Okay kiddies, tonight the Count has got something really scaaaary for you. Boo! Ahahahahah.
4 hours ago
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Good Thinkings
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Film Notes: Halloween with Dr. Seuss - According to a friend, their child (2ish) enjoys *The Monster Overhaul. *They toddle over to the bookshelf, get it down, and flip through it looking at t...
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Film Notes: Halloween with Dr. Seuss - According to a friend, their child (2ish) enjoys *The Monster Overhaul. *They toddle over to the bookshelf, get it down, and flip through it looking at t...
4 hours ago
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Mixing Warriors of the Red Planet (WotRP) with the Domain-level Architecture of ACKS II Rpg - illegal depot for a warriors of the red planet & ACKS II combined game campaign - Integrating Warriors of the Red Planet (WotRP) with the Adventurer Conqueror King System II (ACKS II) domain rules creates a sword-and-planet campaign whe...
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Where U At, B/X? - This is a meandering TTRPG design post mostly pondering why I haven't been making D&D stuff lately. I just thought this was funny. I don't know. Yeah, so...
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The Spellbooks of Mydwandr... - Spellcasters in the *Mydwandr* RPG (and its eponymous setting) exploit a natural talent known to few beyond the mysterious elves, shaping the materials o...
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The Spellbooks of Mydwandr... - Spellcasters in the *Mydwandr* RPG (and its eponymous setting) exploit a natural talent known to few beyond the mysterious elves, shaping the materials o...
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Magical Mesopotamiae - Six Strange Rivers cross a great plain, flowing from some mysterious source to the great churning ocean. Settlements cling to the banks of these rivers; ...2 weeks ago
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The Monkey King’s Many Faces - In Kuala Lumpur, in Brickfields, there is a temple called Sree Veera Hanuman, whose vimanam is a green furry tail coiled 41 times into the shape of a tal...2 weeks ago
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Money in Mutants & Wizards - Money and wealth is always an issue in Post-apoc gaming. Mutants & Wizards uses precious metals with the expectation of bartering occurring where that's ...
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Polearms & Proust (or, In Search of Lost Biscuits) - A very silly role-playing game about introspective thugs with big pointy sticks. Inspired by this BlueSky post, and written by someone who has never read P...
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The Waves Rule Britannia (Some Notes on the UK of Invisible Hands) - *RUN LIKE HELL RUN LIKE HELL RUN LIKE HELL RUN LIKE HELL RUN LIKE HELL RUN LIKE HELL* In the UK, the god who rules is *Flood*, much like the *Economy...3 weeks ago
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Liquidation - *Liquidation *is a creature-capture corpo-crawl for Mothership, published by Spicy Tuna RPG, edited by Chris Airiau, and written by me. Players explore...1 month ago
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Back from the Void: "Where ya been, Gundobad?" - redux! - Well: hello again. It's been a year and a half since my last post, from February 2025. Meanwhile, any reports of my demise have been exaggerated (and hop...
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One Year before the Comms Array - I just realized that it's been almost a month since the one-year anniversary of running Operation Lamplighter. I think this is the longest I've been runnin...
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Vanishing Blogs From The Old Days - There are so many RPG related blogs on every genre and category of RPG. Periodically I discover that another blog is no more when an app on my blog reports...2 months ago
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The Common Store of Monsters - I am slowly grinding my way through the re-writes for Veins of the Earth. As part of the re-write I have re-organised the ‘Pariahs of the Earth’ monsters ...2 months ago
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"Jaquays Your Dungeon" - Another OSR Maxim - Be Cautious of Maxims As I've written before, the "OSR" loved its maxims, short phrases that try to describe shared principles and act as a way of mutual...
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Doing a comprehensive survey of Appendix N - I’ve been chipping away at Appendix N since 2012 (although I’d read a number of Appendix N works prior to that, just not as Appendix N works), and my think...3 months ago
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Dragonlance: Law vs Chaos - Been thinking of Dragonlance again lately. And one thing that strikes me is that the setting works so much better on a classic Moorcockian axis of Law vs...3 months ago
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Who Do You Write For? - It's in the title - when you sit down to write a post, who is it for? I had a conversation with friend of the blog Weird Writer (Roll To Doubt) today an...
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My 2025 in Review - Continuing my annual tradition, here are some of my favorite things from the last year. I think this is the first year where I've had to decide not to shou...
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al-Alam al-Wasat Classes - The classes detailed below represent a series of editorial choices. Some options are unused (or to be precise, sometimes shunted to the "foreign classes"...
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The OD&Dyssey - Fantastic Homeric AdventureConcept A sandbox campaign set in a fictionalized analogue of the Archaic period ( *circa* 800–500 BCE) of ancient Greece, using...
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Sant Jordi 2026 - Portada de la traducción al catalán del juego Year 100 Million BC,adornada con rosas y el texto Sant Jordi 2026 Vuelve a ser Sant Jordi, y el blog cumple u...
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The Norwood Reaper Random Table - If your D&D guy is over 20, it’s already over for him: THE NORWOOD REAPER COMETH To determine how over it is, roll on the Norwood Table at character creati...6 months ago
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Thoughts on Autocrats of Night & AD&D Dungeon Guidelines - My Autocrats of Night campaign, wherein the players were to delve the enemy megadungion and steal a Dragon Orb to break the power of the nasty dragon-ri...7 months ago
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Contextual Collapse - In an otherwise unpromisingly-titled article—“Could the US really release more of its strategic oil reserves?”—the Financial Times points out a surprising ...7 months ago
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Referee Sabotage - It is an old saw that players are bad at executing their plans. Imagine this common scene: the party have some big job that requires planning; perhaps robb...7 months ago
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D6 State of Orc & Goblin Clan Relations - Roll every day, keep if higher, resetting on a 1. 1. Orcs kill Goblins on sight because one looked at the clan chief wrong, Goblins fled into warr...7 months ago
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Mapping the pre D&D Dungeon Adventure From May 25 1972, Part 1 - Earlier (Here) we looked at the oldest dungeon dive preserved in Arneson's write up as found in *Blackmoor Foundations*. Turning now to the second dunge...
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Underkeep: a new game reminiscent of Dungeon master - *Underkeep* is a game which is currently in development, it is reminiscent of the old "Dungeon Master" which many of us used to play on Amiga 500 back i...8 months ago
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The Sacrament of the Minotaur - This is the first of a small series of posts which will be about how I am running Luke Gearing’s *Gradient Descent *in my Mothership home campaign. This ...
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The Reassembulation Will Be Messy - I’m reassembulating wizardthieffighter.com on a different platform, in a different format and style. This reassembulation will be messy. Most links will di...9 months ago
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2025 Gaming Summary and 2026 Plans - I didn't blog at all in 2025 because I was too busy gaming. I was playing in two weekly 5e (2014) campaigns and running a weekly Imperium Maledictum camp...9 months ago
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On a Happy New Year - We are about to experience the most social upheaval since industrialization. What will that look like in sixty years? Sinless is starting it's third yea...
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D&D: Inexpensive Miniatures options - Whether you are new to Dungeons & Dragons or coming back into the hobby after many, many years, you will probably want to add various play aids and acces...
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Postcards from the 2025 BIPOC Game Studies Conference - This collaborative essay brings together seven participants to reflect on their observations and experiences at the 2025 BIPOC Game Studies Conference at T...10 months ago
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The Earwight - The sinister little insects known as earwights are thought to have once been earwigs who fed on the decaying flesh of revenants or other matter suffused wi...1 year ago
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A Wraithblade to Bind a Murderer’s Soul - Wraiths are the restless souls of brutal murderers. They cannot find rest in death, and keep on tormenting the living, leaving behind a long trail of pain....1 year ago
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Deep Space & Derelicts: Basic/Xenotech version, an idea for a game - here's a little idea for a game that's been floating around my head for a while. what if early D&D had been based around classic scifi rather than cl...1 year ago
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tricks taught: risk, thought, and the Marxist (un)truth of myth in Sukumaland - *a matched pair of mabindas (Sukuma articulated dance figures) on a performance cord* “*For revolutionary consciousness is subjective consciousness...
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Knave 2e Alternate Attributes - Sometimes, I'm exactly in the mood for the classic simplicity of defining characters entirely by D&D's six attributes, as Knave does. But sometimes, I want...
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Indulge Me - I miss magazines. There was a time when you could walk into any shop and you’d find a plethora of gaming magazines in the used bins and on the new shelves....2 years ago
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Folie à Trois: Trophy Gold - Below is a shared review of *Trophy Gold (2022)*, a fantasy adventure game designed by Jesse Ross and published by The Gauntlet. Although it is informed ...3 years ago
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Another test - Now I’m testing the WP app. Drafting from my phone or tablet would be a useful way to blog more. Possibly. Does purple text show in my template? Quotey q...3 years ago
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Osamu Tezuka (1928 - 1989) - [image: Osamu Tezuka - Shonen Magazine Cover, 1970]Shonen Magazine Cover, 1970 [image: Osamu Tezuka - Shonen Magazine Cover Illustration 1970]Shonen Maga...4 years ago
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Notes on a semi-successful skill system - When I finished my Team Tsathogga campaign back in 2019, one of the things that I noted afterwards was the extent to which fighters had struggled to keep...4 years ago
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Behind the Screen #5: Old Men Rolling Dice - Welcome once again to Behind the Screen! This week take a stroll down memory lane alongside the gang at “Old Men Rolling Dice.” Jeremy and Jason are the go...4 years ago
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My FREE RPG 12v12 Is Out Now!!!! - I hope everyone is well. I am very excited to be able to share a little game I have been working on for a while. 12v12 is a D12-based multi-genre RPG, an...
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CCLII. AoS28: Sunhold Deadwalkers and Netopyr - *A*t last found a bit of time for my personal projects, so I made a few figures real quick. Sunhold Deadwalkers I'm trying to settle for a definitive ...
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Spoils of the Gorgon Coast: The Degenerate Heir - As the kickstarter for the Zinequest Quartet winds down, I find myself in awe of the amount of folks who seem interested in my project; especially given t...
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The Metaminds of Vor - The Metaminds of Vor dream only of doomsday, calculating the odds of humanity’s demise. Synthroid agents tend to the needs of the massive brain-tanks, ...7 years ago
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Indefinite Hiatus - Due to intermittent technical problems on a dying computer and life-changing personal problems, I can't see myself gathering up the motivation to even keep...7 years ago
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Roomless, Mapless, Distanceless - a micro-ruleset for dungeoneering - I am currently running a heavily homebrewed game of Ultraviolet Grasslands with heavily homebrewed rules. Ultraviolet Grasslands, for those not in the k...7 years ago
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Profane and Profound Prep Part 2 - This is part 2 of my work to edit my magic items for a DMsGuild release, along with adding cursed items along the way. Here is part 1. Bone of a Saint 8000...7 years ago
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2018 Was a Hell of a Year - 2018 Was a Hell of a Year It was the greatest year to-date for Darker Hue Studios (DHS). So many things happened that it is a bit of a blur and the fee...7 years ago
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Save Versus All Wands Contest: What is the Value of the Coin Hoard? - Treasure Type H Announcing the third annual (well, not quite) Save Versus All Wands contest! You can read about and see the results of the first two - *...
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On Chaos - *This post will have very little in terms of gameable mechanics. I'm wary of posting too much that borders on "game themed prose fiction" but I intend to r...
8 years ago -
DUNGEON#3:TOTALT JAVLA MORKER - PDF here It's a simple 13 room dungeon I've ran for new players to figure out how OSR is played. The dungeon can be easily adapted for your purposes b...
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I just wanted to say that I absolutely love these. I save each one for my binder of things-to-use-in-a-game. Seriously, keep 'em coming.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have to say the whole venture is pretty smart; it takes all those pieces that we like and identify genres by, but allows for mushing them together in new ways so they aren't tired tropes.
ReplyDeleteI dig your color choices too. For some reason I want these all on round-cornered laminated cards.
What Telecanter said, particularly about the almination. Collect them all!
ReplyDelete