Stuff I think about
A while ago, I picked up a copy of the AD&D 2e book “Player’s Option: Skills and Powers” and it set off some kind of explosion in my brain in terms of designing a modular, kit-based game. I had already been sketching a heartbreaker-style document of old-school, OSR-ish procedures I wanted to use, so this …
Last week, I posted some gods I had written years ago — I think for a 4e game that was never going to happen. I was really inspired by dungeon doll’s Dungeon Gods and Dungeon Shrines posts, so I wanted to write out some shrines + rituals as a way to flesh out these gods …
Inspired by this post by Mazirian’s Garden, I wanted to write up some spellbooks. I found that post through this one from the excellent I Cast Light! on making 1st level magic users interesting, it’s definitely worth the read. While I was making this, I remembered I had a little “Council of Wizards” brewing for …
“The Circle of the Lustful” Francesca da Rimini Here’s a roster of gods I wrote years ago, I think for a short-lived Torchbearer campaign? The main conceit with this pantheon is that they all represent broad concepts, and often both sides of dualities. I’ve since given them all alignments for use in OSR-ish games, plus …
I’m really enjoying the language-themed blog posts going around right now, check them out if you haven’t. “The Ugg-Tecture of Language” by Playful Void “Quantum Languages for Basic D&D” by Pointless Monument “Thirteen Tongues (Making Languages Interesting)” by Dungeonfruit Inspired by the Dungeonfruit post, I wrote some languages and their special uses. Descriptions or mechanics …
Today I’ll be continuing level 4 of my megadungeon, this one entitled “The Cyclopean Ruins.” In case you missed it, I’m basically trying to create a series of isolated environments, and then I’ll connect them with a mess of passages, overlapping encounter tables, etc. For the first part, I’m just stocking the dungeon. I haven’t …
This summer, I was fortunate enough to take part in the School for Poetic Computation’s Worlds in Conversation class, led by Everest Pipkin, Weaver Walker, and Caro Asercion. It was a real boost to my motivation and excitement when it comes to game design, and I’m hoping to be posting more here. Specifically, doing small, …
It’s been a while! But I have been working away at the Nether Prison just a bit. I knew I wanted some random encounters/wandering monsters in the prison, so I took a look at the stocked rooms and picked out 16 of them to fit into an Overloaded Encounter Table, in the style of Prismatic …
They start as bones — it always starts with bones. Set to guard. Mindless. The mold and dust and detritus of a dark dungeon hall will coalesce in layers like organic sentiment. Given enough time, this mess begins to resemble flesh once more. The bones cloak themselves from the bludgeoning damage of the priest. Their …