One of the more difficult things to admit as a referee is when you make a mistake. We like to think that mistakes are mostly of the “oops, didn’t quite mean it that way” variety, but sometimes mistakes can be much bigger than that. Probably my earliest big mistake came when I was running a… Continue reading “Mistakes were made, Senator….”
Yes, this photo – taken at a Starbucks in south Minneapolis – reveals the sinister dark underside of the Old School Renaissance. Gathered for nefarious purposes are (from left to right): Aaron Kesher, of Sandbox Empire (AKA Kesher on the Original D&D Discussion Board), then myself, and then Tom Juntunen, one of the contributors to… Continue reading Proof of a Conspiracy
Jones Soda has developed a new limited edition of soda pop geared for D&D players. And while this news has probably bounced off the far boundaries of the internet a couple of times already, I’ve just heard about it. It reminds me of the very early days of gaming, when a potions of healing were… Continue reading It’s not Dr. Pepper, but it looks tasty
Rob Conley has some interesting ideas about a kind of Living OD&D that might be something TARGA might eventually run. (Is that enough “might”s? It’s very exploratory in nature, or so it would seem to me.) What I find fascinating about this is that in matches what people did oh-so-long-ago, where characters and campaigns were… Continue reading Campaigns and Living OD&D
“Five dollars an hour.” “For a table?” “Yep.” “…And that’s if the game is out of print or unavailable from your distributor?” “Yep.” I stood, slightly dumbfounded. The gaming tables were in a next-door store front, at that moment completely empty of gamers. The Not-So-FLGS manager smiled that “I’m with a customer but I don’t… Continue reading Table Fees
Dan Proctor, author of Labyrinth Lord, gets interviewed over on RPG Blog II. It’s an interesting interview, since I chose Labyrinth Lord over Swords & Wizardry for OD&D simulation. I found myself curious about it and the Advanced Edition Companion – since much of what I wanted to add to my game was somewhere in-between… Continue reading Dan Proctor interview
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
