Favorites from Other Blogs

A running list of some of my favorite posts from around the RPG blogosphere. Incomplete, constantly updated, and only loosely organized.

Historically-Inspired Gaming

• Gundobad Games — The Logic of Feudalism
  
  • A fantastic description of the conditions under which a “feudal” social order makes sense, the problems it brings, and the possibilities it provides for a roleplaying campaign.
• Gundobad Games — The Merovingian Sandbox (continued): the CIVITAS-centered campaign setting
  
  • A different flavor of medieval social structure, inspired by the Merovingian Dynasty of post-Roman Gaul.
• Gundobad Games — Settings with Strata: A Quick-Design Method for Historically Coherent Campaign Settings
  
  • A neat way to build out a campaign setting, using its history to add locations to the map.
• Gundobad Games — Decline, Collapse, and Campaign Settings (even more Settings with Strata)
  
  • What the “collapse of civilization” might mean for your campaign setting, what it tends to look like in real life, and what opportunities it might bring for a plucky band of adventurers.
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry — Practical Polytheism, Part I: Knowledge
  
  • Part II: Practice
    
  • Part III: Polling the Gods
    
  • Part IV: Little Gods and Big People
    
  • I could recommend Dr. Bret Devereaux’s entire blog, but I’ll start with this explainer on how polytheistic religion tended to function historically. There are tons of great ideas here to mine for your next fantasy game.

Hexcrawling and Sandbox Play

• DIY & Dragons — Landmark, Hidden, Secret
  
  • Great advice on how to use time and risk to make exploration interesting, whether in a dungeon or in the wilderness.
• Sachagoat — Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction
  
  • Part 2 - Paths
    
  • Part 3 - Points of Interest
    
  • Part 4 - Borders (+Trailblazing)
    
  • Part 5 - Regions
    
  • Part 6 - Landmarks
    
  • A series of fantastic posts on how to easily prep more interesting wilderness sandboxes, using paths instead of hexes.
• Prismatic Wasteland — Hexcrawl Checklist: Part One
  
  • Part Two
    
  • A step-by-step guide on how to make a good hexcrawl.
• The Hydra’s Grotto — The Ergonomic 3 Mile Hex
  
  • A great argument for three-mile instead of six-mile hexes, for several reasons.
• Silverarm — Down With The 6 Mile Hex! A Modest Proposal
  
  • A continuation of the above argument.
• Dungeon of Signs — What’s needed for a Setting?
  
  • A quick distillation of the essential ingredients to start a sandbox campaign.

Political Gaming

• Chocolate Hammer — Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice
  
  • Perhaps my single favorite RPG blog post of all time. How a game master turned a 70s cowboys shoot-em-up game into a campaign of politics and intrigue.
• Luke Gearing — Violence
  
  • A “fast, nasty system for violence resolution.” You can find my hack of Violence here!
• Bastionland: Information, Choice, Impact
  
  • This is top-tier RPG advice. Players can’t make meaningful decisions if they don’t have enough information, and their choices need to actually matter.
• Rise Up Comus — Interesting Social Situations, or The Discourse Post
  
  • An excellent distillation of what makes a good OSR-style social encounter, using that classic advice about information, choice, and impact.
• Goblin Punch — How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM
  
  • Another great post on how to run challenging-yet-fair social encounters. “You don’t need to be good at Persuasion in real life to roleplay a character who is good at persuading. You just need to be able to approach negotiations like any other puzzle.”
• A Knight at the Opera — People Are Problems: NPCs as Challenge Elements
  
  • A way to build NPCs that treats them less like three-dimensional characters, and more like tools in the game master’s toolbox. Just another way to create opportunities and challenges for the players.
• Mindstorm — Ransacking the Room
  
  • A method for creating interesting choices when players go searching a room or gathering information.

Elegant Game Design

• Methods & Madness — Minimalism, Elegance and Multipurpose Mechanics
  
  • A definition of terms. ”While a minimalist game eliminates every detail that is not important or essential, an elegant game uses the same solutions for different things, which means that few rules can be used to cover many situations, whether essential or not.”
• TRAAASH — No-Initiative Action for Mothership
  
  • A turn order method so straightforward and effective that Mothership 1E adopted it wholesale.
• Odd Skull — Combat Maneuvers, The Easy Way
  
  • An “I cut, you choose” rule that allows you to do… anything, really, and gives your opponent the option to either accept its effects or take damage to stop you.
• Traverse Fantasy — FIVEY: Aspects, Part 2
  
  • A simple rule for character backgrounds where the player chooses how many backgrounds they have, and gives each a bonus. The only restriction is that the total of all bonuses must add up to a certain number.
• Traverse Fantasy — Mathematical Analysis of “Long Live HD”
  
  • An interesting take on health that has you spending hit dice to reduce damage, giving the player both choice and risk.
• Zedeck Siew — You carry your experiences with you
  
  • Takes a standard inventory slot system, and expands on it by turning skills, training, friends, and injuries into “gear” which takes up slots. I’m not sold on this, but I think it’s very interesting!
• I Cast Light! — GRENDEL MENDEL: Using Punnett Squares For Monster Design
  
  • An easy way to differentiate monsters in a rules-light roleplaying game.
• Spooky Action at a Distance — Twelve Angry Rooms
  
  • A simple scheme for building 9 to 12 room dungeons.

Cool Ideas and New Mechanics

• Throne of Salt — 10+20 Setting Questions for Sci-Fi Games
  
  • A questionnaire to establish the tone and setting of a sci-fi campaign.
• The Hotline — Debt Rules for Mothership 1E
  
  • Adding a little more corporate horror to Mothership, and a motivation to do dangerous work, by putting the player characters in an eye-wateringly large amount of debt.
• Orbital Crypt — Small Gods and Stone Soup: Deities made for Dungeon Crawling
  
  • A way to mechanize deities as characters, with their own goals and motivations, who will reward you for good conduct.
• Monsters and Manuals — Animal Name Monsters
  
  • Need to come up with a new monster? Just smash two animals’ names together!

Commentary

• James Mendez Hodes — Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror
  
  • An overview of how orcs, as envisioned in The Lord of the Rings, are an anti-Asian racist caricature.
• James Mendez Hodes — Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They’re Not Human
  
  • How Dungeons & Dragons brought dehumanizing racial stereotypes to all of modern Western fantasy. ”If you find a way to scrub an explicit signifier from a racist expression, but keep the expression intact, you preserve the racist dynamic without the explicit identification.”
• A Knight at the Opera — I Don’t Think I’m Going to Allow Elves to be Playable Anymore
  
  • Presents an argument that since it’s bad for orcs to be people unable to overcome the inherent characteristics of their bloodline, then it’s bad for elves, dwarves, and other “fantasy races” to be so as well.