A blog for TTRPG play reports
This was my third year at GenCon, but my first time running games. I was super anxious about it to the point of neglecting my prep until the last minute, though I think/hope my players didn't notice! I got a lot of compliments on the set up, and almost everyone had a good time. I'll know more once I get the survey data back after Lurking Fears, the group I worked with, processes it. Overall, it…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played April 7, 2026 Adventure Wizard's Sojourn System Peasantry GM Zakary (Creator) Player Count 4 My Role Player (Dinkus, Hangman) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Visited a wizard tower, and the wizard went on vacation Tasks given by wizard, shenanigans ensued A competition for determining if someone has magic Profit? The System Peasantry is a game…
I've found joy in retro gaming these last couple weeks, playing a lot of Skies of Arcadia. It was one of the first games I played for hours on end on my Dreamcast back in the day. It's an iconic JRPG first released on Dreamcast and then re-released on GameCube. Now that game design is my full time job, I was analyzing the presentation and mechanics of the game in a new light. For one, why does…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played December 21, 2025 Adventure Naughty List System Orbital Blues GM Kati Player Count 3 My Role Referee Number of Sessions 1 With Orbital Blues Month having just ended, I thought it would be a great time to share the Holiday Heist I ran at the end of 2025. Before this heist, I had run Orbital Blues once before and really liked the sytem. My group liked…
This post has been written as part of the Map Blogwagon . The game Blue Prince celebrated its one-year anniversary this month, and I found myself back inside the ever-changing home. It took me 58 days to reach Room 46, and at 125 days, I’m still searching for answers. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, Blue Prince is a rogue-lite where players draft rooms, solve puzzles, and learn more about an…
Fungal Festering Fugitives This is an ongoing series about my open table of Cloud Empress. This is part 3. Pack a Knapsack! Campaign Kickoff - Cloud Empress Players Present: Veer, Grimalkin, and Ponti Hexes Explored: V27, V20 Days: 3, 4 Provisions Used: 1 I'm continuing my GM reports of the open table Cloud Empress campaign I'm running, and this post covers Session 2, including my…
Discussions around the bullet typographical device have been making its rounds in the Blogosphere and inciting much debate and discourse, which I’m partially adding to with this post. I’m not here to tell you whether bullet points are right or wrong, but I will tell you the history of them to the best of my knowledge. I’m interested in the following: The history of bullet points The integration of…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played April 3, 2026 Adventure Summer Season System Honeybees GM Pat Player Count 3 My Role Player (Derpia) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Continued play from session 1 playtest Discovered paper wasps south of the hive Found another deer carcass southwest In the middle of the mountains, we found a meadow The Party Scott – Scott? Zak - Blue Kati – Derpia…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played April 1, 2026 Adventure Down Darker Trails - Shadows over Stillwater System Pulp Cthulhu GM Jess Player Count 4 My Role Player (Lee the Flea) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Poorly scoped out a bank The whole town is havin’ nightmares Got a date with Edith 😉 The party plans at the Silver Shaft Saloon Returned to the bank, planned to make a…
This post is both a player and GM report at the same time! I'm calling it a Referee Rundown, a Mirror Report, the Director's Commentary, Behind the Screen? Something like that. One of my players in the Gallows Corner one-shot wrote a great play report, and I'm going to provide my side-by-side feedback of my thought process in response to what the players did. Play Report comments will be in…
I was looking to expand my Blogosphere setting, and I wanted to write-up locations for them. This led me to considering how and what would be included in each location. I wanted and needed a good schema for them. Rather than do a description in pure prose, I want something akin to a stat block or even the lore blocks which have been inspiring fun stuff. My goal is to take the lore block concept…
The discussion of improvisation and its role at the table continues to fester in my mind, especially after my post on Improv, Play Culture, and Authority . I've only scratched the surface in that relationship, but I want to focus on improv's role at the table when it's a real-time table vs. a play-by-post (pbp) one. Play-By-Post Prep I've been running a play-by-post of Blades in the Dark with Deep…
I love writing snappy reviews of ttrpgs products I engage with, but I realized I can do that with all kinds of media...like video games! Yeah, that thing I spend all my other extra time on and my day-to-day job. The presentation and artstyle of the game imply a cozy and benign setting, something akin to Legends & Lattes, but it's not. It tries to stay a bit in the middle between tongue-and-check…
I've been wanting to share with anyone who would listen about the Open Table Cloud Empress (CE) campaign I've been running and then I realized this is one of the reasons why I have a blog...to capture these sessions and refine the way I GM! Setup I've already talked a bit about setting up for the campaign which I've kept as is. The only change has been the addition of a Caravan Sheet. Since I'm…
As someone who GMs many games, I often think about improv and how that skill has grown with the number of systems and sessions I run. Not having this skill as a beginner GM made me very anxious to run games, but thankfully my friends encouraged and supported the habit. Now here we are. Thinking more about the importance of improv at the table, I've never considered it from a player perspective. I…
Introduction This post is part review of my time reading The Rulebook and part recognizing the importance of Instructional Design for TTRPGs. I've taken my time reading The Rulebook since it was a project last Fall among a group of bloggers (1). It does a great breakdown of rules into four categories: formal, internal, social, and material. There is a small chapter on external regulation that I…
Running an Open Table of Cloud Empress has taught me a lot. It's my third time running a hexcrawl, my first time running an open table, and my first campaign with, what I hope, will be a satisfying end. When I ran my first hexcrawl a few years ago, I scoured the internet for the right combination of tools , tables , and procedures to capture exactly what I wanted my open table to be. I found…
I've been writing some non-fiction pieces and considering writng them in an epistolary fashion. I was noodlin' on how this could be applied to ttrpgs as all bloggers are wont to do, and I've come up with Epistle Maps: An Exquisite Hamlet. This combines the Exquisite Corpse process to create a map. Rather than roll for a prompt or pick one at random, players can only draw from the information…
Cover art for Slugblaster by Sex on a Pizza. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played January 1, 2026 Adventure Slugblaster Turbo-X System Slugblaster GM Kati Player Count 4 My Role Referee Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Kiddos zip zoomed through a portal to the Golden Jungle Crossed a river full of crocodiles in style Met up with a bunch kids partying around a gundamn arm Woke up said…
Table of Contents Introduction System & Adventure Breakdown System Breakdown Adventure Breakdown Memorable Highlights Facilitator Shoutouts All the Data Conclusion Introduction The end of year awards are making their rounds, and being a lover of a data, I'm doing a breakdown on what I played, what I ran, and some fun analytics of it all. System & Adventure Breakdown System Breakdown This year, I…
Final Hexmas Map This entire project wouldn't have been possible without Prismatic Wasteland's Blogwagon Call . Another shoutout to Among Cats and Books for keeping a spreadsheet of all the entries. It made it incredibly easy to mark off entries as I added them. Creating this map has been a delight. As entries filtered in, I learned more about design and layout, changing the design to fit the…
The logo for Over/Under. This post is part of a series. Resources as Players - Over/Under The Gift of Grash - Over/Under You are here. Table of Contents Introduction Game Designer Intentions Ground Zero Let the Con Begin A Love Letter to Lit Majors A Pound of Flesh Terminology Code Breakers Club/Heimlich Expedition Choke Night/Choke Incursion/Choke Event Me, Bleeding Out Airtight Intel What makes…
Table of Contents Introduction Inspiration Blogosphere Event Die Real Life Event Die Blogosphere Flux Theme Encounter Local Effects Points of Interest Special Equipment Final Thoughts Additional Reading Introduction Since I joined the Prismatic Waystation years ago (yes we're now in the plural wow), there have been many, many jokes on blog posts like "here's my post on how I fixed the thief class"…
Another blogwagon by Prismatic Wasteland has summoned the bloggers. This time, it's about creating a hex, using the rankin/bass Christmas productions as inspiration. You can read more about in Prismatic's post. Let's get into hexes!! Hexmas Map So Far In the Prismatic Waystation, I've been keeping track of each person who has joyously contributed to the Hexmas map! Here's the current map with my…
A few years ago, my first sandbox campaign used the Beyond the Wall (BtW) system, and it was also an excuse to buy Hexographer to create my own hexcrawl. I had no idea what I was doing, so I often referred to Prismatic Wasteland's Hexcrawl Checklist , a post that's fast become a classic reference. I also owned tons of adventures, dungeons, and settings that I wanted to drop into the world. BtW…
Been a minute since I got to be a player, but I'm back with more Mothership. This is fast becoming one of my favorite systems to run and play in. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played December 12, 2025 Adventure ABYSS // EXE System Mothership GM Lyndsey Player Count 3 My Role Player (Becky - Teamster) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Sent to a deep-sea lab for data extraction Found…
When people ask for a good system change - from say something like 5e - that's easy to handle, I used to always recommend PbtA. Now, I don't, and it isn't because PbtA is bad. It's because you need an experienced GM to properly pilot the system. Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a framework designed by Meguey and Vincent Baker for Apocalypse World. In fact, they're running a Kickstarter for its…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played August 16, 2025 Playtest Infected Settlement in Sector 6 – Exiled Seers System Orbital Megastructure GM Evlyn Moreau Player Count 4 My Role Player (Jules – Human Variant of Killvek Clan) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Saw some creepy cyborgs? Travelled to a node and scavenged Old contact visited our camp The System Orbital Megastructure (OB) is a…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played September 9, 2025 Open Table Realm of Fosk System Mythic Bastionland GM Olobosk Player Count 4 My Role Player (Viv - The Mirror Knight) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Travelled to a bridge that was covered in overgrowth Met a lady from the pond (quite the seducer) Went looking for a Seer to help us Cleared the bridge and restored it Attacked by…
Lying on a dice roll is often remarked as a horrible behavior to do. I've always laughed and agreed with statements like, "Yeah how much of a loser do you have to be to cheat in a RPG?" Turns out, I have been that loser. I would argue that it's way more common than people think and comes from a variety of places. Lying as a Player For me, the impetus for lying about a dice roll was not only to do…
The logo for Over/Under, created by Sam Sorensen. This post is part of a series. Resources as Players - Over/Under You are Here. Doing OT in OU - A Deep Dive into Over/Under Today over/under ends, and...I can't begin to explain the mixed emotions about it. The first is relief, because if you've been playing to stay up to date like I have, then you know it's exhausting and intense and overwhelming…
The logo for Over/Under, created by Sam Sorensen. This quickly became part of a short series: Over/Under Part 2: The Gift of Grash Doing OT in OU - A Deep Dive into Over/Under I've been participating in the giant experiment that is over/under , and I've had extreme highs and lows with it so far. If you aren't familiar with the rules, you can find them here . This past weekend in O/U, we saw wildly…
Got into a discussion about when you should link to relevant content in your blog, but not all the authors are cool, so should you? Maybe even some of them are problematic, and you no longer want to support them. What do you do? Well, I don't know, because this post isn't about that. We dove deeper into the topic, and it got me thinking...Is enjoying art a moral act? My question isn't to place…
The Blogging Clerics, or Blerics, have been summoned again by the Bandwagon! This time, we're posting our own Appendix N entries. As a 90s kid, my list is comprised almost entirely of digital media with a dash of physical. Digital Media Here, I'll cover the digital media that inspired me. The video games, the TV shows, etc. The biggest theme I've noticed throughout is if I liked the soundtrack to…
A picture of Outer Wilds Main Theme sheet musicby Andrew Prahlow. I've had this idea rolling around my head since GenCon (so not very long) about how ttrpg sessions, regardless of system, could empower a group to create music! I wouldn't call myself a musician, but I used to play in my high school band back in the day, haha. So, I have the smallest idea of what I'm doing when it comes to reading…
Old Gods of Appalachia (OGoA) is a Cypher system based game that focuses on an alternate Appalachia in the 19th century. The stereotypes of Appalachia are not welcome here. With only 4 players at the table and an older British GM, we were set to have a hoot. The player next to me, Derek, was from Georgia, so we explained to the table what some of the most contentious discussions in the region are:…
Introduction Opening and eating fortune cookies provide a chance for ominous, vague, or hysterical moments in a campaign setting. Whether it's adding the phrase "in bed" after reading a fortune or laughing at the sometimes unclear message in them. This idea came to me after remembering how in Dolmenwood , each player has a birthday that provides a bonus for that day only. My party hasn't passed…
I heard the clack of keys as Prismatic Wasteland's call to blog about clerics summoned people in the blogosphere. We rose up like the curmudgeons we, sometimes, are. What poured forth from my imagination was a new class altogether. I give you...the Blogging Cleric, or the Bleric, a Nondescript Cleric with many talents. To generate this class, I asked my peers how they would describe OSR Bloggers.…
Another Prep Tool Note: This post includes spoilers for the adventures Another Bug Hunt and A Wicked Secret. This is the first content, theory, or prep post I'm writing. The main thing is, it's not a Play Report. Rather, it's a deep-dive into a prep tool I found on The Novel Game Master's blog where they talked about creating a GM-facing aid to reference at the table during investigation-based…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure Through Ultan's Door System Dreamland GM Jason Player Count 4 My Role Player (Lily/Cultist/Rollory) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Discovered a weird door only we could see Dreamt in the Inquisitor’s Temple Murdered a giant, one-eyed bird Met some guild-less that asked us to take them away Was chased by murderous creatures Conjured a sick boat Woke…
Rulebook cover for Vaesen This was a pickup game after Precognition! I had been itching to play this system for a while and opted to join. Glad I did as it was very cool and prompted thinking about how we set up, run, and manage investigation scenarios as a whole. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure A Wicked Secret System Vaesen GM Joel Player Count 4 My Role Player (Gertrude - Doctor)…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure System Call of Kid-thulhu GM Jess Player Count 4 My Role Player (Paul - Costume: Batman/Mothman) Number of Sessions 2 The Snapshot Legend in town that kids who come to a haunted house never return Roger, some bully, dares us to do it. Locks us inside the house. The house apparently can be locked from the outside?? LAME. We explore the crappy…
The rulebook cover of NUKED! The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure The Strange Lab of Dr. Erichtho System NUKED! GM Mac Player Count 5 My Role Player (Big Brain - John Rotgut) Number of Sessions 1 Players Big Brain (John Rotgut), The Bloodhound (Doug), The Okkultist (Father – Gas 4 Coin), The Snatchfinger (Red Ed), and Bunker Baby (Honcho) The Snapshot Someone's digging up bodies in the…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure Mind Dungeon of the Crystal Eye System MÖRK BORG GM Daria (Bees777) Player Count 4 My Role Player (Ashe - Ashborn Apostle) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Entered a tavern and met some chill people Touched a crystal eye and ended up in a dungeon Encountered weird glitches of the barkeep A few floors later, encountered a giant disembodied mouth with…
The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men System Original Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D) GM Attronarch Player Count 5 (with each person controlling 2 characters) My Role Player (Ulfam and Gill Boi) Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Found some cool looking crab-shell canoes Canoes swarmed by albino rats and 2 people die Gill put almost everyone and himself to sleep,…
The Cover of the Deluge at Drizzle Distillery adventure by Munkao. The session was ran as part of Precognition , a virtual ttrpg con happening March 14-18 2025. Gamemasters and players gathered to spend a weekend playing games through Discord, VTT, and other tools. Just like my previous post with OD&D, this session did not disappoint. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure Deluge at…
The Core Rulebook cover title of Fallout. This GM play report talks about the Fallout 2d20 system. It's easy to see the inspiration the game takes from 5e, but it's also a system with some crunch. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure With a Bang, or a Whimper (In the back of Core Rulebook) System Fallout 2d20 GM Kati Player Count 3 My Role GM Number of Sessions 2 The Snapshot The party…
This is a play report on Crash Pandas by Grant Howitt. Every player is a different raccoon, and you're all trying to drive the same car (done through blind voting) to win a race. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Adventure The Fast and the Furriest System Crash Pandas GM Jess Player Count 4 My Role Player (Dr. Doctor) Human Casualties 1 Number of Sessions 1 The Snapshot Chose a garbage truck as…
This is a play report on Wonky Willie's Authentic Interactive Extravangza . The adventure was created by a whole group of excellent creators in the ttrpg space. You can grab it for free on itch.io! The Stat Sheet Adventure: Wonky Willie's Authentic Interactive Extravaganza Date Played: 05/24/2024 System: Into the Odd GM: Prismatic Wasteland Player Count: 2 My Role: Player (Clarissa) The Snapshot…
This is a play report on a homebrew Halloween system created by Dwiz from Knight at the Opera . While the system is not available for play, it was a great treat (pun intended) to play around Halloween. The Stat Sheet The Label The Details Date Played 10/24/2024 Adventure Downtown Doomsday System Dwiz's Halloween Game GM Dwiz Player Count 6 My Role Player (Cordelia dressed as Denethor, Steward of…