What is Kotaku’s Problem with Gary Gygax?

That the creators of Dungeons & Dragons and thus the initiators of our beloved hobby, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, had many differences of opinion about their respective contributions to the game and that there was significant bad… Read More

First Five Fantasy Roleplaying

My first post on this blog was about the 1991 Black Box Dungeons & Dragons starter set, which was my introduction to D&D and the roleplaying game hobby generally. I still believe this version of the game is… Read More

Cults of Chaos

Both my Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign and my games of Basic D&D feature Chaos cults as adversaries for the player characters. Sometimes hidden in the shadows of respectable societies, sometimes open power centres in cities of… Read More

Character Class: Nymph

Nymph Nymphs are semi-divine beings linked to natural places – forest glades, underwater grottos, lakes, mountain pastures, and so on. They are always female and take the form of beautiful human women. There are numerous types, or subraces,… Read More

Character Class: Faun

Fauns Fauns generally have the upper-body of a human, and the lower-body of a goat (although some, generally called satyrs, may be more human-like, exhibiting only minimal goat-like characteristics). They inhabit wild places, and are fickle, chaotic creatures…. Read More

Character Class: Centaur

I want to add some creatures from Greek mythology to my Basic D&D game as playable classes to replace the Northern European mythology-based demihuman races of dwarf, elf, and halfling. There is a great BECMI supplement, PC1 Tall… Read More

Player Agency & Emergent Storytelling

When I started this blog a few months ago, I picked the title “Save vs. Player Agency”. The reason is two-fold: When people ask me what I emphasize as a referee, I tend to answer “player agency” and… Read More

Personality Trait Saving Throws for OSR Games

One of my regular campaigns is Greg Stafford’s masterpiece, King Arthur Pendragon. For those unfamiliar with the game system, the game is notable for providing game stats for characters in the form of traits and passions. When a… Read More

Level 0: Apprenticeships

As mentioned in my previous post, level 0 characters can be a lot of fun. Since a level 1 character starts with 0 XP, a level 0 character does not “level up” to level 1 by gaining XP,… Read More

Level 0 Characters

Level 0 characters are generally NPCs. They have no levels of any character class (hence they are level 0 as opposed to level 1), and represent ordinary, non-adventuring people in the game world. Sometimes, it can be fun… Read More