Castleby David Macaulay is supposedly for kids – but pretty much every gamer of any age I have ever known has a copy on their shelves. It’s a grand book full of marvelous illustrations, and what it does best is explain how and why castles were built the way they were. From the perspective of… Continue reading Castle by David Macaulay

I’m currently in Madison, Wisconsin for the weekend, and am getting ready to go to Minneapolis-St. Paul for Dave Arneson’s memorial on Monday. It’s pretty obvious to me now that Dave’s passing had a much bigger effect on me than I was initially willing to admit. That having been said, there have been a few… Continue reading Beginnings and Endings

There’s a side of world-building that comes up whenever you have clerics – so what sorts of holidays does their religion actually have? If you go about it fairly blithely, you end up with something that looks like a mix between the medieval Catholic list of Saints’ days and the solstice/equinox set-up from modern paganism.… Continue reading Easter, Ostara, and Holidays

I was asked on another forum to provide some thoughts about Dave Arneson and his participation in Prof. M.A.R. Barker’s world of Tekumel. I’ve decided to share those here, as well: Dave played irregularly with the Thursday Night Group, sometimes for a longer stretch when he lived in the Twin Cities, then for the occasional… Continue reading Dave Arneson and Tekumel

As has been reported by many sources, Dave Arneson has passed away. It’s been just over a month since the anniversary of Gary’s death, and now both of them are no longer with us. I hope people will take the time to appreciate these two men, who changed the world with their modest creation. Whether… Continue reading Dave Arneson

For those of you who do not know, Dave Arneson is in hospice, dealing with late-stage cancer. I’ve known Dave now for many years – not as close as some, but we’re friends. I also happen to know Michael Mornard (“Old Geezer” on many forums), and a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance… Continue reading Being thankful

Over the past week, I’ve been migrating from my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 700m, to a new desktop machine. I had been using my laptop as a substitute for my old desktop machine, which had a significant “blue screen of death” system failure two days after I turned in my dissertation. But the laptop was… Continue reading The Wyrm Biting Its Tail

Just a note to let people know that Fight On! #4 has been released. Fight On! has been the flagship ‘zine of the Old School movement, and has moved to quarterly publishing via Lulu. While I don’t have anything in #4, I am expecting to submit some material for #5. Here’s the info on it… Continue reading Fight On! #4 released

I’m currently in Durham, NC visiting a friend from school, and so out of necessity, this might be a bit short. This is something of a follow-up to a comment I made over on Grognardia. Put simply, if you don’t buy the “evolution” argument about role-playing games, i.e. that games “evolve” somewhat naturally from previous… Continue reading OD&D + Supplements != AD&D 1st Edition

If you go through the list of books and authors that influenced Traveller, it’s a pretty long list. Poul Anderson was always one of my favorites, especially his Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry series of books and stories. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle also had their effect, particularly their CoDominium series – A Spaceship… Continue reading Traveller Tuesday: Our Original Inspiration