Christmas Eve in Minnesota last year Taking a break today from posting anything.  I hope you are having a wonderful holiday, no matter your religion or belief, and more gaming is just around the corner.  Merry Yule!

UFO recovery seems to be a new part of Kurama‘s mission I wrote a few days ago about the mysterious package received at the University of Chicago.  It seems that the entire matter has now been cleared up – albeit in a mostly mundane fashion, and very disappointing to those of us whose subscriptions to… Continue reading You CAN Make This Stuff Up…

One of the interesting results to come out of my recent discussion with Ron Edwards was a keener appreciation for the games industry, and how it affects creativity.  I think I am with James Maliszewski when he says on Grognardia that “[i]f anything, I found my enjoyment lessened and a big part of my abandoning… Continue reading The Grind

Long-term campaigns matter.  That may seem like a self-evident truth to those who are playing Pathfinder or have been involved in a Forgotten Realms campaign for any length of time, but from an OSR perspective, it might not be so clear.  One of the problems of today is that there are so many different choices when it… Continue reading Why long-term campaigns matter

Winter Solstice 2011 at Stonehenge Does the calendar in your game year mean anything?  It should.  In pre-industrial societies, the cycle of the seasons and the turn of the year were important in the lives of everyone.  In our “disenchanted” modern world, we pay little attention to the seasons for their own sake, but more as… Continue reading Winter Solstice!

Read more about this on Jon’s blog I want to be clear: this is an amazing book.  In some ways, it’s the book I’ve wanted to write – but Jon does a better job at much of the subject material by having access to a vast wealth of documentation (and I thought I had an extensive… Continue reading With apologies to Jon Peterson

I just read over on a Google+ community about a fellow whose gaming group – like so many – was beginning to scatter. Whether it was due to college graduation or job and career issues doesn’t really matter. My own brother-in-law has been meeting with his college gaming group on Yahoo Chat and infrequent get-togethers… Continue reading Starting a game club: why do it?

…of the Walking Eye podcast conversation between myself and Ron Edwards, with my friend Kevin Weiser acting as moderator, goes up today.  I have to admit, I am interested in hearing how it will sound, given that there’s a lot we talked about – although not as much about the OSR as I might have… Continue reading The Second Half…

Editorial note:  I wrote this blog post some time ago, but aside from a few minor editorial updates, it is still very much how I feel about the current hype around the “evolution” of D&D. Don’t mistake all of this for… One of the comments made sometimes by fans of D&D 4th Edition is, “oh, it’s… Continue reading They just aren’t the same…

Ah, props in gaming.  Done right, they can add a lot to a gaming session.  Over time, I’ve created fake ID cards, accident reports, even a spy’s briefcase right down to the unknown surveillance photos, cigarettes, and money (for the record, 20 Euros and 100 Rand). But I don’t think I’ve gone this far: