The chocolate chip cookies were exactly golden-brown and hot from the oven. Using an oven mitt, I took the cookie sheet out, slipped the parchment paper and the dozen cookies onto a cooking rack. In another few minutes we’d have cookies and tall glasses of cold milk. For now, though, we would wait until they… Continue reading Learning How to Bake
The Morrow Project is one of my favorite tabletop roleplaying games. Some of this is clearly nostalgia; I played it when I was in college back in the 1980s, and I met my partner Lynn through my gaming group. Some of it is related to my academic and personal study of nuclear war – something… Continue reading Revisiting The Morrow Project
The range of combat additions made in the “mimeo” Empire of the Petal Throne is fairly remarkable, given that it was written in March and April 1974, just after OD&D was released. [NB: all section references in this blog post are to the sections as listed in the mimeo EPT.] A summary of the combat… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday 14: EPT Rules Updates-Combat Additions
I sat down with the fellows from Black Lodge Games at North Texas RPG Con, and they interviewed me about some of the projects currently in the works. Full disclosure: just met them at the con and do not know really anything about the rest of their work, but they were friendly and interested in… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: Interview at North Texas!
Zach Howard, over at the Zenopus Archives, has posted the Table of Contents for Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, which is very exciting. I have cross-posted the TOC from his blog (see below). It is particularly exciting to see the article he and Tony Rowe have written, alongside the article written by Gary Alan… Continue reading Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons Table of Contents
Some time ago, I had a discussion with a friend and fellow academic about the OSR — the Old School Revival, Renaissance, or possibly Rules. Coming at this from an indie games perspective, he said he had never encountered any sort of theory behind the OSR, any attempt to provide an explanatory framework for what… Continue reading OSR Theory 1: Introductory Thoughts
Okay, this blog post has been delayed for a day, due to taking my cat Dorian to the vet. He’s doing much better now, so I can finish this post. I have also decided to split this post into two posts, because there is just so much to talk about when it comes to combat… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday 13: EPT Rules Updates-Combat Sequence
One of the biggest issues I had to deal with in starting my Tékumel campaign had to do with alignment. Tékumel’s alignment system is different from the various alignment systems in D&D, and is more grounded in the setting, which is helpful. My experience in the original campaign was that the player-characters worshiped different gods,… Continue reading Tékumel Thursdays 12: Alignment in my Tékumel campaign
The need to convey news about what was happening elsewhere in the Empire presented a challenge to Prof. Barker in the original campaign – or player-characters were along with Prince Eselné when this encounter took place: “…Know ye, O Omnipotent Eye Which Sees the World, that your excellent son, Lord Eselné, has travelled to Chéne… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday 11: Trolls in the Woods
Gary Alan Fine and I have co-authored “Soft Communities and Deviance in Dungeons & Dragons” which will be included in the upcoming anthology from MIT Press, entitled Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. This volume, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter and José P. Zagal, “explores and celebrates the game’s legacy and its tremendous impact on… Continue reading 50 Years of D&D, from MIT Press
