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There is a contrarian hot take chestnut that gets bandied about occasionally against the prevalence of randomness in roleplaying games. I articulate a simple counter-counterargument in favor of the mainstream approach of enjoying the swings.
When you are using a random table more than once, you are likely going to run into repeated results. Here are five ways to deal with that problem, particularly for random encounter tables.
Issuing a challenge to all bloggers: blog about the topic of “randomness” on a random day in June. Additional random tables are provided to assist you in your posting.
A review of an Electric Bastionland one-shot. Is Chris McDowall one of the funniest writers in TTRPGs?
A roundup of 50 blogs from the past few months that all focus on maps (including a few adventures that key off the same map).
A new method for procedurally generating the terrain of a hex map that adds some level of “memory” to the otherwise disconnected random tosses of the oracle dice.
What is “true” about the fiction of your world? I present a tier list (no S tier, sorry) of sources of truth and argue that the paramount source is what actually happens in play, rather than what is merely prepped or written in whatever book you may be referencing.
I review every single room (and some non-rooms) in the original funhouse dungeon and describe what makes them work or not work and what is worth stealing for your dungeons and what you should avoid, all based on over a decade of running this adventure for multiple groups.
Into the Odd famously jettisoned the “roll to hit” aspect of D&D derived combat. How can accuracy, specifically reducing an opponent’s accuracy by means of sand in the eyes or otherwise, be re-introduced without despoiling Into the Odd’s basic combat mechanics?
I elucidate the ways that the Pokémon games embody several principles of the OSR playstyle, which is maybe unsurprising when you consider the history of JRPGs.
Pre-Order Into the Oddish, a Pokémon tabletop roleplaying game parody of Into the Odd, and Vileplume Mountain, a parody of the classic funhouse dungeon that is compatible with Cairn and other Into the Odd-likes.
Announcing a new blog bandwagon! This time you have 80 days in which to write something on your blog about maps and/or to annotate/remix/expand a map drawn by the esteemed Amanda Lee Franck!
Are you using overloaded encounter dice to track time? Clocks like from Blades in the Dark? Here is a more tangible, toyetic alternative method for tracking progress of anything in TTRPGs from time to damage, and a few ways you might use it: the Clocktower.
To design a game, you have to break a few eggs and discard some rules or completely rewrite them. But you won’t know what to discard and what to rewrite until you feed those eggs to your players.
A Christmas-themed hexcrawl setting with 60 hexes written from bloggers across the blogosphere.
A Merry Hexmas location: dungeoncrawl through Santa Claus’ castle. Whether you lead an elf and reindeer uprising is up to you!
I played Seven Party Pact, Paranoia, Planet of the Apes RPG, Monty Python RPG, Break!!, Barkeep on the Borderlands, and Escape from Atlantis and am reporting those experiences to you from a wholly neutral and accurate perspective.
In 20ish days, the blogosphere produced 80 blog posts about randomness. I present them all in a roll table. Roll a d80 and read a blog post!