Of Scrolls and Flaming Oil
I've got to say, I am one of those DM's who never thinks to include scrolls in treasure hordes. It was an act of conscious will that I remembered to include them in Castle of the Mad Archmage, but they're really an incre[...]Read on >>
Introductory, Quick Start, and Basic Rules Sets
This month's RPG Blog Carnival is on the subject of how to teach new gamers to play. I thought I'd focus on the utility of so-called "quick start" rules. When you have a large and complex game such as D&D, it cannot [...]Read on >>
D6 Probabilities
I've been toying around with substituting multiple d6's for percentile dice in some situations, so I naturally needed to know the probabilies of throwing any given number or less with d6's. Here are the numbers, just in [...]Read on >>
RPG Business Models
Rjstreet over at Purple Pawn has a great article analyzing Games Workshop's financial performance. That got me thinking about the nature of the business model of the role-playing game industry. Games Workshop has a model[...]Read on >>
System Shock Survival
One of the rules I regularly ignore in AD&D is the notion of "system shock survival". This is a rule that states, essentially, when one's physical system undergoes a drastic shock (such as when the character is polym[...]Read on >>
Is the Endgame its Own Game?
Both my own work on Emprise!™ and today's release of the Dark Dungeons retro-clone of the Rules Cylopedia published via the offices of the OGL (definitely worth a look, btw) have gotten me thinking once again about the[...]Read on >>
Secondary Skills in Emprise!™
As a follow-up to my previous post on character skills, here is the current list of secondary skills in Emprise!™AlchemyAmbushAnimal Training and HandlingArmor MakingArtistBlacksmithingBullyingBusinessConstructionDetec[...]Read on >>
Playing in Real-Time
One of the things I've been considering with Emprise!™ is doing things in real units of time. That is, rather than segments, rounds, and turns, things would actually be listed in seconds, minutes, and hours.With spell-[...]Read on >>
Multi-Generational Gaming
And in this particular post, I'm not talking about teaching our kids to be gamers (although that's certainly an interesting topic and worthy endeavor), but rather the notion of playing a long-term game in which the chara[...]Read on >>
On Game Masters Guides
The "classic three" division that began with AD&D-- Player's Guide, Game Master's Guide, Monster Book-- has been taken as a sort of gospel by a number of other games (although certainly not all). I've explored this s[...]Read on >>
The Fiend Folio. Ugh.
Ugh. Just ugh.I've had cause, as part of the design of Emprise!™, to go through the 1981 Fiend Folio in some detail. Sure, it's been a constant companion on my desk for months now, as I use it liberally in stocking the[...]Read on >>
A Different Direction for the OSR
February 27, 2010 from Greyhawk Grognard
Filed under: Design Theory, Legacy D&D, Old School, RPG, RPG Hub
I've been doing a lot of work on Emprise!™, specifically on the Players Manual, and one thing is become more and more clear to me as I continue the work. This is going to be flying in the face of a lot of the common wi[...] Filed under: Design Theory, Legacy D&D, Old School, RPG, RPG Hub
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The Old-School Grind
February 17, 2010 from Greyhawk Grognard
Filed under: Design Theory, Legacy D&D, Old School, RPG, RPG Hub
I only recently came across the use of the term "grind" in an RPG context. I know, I know-- I am an out of touch grognard who is prone to telling modern gamers to get the hell off my lawn. And I certainly have no excuse,[...] Filed under: Design Theory, Legacy D&D, Old School, RPG, RPG Hub
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The Need to Know
I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about rulebooks and how they are-- and should be-- organized. Naturally, the AD&D 1E rulebooks are the prototype for a great many RPGs; divided, in their pristine stat[...]Read on >>
Interior Module Art
Why do publishers include art inside adventure modules?I mean, aside from the rare instance where an illustration is required to make the description of a particular area intelligible, or in the case of illustrations int[...]Read on >>
Is the Temple of Elemental Evil a Megadungeon?
Norman over at Troll and Flame thinks so. So do some of the commenters over at Grognardia. Personally, I disagree. It does touch on the definition of "megadungeon", of course.To my mind, a "megadungeon" in the strictest [...]Read on >>
Role-Playing Must Be Fun
This gradually became, within the past few years, how all instances of evolution of the game's design have been explained to the masses.br /br /Damp;D is a game that ought to be fun. To increase the fun, it thus needs to[...]Read on >>
Inside the Box or Outside??–EDITORIAL
While perusing the internet for Damp;D gaming experiences I came upon several "interesting" angles on spells in play. Actually they were more perceptions grounded in assumptions. Assumptions about how certain spells, o[...]Read on >>
