Pity the Blue Orc
Orcs are green Slime is pink But what if they weren’t? Really makes one think
Prismatic Wasteland
Latest posts
Conversion Guide and Extra Enemy Pokémon for Into the Oddish
Convert any Pokémon into stats for Into the Oddish and any other Oddlike like Carin or Into the Odd. Also 22 enemy Pokémon for your games or Into the Oddish adventures.
Review: A Book of Beasts
A bestiary of 56 or so monsters, written initially for Dungeon World but useful for any fantasy game, reviewed.
Random Blogwagon Roundup
In 20ish days, the blogosphere produced 80 blog posts about randomness. I present them all in a roll table. Roll a d80 and read a blog post!
So You’re Too Good For A Surprise Egg?
There is a contrarian hot take chestnut that gets bandied about occasionally against the prevalence of randomness in roleplaying games. I articulate a simple counter-counterargument in favor of the mainstream approach of enjoying the swings.
Five Solutions to the Birthday Paradox in Tables
When you are using a random table more than once, you are likely going to run into repeated results. Here are five ways to deal with that problem, particularly for random encounter tables.
RANDOM BLOGWAGON
Issuing a challenge to all bloggers: blog about the topic of “randomness” on a random day in June. Additional random tables are provided to assist you in your posting.
Six Spells
Six spells all involving the magic word “fuck”.
Review: Canal of Horrors
A review of an Electric Bastionland one-shot. Is Chris McDowall one of the funniest writers in TTRPGs?
Around the Blogosphere in 80 Days (Blogwagon Roundup)
A roundup of 50 blogs from the past few months that all focus on maps (including a few adventures that key off the same map).
Chain Stocking the Hex Map
A new method for procedurally generating the terrain of a hex map that adds some level of “memory” to the otherwise disconnected random tosses of the oracle dice.
Play Is Canon
What is “true” about the fiction of your world? I present a tier list (no S tier, sorry) of sources of truth and argue that the paramount source is what actually happens in play, rather than what is merely prepped or written in whatever book you may be referencing.
Rating Every Room in White Plume Mountain
I review every single room (and some non-rooms) in the original funhouse dungeon and describe what makes them work or not work and what is worth stealing for your dungeons and what you should avoid, all based on over a decade of running this adventure for multiple groups.
I'm Bringing Accuracy Back
Into the Odd famously jettisoned the “roll to hit” aspect of D&D derived combat. How can accuracy, specifically reducing an opponent’s accuracy by means of sand in the eyes or otherwise, be re-introduced without despoiling Into the Odd’s basic combat mechanics?
Pokémon Is OSR
I elucidate the ways that the Pokémon games embody several principles of the OSR playstyle, which is maybe unsurprising when you consider the history of JRPGs.
Into the Oddish is Heistfunding Now
Pre-Order Into the Oddish, a Pokémon tabletop roleplaying game parody of Into the Odd, and Vileplume Mountain, a parody of the classic funhouse dungeon that is compatible with Cairn and other Into the Odd-likes.
Bandwagon: The Map is Not the Territory But It is the Topic
Announcing a new blog bandwagon! This time you have 80 days in which to write something on your blog about maps and/or to annotate/remix/expand a map drawn by the esteemed Amanda Lee Franck!
All Along the Clocktower
Are you using overloaded encounter dice to track time? Clocks like from Blades in the Dark? Here is a more tangible, toyetic alternative method for tracking progress of anything in TTRPGs from time to damage, and a few ways you might use it: the Clocktower.
Playtest Early, Playtest Often
To design a game, you have to break a few eggs and discard some rules or completely rewrite them. But you won’t know what to discard and what to rewrite until you feed those eggs to your players.
The Rankin Bass Hexmas Crawl
A Christmas-themed hexcrawl setting with 60 hexes written from bloggers across the blogosphere.