QuasiWizard

 No dungeon room is ever really empty. This is because every room starts with nothing. It goes through various contents, a monster, some treasure, an adventuring party. Between sessions, there is nothing.  Is an empty room ever encountered? No, that is wrong thinking. If you think this is because a party must encounter a room with nothing in it, and thus it is not empty, that is also wrong thinking.  When a room is encountered, one may think "combat encounter," or "social encounter," or "stealth encounter." It is from this that actions are adjudicated and consequences are resolved. These myriad interpretations fail in the face of a room with nothing.   The duality of design is thus: a room must give the opportunity to do anything imaginable and feasible, but still keep a coherent playstyle and encourage the party into those constraints. There is a freedom in constraints, and it breeds creativity in play.   When your constraints are four stone walls, the op...

I have been building a plain HTML website over the past few months. I have been quite enjoying creating non-post pages, like resource collections . I also like the plain HTML aesthetic for some reason, not to mention its accessibility (screen reader & visibility) and portability (save a page's HTML source should you like it, it's all self-contained). So I'll be over there. I'm not shutting down this blog, but I wonder if I will be here again. Maybe if I feel more inclined for blog-style posts. But I often enjoy revising and adding to documents rather than thought-dumping and editing into a blog post. I have done literally nothing fancy with the webpages. No RSS, no CSS , no JavaScript. If you don't like how it looks, then use your browser's reader mode and customize that! I wouldn't be surprised as well if there are browser extensions to overload CSS on webpages. But quick update on my gaming: I was playing and running games into October when I had a he...

A small system for reputation, for use in haggling and other similar activities.   Keep a list of notable deeds by the party, both good and bad. Keep a list of a standard die size (I think 20 for a campaign would work). Write the good deeds at the lowest numbered entries, in chronological order; and write the bad deeds at the highest entries, in reverse chronological order. The middle of the list stays empty.  Every entry should have a definite moral character to be at top or bottom of list, no in-between. You should decide this based on how the average citizen of your setting would view the party having done it, either impressed or disgusted. If the players want to haggle for prices, call in a favor, or persuade in a rather abstracted social encounter, roll the appropriately sized die (e.g. d20). If the result is a good deed, they can call in a 5% discount on all their purchases, a favor will be granted, or persuasion goes through. If the result corresponds to a bad deed, the...

 OK, another edition of media I've consumed recently or is on my radar. Books I finished Book of the New Sun . It's a first non-DNF in sci-fi/fantasy in several years. I had been growing a bit tired of the general genre sphere. But I think this reignited a fair bit of interest back again. I am working through The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. It's much slower paced and written more clearly than New Sun (for better or for worse). It's quite a classically told, but not trope-ridden, fantasy story. I am looking forward to reading more of it. I started the audiobook of A Wizard of Earthsea . Its writing is kinda bland? I'm not sure how I feel about it, and if my ambiguity is due to the reader. I might buy a physical copy to try it out. Other things on my TBR (some of which I already own): Between Two Fires The Once and Future King Lud-in-the-Mist Crime and Punishment The Portable Jung Man and His Symbols   I'm not a frequent reader but I have the rest of my reading...

Most outside the OSR give it some side-eye. Those inside ask "What the hell is water?" and keep playing. I've been borderline obsessed with this play style for a while now, and it's not abating. Not that I don't have reservations... but there's something to it I'd like to explain. Appeal of OSR: genuinely risky. No matter the stage of the game, if you want to progress at a reasonable rate, you have to get into, what has been for me, heart pounding situations.  Tactical gameplay. In a (currently hiatus'ed) Nightwick Abbey megadungeon game, I have been thinking throughout the hiatus of the tactically best way to combat some regular old goblins. Because they're being annoying goblins, and it takes some genuine brain racking. Free-form. I don't know that I'm all about my old "immersive gaming" play after becoming so fond of straight up OSR games. But there's still a strong rules-lite feel to most OSR stuff I am fond of. Your tacti...

Just a quick explanation of an OSR dungeon design principle for those unfamiliar. This is maybe not a well-touted idea, but I've been brewing on this idea lately. Of course, this is all centered around how I want to play, run... etc... Take with coarse grained salt if you think your goals are different. If you've got a dungeon, you should have some empty rooms that don't.... do anything. As in, there is nothing 'to do' in the room. I have been brewing this idea based on what Luke Gearing said in his interview on the "Into the Megadungeon" podcast. I'll just rehash what Luke conveyed in my listening: Empty rooms provide a place to rest (my words) Empty rooms give space to a dungeon so that you don't die at every turn Empty rooms are tactically important for managing encounters, especially in conjunction with loops   Luke gave an easy example of how to utilize empty rooms: You pass through some empty rooms, and eventually encounter a big room with a ...