My wife and I have a special love for the kind of cards that appease the gender-role needs of pre-adolescent boys, when teacher forces them to give Valentines to yucky girls.
Anyway, this is a sticky holiday for those unlucky in love. So let's soft-pedal the public schmaltz, and celebrate the
romantic instinct in true Gygaxian style. Enjoy!
Welcome to The Con
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[I was a player in a Cities Without Number campaign recently and it was
great fun. This is the opening blurb to the game. Full play reports and my
though...
d20 Power Shifts
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As factions butt heads in ongoing campaigns, it can be tempting to treat
their conflicts as something that never resolves, or that resolves like a
slidi...
The Bell of Blackthorn Hollow
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FEI GamesSelf PublishedB/XLevels 3-4 Long ago a small village accepted a
gift from a traveling group of clerics. The gift was a large bronze bell
that was ...
Mince Pie Fest 2026: COOP
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Oh dear. These have a bland, mushy, claggy pastry. The filling borders on
flavourless but there's plenty of it at least, and it has a nice chewy
texture. N...
Skumwad Village For Goat Quest
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This is a simple village ive used in 4 con games.
It was made on the fly as a doodle and used multiple times.
This village has regular threats from chaos...
d100 - Total Party “Keepers” for Less Lethality
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On Occasion, an unlucky run on the Dice might result in a particular
Conflict going incredibly poorly for the Party. It happens to the best of
us, and wh...
Notes on The Pool
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Found this pic of one of my old journal pages from c. 2000 where I was
working out the details for The Pool. My memory is of writing the game in
one even...
Blog Improvements
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To a casual observer my blog may not look any different. But to the
discerning eye some differences should be apparent.
Additionally, you should experien...
Doors (B/X + Old School minimalist)
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Another brief pause in our series, because I think this deserves a post of
its own.
Moldvay's rules about doors are so terse that they are almost cryptic...
WHAT TO KNOW: Advice for Players
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*In the spirit of the Prismatic Wasteland blogwagon here are a few
suggestions for players, that in my experience, avoid slowing down the
game.* Nothing ...
Kingdoms of Ink crowdfunding
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Kingdoms Of Ink - Forge Your Fantasy In today’s post I will present you a
crowdfunding at Kickstarter I think you may find interesting: Kingdoms of
Ink. In...
Oh Satan, Is There Anything You Can't Do?
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Drunk on power this afternoon, I commanded my demonic robot slave Claude to
make some hexmaps. And I was impressed with what it came out with. I told
it ...
Combat Difficulty Again
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I’ve used a bracket system for combat opponents in my home campaign for a
while now. It’s been useful to pull stats and moves out of my butt without
havi...
Updates from Patreon
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Patreon is forcing some big changes to the Alexandrian. I started using
Patreon all the way back in 2014. Since then, all of my patrons have
transformed th...
Make Good Guys Simple, Make Bad Guys Sympathetic
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Here’s a TTRPG play-culture axiom I have been thinking about and
consciously using, recently:
*Factions / characters whose values align with the values o...
Minute Might: A Wargame Review...
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Roleplaying has wargaming blood. This goes without saying. It doesn't tell
the whole story given Wesely's non-wargaming contributions to the hobby,
but B...
Minute Might: A Wargame Review...
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Roleplaying has wargaming blood. This goes without saying. It doesn't tell
the whole story given Wesely's non-wargaming contributions to the hobby,
but B...
Tabletop Tips from the Reacherverse
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Have you talked to your dad about Reacher? I haven't, but I have been
talking to my mom. Mama Magnolia and I have spent the past two months or so
wa...
Hot-Sea-3 map (Changed Stars)
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I drew a map for my Changed Stars campaign, the light blue sea areas are so
shallow that they are sometime walkable with CCU exo suits.I plan to run a
camp...
On Suspense And Random Encounters
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This is an alternative way to handle rolling for encounters that focuses on
building suspense.
Throughout most of my GMing career I have used the tried ...
Dread and Halloween Games
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*Dread *is useful as a highly improvised one-shot party or pickup game. I
prefer *Fiasco *if people are clear-headed and RPG-minded, but for
Halloween an...
Dread and Halloween Games
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*Dread *is useful as a highly improvised one-shot party or pickup game. I
prefer *Fiasco *if people are clear-headed and RPG-minded, but for
Halloween an...
WEG Memoirs: The Worst Con Ever
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“*I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.”*
— *John D. Rockefeller*
*The author, left, running a convention game.*Part of our duties ...
Post-It Dungeon for October TWO !!!
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WE'RE DOIN' IT AGAIN!!!
This dungeon can be either standalone (in which case there is an area for a
potential entrance marked with a large E on the map...
Next Stop: Castle Ravenloft
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For this year's Halloween game I'm doing something a little different with
the original I6: Ravenloft. I've run it many times, and what I like most is
ho...
D100+ Border Reiver Eke-Names
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Click the button below to get your very own border reiver's eke-name:
Eke It Out Show tables
Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here:
h...
Summerween Horror Marathon 2026
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For some reason, this year I got into the Halloween spirit extra early.
Beginning in early August, my wife and I began watching horror “classics”
in the ...
Money in Mutants & Wizards
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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 ...
Liquidation
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*Liquidation *is a creature-capture corpo-crawl for Mothership, published
by Spicy Tuna RPG, edited by Chris Airiau, and written by me. Players
explore...
One Year before the Comms Array
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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...
The Common Store of Monsters
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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 ...
"Jaquays Your Dungeon" - Another OSR Maxim
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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...
Doing a comprehensive survey of Appendix N
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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...
Dragonlance: Law vs Chaos
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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...
My 2025 in Review
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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...
al-Alam al-Wasat Classes
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The classes detailed below represent a series of editorial choices. Some
options are unused (or to be precise, sometimes shunted to the "foreign
classes"...
The OD&Dyssey
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Fantastic Homeric AdventureConcept
A sandbox campaign set in a fictionalized analogue of the Archaic period (
*circa* 800–500 BCE) of ancient Greece, using...
The Norwood Reaper Random Table
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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...
Contextual Collapse
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In an otherwise unpromisingly-titled article—“Could the US really release
more of its strategic oil reserves?”—the Financial Times points out a
surprising ...
Referee Sabotage
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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...
D6 State of Orc & Goblin Clan Relations
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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...
The Sacrament of the Minotaur
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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 ...
The Reassembulation Will Be Messy
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I’m reassembulating wizardthieffighter.com on a different platform, in a
different format and style. This reassembulation will be messy. Most links
will di...
2025 Gaming Summary and 2026 Plans
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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...
On a Happy New Year
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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...
D&D: Inexpensive Miniatures options
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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...
The Earwight
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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...
A Wraithblade to Bind a Murderer’s Soul
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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....
Why Did Natural 20's Become Automatic Hits?
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Here's an observation I just made, that came up from a friend's question
about the 1E AD&D rules for a big project they're working on. Ultimately
this hi...
Old school conversion notes #2 – Armor Class
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After the first installation in this series (about different movement rate
systems in OSR games) the turn has come to the differing armor class
systems tha...
Alternative Experience Awards and Advancement
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Alternative Experience Awards and Advancement
(I started thinking about this as a way to make XP awards in 5e come from
all three “Pillars of Adventure” r...
Pirates and Necromancers, a Play Report
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Over the Thanksgiving weekend we did a lot of gaming ranging from
“off-table” domain level stuff to some solo adventures to spell and magic
item rese...
Knave 2e Alternate Attributes
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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...
Indulge Me
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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....
Folie à Trois: Trophy Gold
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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 ...
Another test
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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...
Notes on a semi-successful skill system
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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...
Behind the Screen #5: Old Men Rolling Dice
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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...
My FREE RPG 12v12 Is Out Now!!!!
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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...
CCLII. AoS28: Sunhold Deadwalkers and Netopyr
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*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 ...
Spoils of the Gorgon Coast: The Degenerate Heir
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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...
The Metaminds of Vor
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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, ...
Indefinite Hiatus
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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...
Profane and Profound Prep Part 2
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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...
2018 Was a Hell of a Year
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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...
The Mystery of Dave Arneson's Engine
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*(This article was written as part of Murkhill's Week-long celebration of
Dave Arneson. Click the link to find more great articles!)*
Like many other Dunge...
spooky scary skeletons
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Skeletons are my favorite D&D enemy. My players know this fact very well.
It's become a running joke.
Plug: Matt Bailey does amazing illustrations of skelet...
On Chaos
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*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...
DUNGEON#3:TOTALT JAVLA MORKER
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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...
Researcher in social science and appreciator of hexy wargames, role playing games, interactive fiction, board games, and CCGs. I've learned a lot doing design and rules editing work on the side for the Legend of the Five Rings CCG. But this blog is mostly about other things.