I’m working on a project that might be rather interesting when it’s done.  What I need is this:  a global project of the Earth with the poles in different locations – the South Pole somewhere around the Black Sea, and the North Pole somewhere in the South Pacific.  Some more glaciation would be cool, too. … Continue reading Need some help

“I’m a loafer with a dead-end job in real life; why can’t I play a hero in a fantasy game?” I’ve heard comments like this fairly frequently from gamers with whom I’ve played, over the years. Aside from the self-esteem issues implicit in the comparison, there’s a fairly good reason why not every player-character is… Continue reading Player-characters are….

When I first started roleplaying, back in 1975, there were no modules. Instead, people spoke of “dungeons” – as in, “Say, we’re going to play in Steve’s dungeon on Saturday – want to join us?” The idea of going on an adventure was firmly inside the frame of a larger campaign. Some people had elaborate… Continue reading What are these “modules” of which you speak?

One of the more interesting aspects of the early days of role-playing games was the assumption that campaigns were something that lasted some time. Certainly Greyhawk and Blackmoor lasted a very long time – but in the first decade of gaming, there did not seem to be any sort of assumption that a campaign would… Continue reading Open-Ended Campaigns

I’m moving to Madison, Wiscowsin at the end of the month. Not too surprisingly, I’ve decided to invest in a lot of standard-size boxes to make the move go more easily. A quick check of Uline revealed that they had 12x10x10 boxes (that’s 30.5cm by 25.4cm by 25.4cm for metric folks), for 51 cents in… Continue reading Moving and various issues

As it turns out, Aaron Allston has had an emergency bypass operation. Aaron’s a science fiction writer, and in the past contributed significantly to The Space Gamer and other SJG projects. Details on how to contribute money for Aaron’s recovery can be found here. This isn’t the first time someone in our community has needed… Continue reading Aaron Allston needs your help

I ended up recently having an online conversation with Jonathan Tweet about his recent experience with Old School gaming. He seemed to mildly enjoy it, but had this to say about the rules: The problem with such games is that there’s a lot of bad stuff that people are nostalgic for. For every bad rule… Continue reading De gustibus non est disputandem…and all that

Sometime in the past decade – probably about seven or eight years ago – WOTC decided to bring out miniature versions of various AD&D and D&D books. I picked up the three core books for AD&D 1st Edition. I kept them in my desk in grad school, apparently hoping for the spontaneous lunch session game… Continue reading Three *really* little books

Something of an unintended vacation took place over the past month. Between end-of-semester grading and then going to WisCon, I found myself for little time for the Old School Movement. It didn’t help matters that my weekly game on Monday afternoons had to shut down due to schedule changes for my players. But it’s June,… Continue reading I’m Back

“Hate” might be too strong a word here, but I have a difficult time seeing the appeal of gaming in someone’s – anyone’s – home. Before everybody goes bonkers over this, lemme explain. In an earlier post, I reminisced about different gaming clubs of my youth. One important fact about all of them was that… Continue reading I hate gaming at home