of pandemic-related complications, but the good news is that my schedule […]
I wrote something on the last page of a journal today, and decided to transcribe it here to my blog so I don’t forget it when I shove this notebook in a box in the basement. It feels like something I may need to remind myself later, and maybe something others might find helpful to […]
People sometimes ask if I plan to make a second edition of Grave to correspond to the updates in the second edition of Knave. 1️⃣ The answer is: sort of, maybe but not quite. But I’m closer to it now than I was a year ago, now that Dungeon23 left me with an adventure to […]
2023 is over, and with it, the #Dungeon23 challenge: a yearlong effort to create a 365-room megadungeon, one day at a time. Now that I’ve filled two notebooks with a pair of soulslike adventures, I’m reminded of a birthday card I once got from my wife: I share this sentiment with everybody who completed Dungeon23 […]