I’ve been working on this project for a little while now, and it’s time the public sees it and decides if it’s something worth investing in.

(I believe in this idea, a lot - that’s why I’m posting on Substack, even though I’ve moved entirely off of Substack and onto my personal blog for moral and philosophical reasons.)

It’s a user curated, wiki-like repository of all TTRPG materials.

All of them.

Every major publisher, every indie publisher, every fan made zine, every jam entry, every everything, every anything.

I want to be able to go to this site, search for Mausritter, find the game, browse every related material for that game to find adventures and supplements. I want to find related things to those related things. I want to search for the “hexcrawl” tag and get a link to every hex crawl and every hexcrawl supplement out there.

So I made this. It only works if people get involved and if the community at large finds it valuable to have and grow and maintain. But I think it could be. I think it could be the go-to place to find new materials and a great way to share your new creations. I think it could be a great centralized location that has what you need, instead of searching ten different sites on the internet and asking five different discords and hoping the right person with the right knowledge is there at the time you ask.

Sign up, throw up a submission. It’s all reputation based - the more you submit and edit, the more trusted you become in the system, and eventually your submissions will be automatically approved and you’ll be able to approve other people’s submissions. It’s for the community and by the community.

RPGBase.

The Indie Web

Okay, the indie web, the old web, the small web, it’s got a lot of names. Some people will be really eager to debate these names and these terms and what they mean and who is allowed to use them - I will not, nor will I entertain those debates. They are for silly people.

The point is bigger than the term. The point is that the internet is still capable of being democratic. You can still choose not to go to facebook, to instagram, to tiktok, to these algorithm-driven engagement platforms that are stealing your attention, your focus, and your humanity, and selling it to advertisers. You can choose not to participate in the endless cycle of vitriol and the suppression of your humanity and the erasure of your creative self. Those choices still exist, but they exist in the colossal shadow of the aforementioned mind-thieves.

Ultimately, what you type into your address bar in your browser is still your choice. Smartphone companies will still shove bloatware onto your phone to drive you towards their platforms and entice you with their features and promise to “connect you to people you care about” (what a load of shit.) They have greased the skids so that you slide headfirst into their traps. They buy every competitor so that you have fewer options. But options remain.

Enter, the small web.

Back when I was a young lad, people still made their own stuff on the internet. Geocities, Angelfire, hell, even Neopets and Myspace gave you the option to customize and tailor your website to your interests and your aesthetic. Whatever you made, it was an expression of you. Not 280 characters of you in a uniform box that’s the same as everyone else’s box that’s fed into a machine algorithm to determine whether or not your thoughts stoke enough anger to be showed to other people. Just whatever you wanted. It could be some writing here, a video there, pictures here, dancing babies there. It was whatever you wanted.

And uh… you can still do that.

I’ve been ranting and raving for some time to those around me that I’m desperate to own the things that I buy. I’m exhausted of licenses and streaming and paying for the permission to temporarily view a thing or use a thing. I’m exhausted of paying for a piece of content and then being told I’m not allowed to do anything with it except glue my eyes to their particular platform for the privilege of consuming it.

There was a day when you bought something and owned it. And that has been systematically stripped away by greedy corporations and conglomerates who want every penny you have and want to give you nothing for it. We once had television. Then we had television with ads. Then cable TV promised no ads for one big fee. Then cable TV inserted ads. Then streaming came along and promised no ads for one fee. Then streaming added free options with ads. Then streaming added ads to the paid versions, and then raised the prices.

The endless cycle of enshittification continues because we aren’t allowed to own anything. Nobody can insert advertisements into my ancient VHS boxset of Star Wars. Physically impossible.

I want to own the things that I buy. I want to own the things that I make. I want to give people what I want to give them, share what I want to share, without a middleman trying to sell shit using me as a delivery medium.

And uh… you can do that. Did you know you can still buy physical media? DVDs and CDs and Vinyls? You know you can still buy a polaroid camera, you can buy a camcorder and make your own home videos. All those things that my millennial generation is becoming nostalgic for are still possible, yet most of the conversations about those things end up at “Man, I wish we could go back to those days…”

You can buy an mp3 player and buy music from bandcamp. Then you own it and can do whatever you want with it. You can download podcast episodes onto your computer and have them forever, not just until that provider gets bought and changes licenses on you. (More on that in the future.)

The web is the same way. People are making their own bespoke little websites and putting what they want on it. Doing what they want to it. Defying uniformity and corporatization and enshittification.

Start here.

The Indie Web and the RPG Blogosphere

I think the small web is the perfect fit for the RPG blogosphere. In fact, in a lot of cases, the RPG blogosphere is already part of the small web, or at least, it’s own little pocket of the small web. Creators, sometimes on platforms like blogger, but increasingly using tools bearblog, making their own little corner of the internet, linking to other likeminded or interesting people, sharing what matters to them and opting out of the enshittified internet. No rat race here. No desperate clinging for views and likes and follows and subscribes. (I say self-effacingly, as I have been part of a platform that prompts you to subscribe on every post.)

More of the RPG blogosphere should consider opting out of those platforms and becoming part of the small web. It’s the natural evolution of a hobby who has grown out of a wholesale rejection of modern temptations. It’s an obvious next step for a medium and an industry which relies upon and encourages real human connection with people at your table.

If you’re a blogger, especially on a platform like Substack, consider making your own thing. It’s not hard, and you can use tools to make it easier. And it’ll be yours. And you’ll love it more, and you’ll be more invested in it. And when you are, people will be able to tell. They’ll see your love for this thing and their own engagement with you will mirror that love.

Hosting platforms like neocities makes this quite easy. Also, setting up your own server is easier than ever. You can do it on a laptop in your home. You can do it on a Raspberry Pi. Make your bearblog or your jekyll blog or whatever the flavor of the month blogging tool is. Or just make your own website wholesale and put everything on it. Link to others, they link to you, and we create a new internet. And corporate interests can fuck right off.

Moving the Notepad

So, I’ve followed my own advice. I got eager to participate, and in a rare case of my eagerness and excitement being followed by actual effort, I created the new Glorified Notepad. It’s got some of my blog articles, and some new ones, and I’ll move other substack posts over as I have time and energy. It’s got a fun background thing you can draw on if you want. I’m going to put a lot of other stuff up there too. Whatever I want. However I want to.

No follow button. I might make a newsletter for it someday, but for now, it’s just a thing that sits there and you can come back and visit from time to time. I don’t ask for any of your attention. There’s no call to action here. I just think you might like it. And I like that.

This is my final substack post. Thanks for being here. I’ll see you over there.

I will be the GM, and I will emulate the players using Triple-O, a neat tool by Cezar Capacle. My hope is that, as a happy forever GM, this style of play will appeal to me more than playing solo characters, and I’ll be more eager to build a longer running campaign. I’ll be able to develop content before I run it and then see what my emulated PCs do with it. The characters actions will be informed by some randomly generated traits.

I will be notating this campaign using the Lonelog format. My hope for using this tool is that it will lower the barrier of entry for me. I want to be able jump right into sessions without being overwhelmed by the idea of writing a ton of prose.

The PCs:

I have randomly generated 15 PCs from the Aetherdark setting. I will play four of them at a time. If one dies, I will replace it with another PC. All the characters that aren’t currently being spotlighted are assumed to be following the main four around and doing little things to help.

Content Warning:

The level zero gauntlet begins with players captured by slavers. These slavers are unambiguously evil. I recognize this is not everyone’s cup of tea - it’s not something I reach for either, but having read it, I don’t feel qualms about running it as a game.

Session 1

Date: 2026-02-19

What the PCs know:

• You were taken by raiders in a flying ship

• You’ve been locked up at least a week, up to a month

• You’ve been able to talk in whispers and know a fair bit about each other

• Your captors are cruel

• Two captors are the frightful **Chef Amelia** and the cunning **Captain Ca’Resh**

• Just now, yells came from above, then the ship began to shake. The hull buckled and broke your cells open

• There was a slaver in the hall before the cells broke, but his lantern went out in the chaos.

S1

The ship rocks and captives are thrown to the floor. They scramble to their feet in the darkness.

The four PCs I am starting with are:
Pavya, Calrivian Dwarf. Sarcastic, talks to themselves. Former Thief.
Leith, Devlienner Serf. Orc. Courageous, growling. Former Stonecutter.
Amchutchen, Calrivian Hardback. Huge family, quivering. Former Spicer.
Bi’De’Nir’Wyn’Lek, Solarian Kobold. Bide (pronounced Beed) for short. Never gives up, insistent. Former duelist.

I will roll for turn order and stay in turn order. The Kraken Timer as written is 1 hour. I will make it 10 turns, the way Solodark prescribes for torch timers. On my turn, the kraken timer will advance. It will look like: [E:Kraken Timer 1/10].
d: d4=3 -> Amchutchen goes first.

@ [C:Amchutchen] Search in the darkness for a light source
(note: three things can be found by searching here, so the only thing that will change is the order.)
d: d3=3 -> Slavers corpse
=> Amchutchen stumbles blindly into the corpse of the slaver

@ [C:Bide] Searches the body
d: d2=1 -> Cutlass
=> Bide grabs the cutlass from the man’s belt.

@ [GM] Encounter check and kraken timer
d: d6=4 No encounter
[E:Kraken Timer 1/10]

@ [C:Pavya] Searches near the body
=> Finds the extinguished lantern and turns it on

[GM: There are two visible exits. Grinding, cracking sounds come from the door fore, and flickering light from the door aft.]

? Which way does Leith lead the group? Obvious: aft, Option: fore, Odd: neither
d: d6=6 -> Obvious, aft

@ [C:Leith] Opens the door and charges in

Leith yanks the door open, nearly ripping it off its hinges, and then freezes. The smell of burning flesh sickens. All that can be seen in the dim light are stacked barrels and crates, and fire in an oven on the starboard side wall. Turning on the spit in the oven is a goblin body. The group is in the hold of the ship. The ceiling is open over the barrels, and flickering firelight can be seen above. On the wall to port, a sliding section of the outer hull is open, revealing an endless expanse of stars in the astral sea.

[GM: Everyone makes a CHA save (DC12) upon seeing the goblin in the oven. On failure, disoriented for d4 rounds, can only move OR act.
d: [C:Amchutchen] d20+2=8 -> Fail
d: [C:Bide] d20+1=10 -> Fail
d: [C:Pavya] d20+2=17 -> Pass
d: [C:Leith] d20-1=7 -> Fail
d: d4=2 -> 2 rounds of disorientation
=> All but Pavya see this and are sickened. Bide and Pavya vomit, overcome.

@ [C:Leith|disoriented] Searches the barrels and finds a pathway through into the open hold

Further into the hold, steel pipes descend from the upper deck, pass through boxes carved with runes, then continue to the aft wall of the ship where mithrite blocks are positioned, floor to ceiling, carved with complex runes and flickering with green flames. On the wall opposite the group, sacks and crates of supplies are strewn about, opened, spilling onto the floor.

@ [C:Amchutchen|disoriented] Searches the supplies for anything like a weapon.
d: d12=8 -> Iron Spikes (10)
-> Triggers random encounter check
d: d6=5 -> No encounter

@ [C:Bide|disoriented] Joins Amchutchen in the search
d: d12=7 -> Crowbar
-> Triggers random encounter check
d: d6=1 -> Encounter!

Bide and Amchutchen start digging through the supplies, desperate to find anything to help them survive this catastrophe. As they dig, they uncover a sailor hiding behind a barrel, one of their captors. More crawl out from behind cover as they realize they are discovered, but they look terrified.

[GM: Reaction Roll]
d: 2d6+2 (Amchutchen CHA)=12 -> Friendly
=> The terrified soldiers say they are hiding from Amelia

As weapons are pointed at the cowering soldiers, the halfling closest cries, “Don’t! Wait! She’ll kill us all, we can help you!” The other soldiers babble incoherently, about something monstrous destroying the ship. “Amelia, she’s gone mad, she’ll carve you up and eat you just the same!”

? What does the party do in response to this unexpected reprieve?
Obvious: Attack the sailors, they are captors!
Option: Try to compel the sailors to defend themselves and the ship
Odd: Leave the sailors here and go somewhere else
d: d6=1 -> Leave the sailors here, have to get away from them!

[GM: Encounter check and Kraken timer]
d: d6=2 -> No encounter
[E:Kraken Timer 2/10]

[C:Pavya] Shouts out that they have to run, but tries to glance around the supplies first
d: d12=1 -> Torch

[C:Leith|disoriented] Leads the way back aft, into the room with the cells

[C:Amchutchen|disoriented] Opens the heavy wooden door on the fore side of the cell rooms and steps in to see the Kraken’s massive, lamprey-like maw devouring the wall and floor to starboard.

The group freezes in terror as they see half of the room has been replaced with the open, gnashing, gnawing mouth of an enormous creature. Wood from the deck and the hull splinters and cracks and falls into the mouth, where rows upon rows of impossible teeth grind it to paste. A tentacle, a meter thick, crashes through the walls and up through the ceiling, where more breaking and cracking can be heard above. The ship will soon be completely destroyed.

? What do the party do, with the kraken’s maw here?
Obvious: Push through to the other side
Option: Retreat and deal with the sailors instead
Odd: Freeze for a round
2d6: 1,6 -> Obvious
=> They try to push through the room and make it to the ladder

[GM:The kraken senses their approach and starts to shake the ship violently to get them in its mouth. DC12 DEX check or fall and slide towards the mouth]
d: [C:Amchutchen] d20+2=20 -> Pass
d: [C:Bide] d20+2=8 -> Fail
d: [C:Pavya] d20-2=8 -> Fail
d: [C:Leith] d20+4=14 -> Pass
=> Bide and Pavya stumble and fall, sliding towards the maw. They will be devoured on their next turn...

[C:Amchutchen|disoriented] Tries to grab Bide and pull them up
d: d20+2=13 vs DC12 DEX -> Pass
=> Amchutchen pulls Bide to his feet

[C:Bide|disoriented] Tries to grab Pavya while Amchutchen holds on to him
d: d20+2=18 vs DC12 DEX -> Pass
=> Still scrambling to his own feet, Bide also grabs Pavya by the leg and hauls her back

[GM:Encounter check and kraken timer]
d: d6=1, Encounter!
[E:Kraken Timer 3/10]

[GM: Unbeknownst to the group, Chef Amelia has finished her meal and begins searching for a new one. She leaves the chop shop and cabin and is now in area 7. She finds the syndicate sailors there and is engaging them in combat.]

[C:Pavya] Scrambles up the ladder onto the open deck

Atop the ladder, the stars light the middle deck. Facing out from the front of the ship are four iron devices, like long, bowled cauldrons, resting and bolted down to wooden blocks. The opening of these devices aims out over the front of the ship into the astral sea. In the center of the ship is a cabin atop this deck. On the walls of the cabin are shuttered glass windows. To the sides of the ship, tentacles of the kraken have curled around the deck of the ship, splintering wood beneath, and keeping the ship in a vise grip as it devours it from below.

? Does anyone know what the bombards are?
d: d20=9 -> No

? What do the group do here?
Obvious: Search the rest of the deck
Option: Break into the Cabin
Odd: Try to figure out the bombards
d: d6=5, Obvious
=> The group moves to search the rest of the deck for any way off this ship.

[C:Leith:-disoriented] Moves around the sides of the cabin.

[GM: The group hears a blood curdling scream and the thwacking sound of a blade hitting flesh.]

As the group follows the narrow walkway to the aft of the ship, they see a grisly scene. 3 sailors back away in fear from a hulking human woman. She wears a blood stained apron, and blood drips from the end of a massive chef’s knife. It is clear to them that this is the woman the sailors below were so afraid of. A halfling sailor lies on the deck, feebly trying to crawl away as they rapidly lose blood from a fresh wound.

“Mutiny... you thought you could... take my place... take the captain’s place... Oh no, sweet little meatlings, there won’t be any mutiny on my ship!” The woman steps over the body of the halfling towards the other sailors.

[GM: Initiative Rolls!]
d: [C:Amchutchen] d20=2 -> 2
d: [C:Bide] d20=6 -> 6
d: [C:Pavya] d20=10 -> 10
d: [C:Leith] d20+4=13 -> 13
d: [GM] d20=2 -> 2

[C:Leith|-disoriented] Stunned, but Orcish runs hot. Charges and attacks Amelia with his fists.
d: d20+STR(0)=20! -> Critical Hit. 3 damage [N:Amelia|HP:17]
(Note: Unarmed. My rule is that unarmed strikes deal 1 damage. Here, it’s doubled to 2, and Leith’s Mighty adds 1 to make it 3.)

[GM:Amelia grins and turns to attack Leith]
d:d20+3=7 -> Miss!

? Do the sailors run, or do they join the fray to attack Amelia? Or the group?
? d6, 1-3 run, 4-5 attack Amelia, 6 attack the group
d: d6=1 -> Run
=> The soldiers, seeing an opportunity to escape the mad woman, run away.

[C:Amchutchen] Searches desperately for something like a weapon
? Does he find something useful?
d: d20=11 -> Yes
=> Amchutchen spies bottles flickering with lightning near the edge of the husk of a burning room. (Lightning Bottle)

[C:Bide] Whips out his cutlass and attacks with duelist’s speed!
d: d20-1=14 -> Hit!
d: d6=3 [N:Amelia|HP:14]
=> The cutlass slashes into Amelia, who seems to revel in the bloodshed

[C:Pavya] Grabs the crowbar from Bide and swings it at Amelia
d: d20=6 -> Miss
=> Pavya swings wide and stumbles toward the only intact small boat on the deck

[C:Leith] Enraged, tries to kill Amelia with his bare hands.
d: d20+1=3 -> Miss

[GM: Amelia whips her blade in a circle, attacking her nearest enemy, Pavya]
d: d20=16 -> Hit
d: d6=3
=> Pavya takes the wicked chef’s knife across the neck, and the blade nearly decapitates the dwarven woman, who is now dead.

As their first compatriot falls, the group cries out in horror. Another one of the group steps forward and grabs the crowbar out of Pavya’s lifeless hand.

[C:Ra’Wyn’Lek’Ka’Nir, Solarian Gnoll. Rawyn for short.] (takes Pavya’s place in initiative)

[C:Amchutchen] Throws the bottle at Amelia!
d: d20+2 vs DC 9 DEX=17 -> Hit
d: d20=16
=> Amelia convulses as the bottled lightning explodes at her feet, collapsing to the ground, smoking and dead.

To be continued...

Expected Scene: Arriving at Ekkurad and meeting with the Seekers

Test: 3, Altered Scene

The ruins of Ekkurad are known to local Faa tribes. These dusty, crumbling ceramic structures have given temporary shelter to many nomads. They still reach high above, as much as 40 yards in some places, with hexagonal patterns etched into the sides, eroding into smooth surfaces lower to the blue dunes. Seen from a distance, the ruins could be mistaken for a copse of white tree trunks, stripped of branches and hollowed.

Pidash is puzzled by Vash’s certainty that the Seekers would be here. He himself has sheltered here from sandstorms and hidden away from pursuers, and he has never seen sign of the Seekers here. It is possible that they took up here recently...

Pidash snakes between the towering structures, gloved hand brushing against warm ceramic as he circles the cylindrical hulls. He listens to the sound of sands, but they are still. The air is unmoving today, the dying red sun bearing down on the sands. Pidash looks up at the sun. It is worthy of respect, though some days it feels more a sad, dying man glaring its regret down on the Urth. It still heats the air and dries the skin, but without the vigor and intensity that the ancestors knew.

While he paths through the ruins, he takes note of defensible locations. He imagines himself a Hegemony soldier, moving through the ruins in search of prey. In his mind he becomes one of them - lacking the wisdom of the desert, but carrying the strength of Hegemonic arms, armors, technology, and pure numbers. The Legionnaire has orders from his his Centurion - flush out the occupants, put them to the blade or the rifle, and tighten the grip of the Empire on the desert.

He starts to move like a Legionnaire. His stride becomes less Faa, less confident, less graceful. It becomes more clodding and brutish. Pidash is not underestimating his opponent, just observing the truth of those who were not born in the azure sand and do not know how to dance with it.

His eyes follow the path of the hexagons up the side of one of the ruins. It stands stark against the indigo sky, broken peak. The Legionnaire’s gaze would be skyward, awestruck by the timelessness of it, maybe even a bit resentful of its origins, predating the Emperor and the Hegemony itself, proof of the supremacy of the desert.

The sands suddenly shift underneath his feet. He grabs his rifle sling and crouches, the floor underneath him gives way and he’s falling, plummeting through a narrow chute, crashing onto a hard floor. Pain shoots from his ankles to his hips. (3 fall damage, HP: 5) Sand continues to fall from what was once the floor beneath his feet. He lowers his head, keeping it from his eyes. He reaches out and his hand hits a solid bar, and he peers up through the diminishing curtain of sand to see bars. He quickly glances around. The bars fully enclose him - he grabs one and pushes on it, shakes it. Panic bubbles up within him, the caged animal ancestor in his spirit growling in his mind. It’s all he can do to keep from lunging at the bars and screaming.

He suppresses this urge, pushing it down. The bars are evenly spaced, and not rusted. They only rise about ten feet up. These were not originally part of the ruins. They were placed here by someone who occupies the place, or at lest someone who occupied it recently. He considers shouting out for help. If the Seekers are here, they are unlikely to harm him. But if they are here, they knew he was here, and that he would be in this cage, long before he even arrived.

This scene was longer and flowed easily. I had such a clear mental picture of this one, but it took several days for me to form that mental picture. It’s my hope that as I continue writing, it’ll be easier for me to produce this without having to wait days for the right combination of ideas. I am still aiming for 500 words of writing a day at a minimum - this one clocks in at 640. If you’re enjoying it, check out Vaults of Vaarn 2e on Backerkit. It’s a project that won’t disappoint.

Pidash is in Moongaze, in a tucked away upper room at the inn. He’s known to Hegemony soldiers for some petty crimes, and has no desire to be shipped off to Gnomon. He’ll lay low until he can get away from the inn, then figure out something to do to get the soldiers to leave.

Notes:

I didn’t record the dice rolls for this session, but next time I will. Each question in italics, the yes/no questions, are answered on the Mythic GME 2e Fate table.

Scene 1 - Pidash tries to sneak out of the inn

Test: 9. Expected scene.

Are there soldiers in and around the inn in the morning? Extreme Yes

Pidash wakes in the morning to sounds of raucous soldiers below. The odds that this specific detachment would recognize him are low, but the consequences are dire. He considers whether to lay low, which would mean remaining in his room for an extended time and consuming limited resources, or try to sneak out.

Pidash tries to wait it out. He puts his ear to the floor for a while, trying to hear some of the conversation of the soldiers and figure out what might happen next.

Are the soldiers talking about anything useful? Yes. Rolling on meaning: Truce Expectation

The soldiers are talking about their operation, which is to root out a troublesome nearby element. They are expecting it to come to an end soon. They seem to think these detractors are going to turn themselves in and then they’ll all go back to Gnomon before long.

Who are the detractors? Are they Seekers of Eyeless Wisdom? Yes

Pidash continues listening and hears references to the Seekers of Eyeless Wisdom.

Does Pidash have previous experience with the Seekers? No

He’s never co-mingled with the Seekers before, which isn’t to say he’s avoided them either. They’re just a bit odd folk. They never drink, which leaves out most of Pidash’s entertainment options. They speak riddles most of the time, or at least that’s how it sounds to his ear. And the only ones that come above ground are the more zealous and insistent of them, which Pidash has little patience for.

But his people know them. And the Hegemony are after them. Enemy of my enemy, and all that. So I need to figure out how to get out of here and go warn them.

He pokes his head outside the door to his room. Does he see anybody there? No

He needs a distraction - there’s simply no way he can traipse down the stairs and out the door. He goes back to his room and looks out his window. The Hegemony’s caravan is there, pulled by a few war camels. Is there an ornithopter? No Is there a stilt strutter? Yes Perfect.

If he was going to live a cursed life, he might as well enjoy the benefits of it... He does the mind-reaching-grasping pattern, his eyes unfocusing and focusing in rapid succession. The sunburst brand on his face itches, then burns, as outside, two of the legs of the stilt strutter suddenly rust through, collapsing, and crashing to the ground. Cost: d6 + PSY (1): 7

The gift racks Pidash’s body. It hurts worse than it ever has before, spasming muscles, short and shallow breaths, the throat constricts. It takes all of his concentration to move his body out of his door and down the stairs, casting a glance into the common room to see if the Hegemony soldiers took the bait and went out to investigate. Pidash pulls his head over his head and stumbles out of the inn. DEX save to go totally unnoticed: 5. One of the soldiers sees him exiting the inn, head low and hunched. Is the soldier concerned? Will they try to pursue? Yes

Pidash hears the soldier call after him, and when Pidash doesn’t turn to respond, it becomes shouting, muffled beneath the soldier’s mask but a clear command to halt. Pidash instead breaks into a run, still suffering from the physical effects of his gift. Fleeing: DEX save vs occupied item slots (9): 5

The soldier pulls out a shoddy rifle and draws a bead on Pidash. Attack roll vs AV (13): 5

A bullet pings off the chrome-sided building in front of Pidash as he turns the corner and disappears into the crowded market. When he’s out of sight, he tears off his cloak and tosses into a basket of fabrics sold by a silk merchant, then sits on a bench and pulls out a smoking glass. He casually draws on it as the Hegemony soldier runs through the market without casting a second glance at Pidash.

Scene ends. Chaos +1 (6).

Scene 2 - Ask around about the Seekers Location

Test: 4, Interrupt Scene, New NPC. Awkwardly Colorful, Inactive, Happy

Pidash feels his body relax with the effects of the smoking glass, filled with vine. He’s fairly confident he’s escaped trouble at this point, but he won’t be able to go back to the inn. If the Hegemony are trying to hunt down the Seekers, then to the Seekers we go. Don’t know any, though. It’s gonna take some discrete asking around.

Questions about the NPC:

Is this person on drugs?: 89, No
NPC Behavior: Break
Action Meaning: Misuse Bureaucracy
Identity: Legal Ally
Ancestry: Synth
Name: Fane
Power source: Artificial Digestion
You were made for: Flattery
Finish: Iridescent
Form: Ape

Wandering through the markets and backstreets of Moongaze, eyes are drawn to the chrome spires that erupt from blue sands and brown mud. They are also drawn to the insanity of some of its denizens. Pidash is accosted by a small synth-ape trailing fabrics of a thousand colors. It swings from tent pole to sign to window shutter, shouting down at Pidash.

“Friend Faa! Friend Faa! You stride the sands like the great worms of the dry sea! You prowl the streets like the crag cat, rippling in the heat-haze. To where do you pounce, friend Faa?”

Pidash looks up at the creature, following its movements as he carries on down the road. “I have nothing for you, machine. Why do you pursue?”

“I want nothing from you, friend Faa, only to see and be seen! You see, I find Tarceny and his wife, those mayors of our beautiful oasis, to be prudent and ambitious to an unseemly degree. Such is not the way of Moongaze! I am made of less worldly stuffs, and more fit to carry these and those into everytomorrow!”

Pidash sighed. This is the strangest custom of this strange place. The most absurd, unreliable, unpredictable, and obnoxious are those chosen to lead the way. This iridescent ape-machine was campaigning.

“I have no interest in the politics of this place. I have neither influence nor aught to gain. Pester another, I have little patience for it.”

“Oh, friend Faa! I am wounded, I lay bleeding before you, my breath is choked from my chest. Haven’t I pleased you, haven’t I sung enough for you to put your faith in me? And that aside, I am known throughout and all that know me put their trust in me. Won’t you, friend Faa? All I ask is a token demonstration, for you to carry my signet, and I will be in your debt!” The ape-machine continually leaps in front of Pidash, never blocking his stride but staying perpetually in front of him.

“Will it cease your babbling, machine?” Pidash grumbled.

A moment passed as the synth perched on an low wall and stared at Pidash, as though he were considering if it were worth it. “I can descend into silence for it, friend Faa!”

“Then give me the thing, and be gone from my sight.”

The ape-machine hangs in front of Pidash, one reticulated arm hanging down holding a trinket, dorned with the machine’s face and the name “Fane” inscribed on it. “If you wear this at the Council Summit, it will please me so friend Faa, and you will have a friend in me as I ascend!” It swings away, to pester some other poor soul. According to the laws of Moongaze... that synthetic might be the most qualified to lead. A terrifying thought.

Chaos: Down (5)

Scene 3 - Finding the darker side of Moongaze

Test: 9, Expected Scene

Shady district, economic. Keywords Rustic, Water

Pidash wanders to the Exile’s Den. A home to pariahs, outlaws, and those looking to get out from under the gaze of the Hegemony, this hall of drinks and deal-making sits in a hollowed out water drum. Inside, the circular wall is decorated with signs of multitudes of lost homes. Faded lithographs, holoprojectors that have long since deresolved, symbols of forsaken faiths, toys of children made orphans.

The only other person here sits in a patch of sunlight that comes down through a dilapidated metal roof. He’s a weathered old man, skin the weathered faded color that represents a life in the blue sand desert. He sits on a stool against the opposite wall, legs crossed underneath him, laconic posture making him seen more a sun bathing sand lizard. He holds a musical instrument in his hand and blows through a small dry reed on one end. The music is shrill, titillating, and playful, in a register like a girl child’s voice. His eyes meet mine as I enter, but he doesn’t stop playing. The corners of his mouth curl up as to welcome me in while he continues his song, so I unstrap my laser rifle and lean it against the wall near the door.

The man finishes his song, which ends with a rather sad melody that evoked a feeling of regret in Pidash.

“What is this new thing you have written?” Pidash takes a chair from nearby and sits at a table near where the old man is perched on his stool. He loosens one of the ties on his brigandine, exhaling softly as the armor loosens on his chest. He brushes blue sand from his shirt.

“I pondered a young one’s path. I saw them step through the vine and dip their toes in the oasis, and I saw them mourn the migration of the wren. I saw them grow wise and then grow childish and then I saw them wrinkle and dry, and this perhaps was most droll of all. Thus, a tragedy! Did you enjoy it?” He grins, showing teeth stained blue from a life of amaranthine sugar.

Pidash sips water from the plastic tube at the neck of his suit, chuckling at his old friend, then a boisterous laugh at the end of the wrinkled man’s description. “Autobiography! I should have known. Vashy, you play as beautifully as ever.”

Vashy unfolds from his stool and put his instrument in a box at his feet. “Flatterer and liar, what can I do for you, desertfriend?” He walks over to the bar, each step a little bit crooked.

Pidash lowers his voice slightly. “I’m looking to find the Seekers. I have information for them.”

Vash turns back and raises his eyebrow for a moment, then picks up two glasses and a bottle of something milk white. He puts the glasses down on the table, then pauses for a moment before pouring the drink. “They are called Seekers for a reason, Faa. They don’t prefer being found. Maybe they consider it an affront to their name! What makes you think they will welcome you, whether your hands are empty or full?”

“The Hegemony are in town for them. I heard it from their mouths today. They Seekers would want to know, I’m sure.”

“You are not so noble, Pidash. They should want to know, yes, but you don’t go running out into the dunes just to deliver a message out of kindness. What are you going to get out of it?”

Pidash smiles wryly. “The enemy of my enemy, Vashy. I could offer them my services. We could send them back to Gnomon with their tails tucket.” He pauses, and sheepishly adds, “And maybe the Seekers will be overcome with gratitude and I can live off of that gratitude for a season or two.”

Does Vashy know where the Seekers are? Likely: 19 Yes

“Give me your map. I will show you.”

Good fun. We’ll see how things go. I’ll post my thoughts on the settlement building that I did to come up with Moongaze later. Next session, we’ll set out to the Seekers encampment and see what, if anything, they have to say.

Creice glanced at the severed head which sat on a metal chair in the middle of the room. It was only a couple of days since Creice had accomplished that goal, and the thought of it still made the muscles in his neck twitch, as though they were eager to leap into action now and do it all over again. The head, still leaking a bit of yellow sap, stared back in permanent shock. That sap made Creice’s clubbed tail feel sticky.

The room stank like age. Not dry, dusty, forgotten places but the decayed, moldering stench of a village abandoned after plague. There was no life here - not besides Creice, and the expired life of the scorpiock chieftain he had slaughtered this morning - but the room felt like it carried a history of death.

Criece discovered this room several weeks earlier, when fleeing from the same scorpiock tribe he had just returned from massacring. The sandstorm that had given him cover to flee had also revealed a narrow crack in the base of a towering rock formation. Squeezing his wide, overmuscled body into the crack, Creice found a path that led to a set of stairs, leading upwards into the spire of rock. The stairway ended in a single room, large enough to hold the feasthall of his tribe, littered with strange bits of cord, metal boxes stacked and strewn about the carved stone floor. One cylindrical chair laid on the floor at the far end of the room, a few meters away from the thing that Creice had come to believe was a god.

“APPROACH, PETTY BEING, AND RECEIVE INSTRUCTION.”

The words vibrated the room, but not through volume or force. They seemed to Creice to shake the stone itself, and his vision blurred at the edges. He found himself stepping forward unconsciously, then stopped. He deliberated. Something within him fought to approach, something intrinsic, something buried in his genetic memory, as though every one of his ancestors were rising up from their afterlife and pushing him forward. But he was also afraid. It was a feeling he rarely acknowledged, but in this moment he gave it its full berth.

In the end, that thing that he knew as his true nature won out, and he walked to the thing that spoke. It seemed to hover in the air, about a meter off the ground. It looked like a tangle of chrome pipes, knotted in impossible geometries. Three, maybe four meters in diameter. It rotated slowly - or, perhaps it was the tangle of pipes tying and untying itself repeatedly that gave it the illusion of rotation. The light of Creice’s glowbulb in his hand reflected pink-white off of the god-thing.

“BRING ME THE HEAD OF A MORTAL ENEMY, AND RECEIVE THE BLESSING OF METACHROME.”

Those words imprinted on his mind like a burning brand, and in the early, pre-dawn darkness of the desert morning, as he cut down warriors and elders alike on his way to the chieftain who had cursed him, he mumbled the words under his breath over and over and over.

The head of the chieftain, black eyes wide in fixed horror, strings of beads wrapped around chitinous spines, sat beside Creice on the cylindrical seat. The god-thing seemed to pulse, swelling outward, as though each of the chrome pipes were about to burst. The head next to Creice dematerialized.

“BLESSINGS OF THE METACHROME.”

Thus did Creice become known as the Warlord of the Chrome Glove. His reign over the inner desert lasted 89 years, until his death at the end of the Insutan Rebellion.

Subscribe now

To try to rejuvenate those lower moments, I have been asking the question, “What do I do when I don’t really want to do anything?” When I don’t have the energy and time and motivation to play a solo session or sit down and do some campaign prepping, but I still have the urge to do something, I want a small, tangible, meaningful thing to do, to feel like I still did something.

What I won’t do is tell you to “take a break” or “self-care” stuff. That advice is trite, and you don’t need to read a blog article to know if you want to take a break from doing something.

So here’s a d20 table of ideas for what to do when you don’t wanna.

1. Write up and Roll up a new Player Character. Maybe this turns into an NPC in your home game or a backup character in your solo campaign, but the joy and thrill of discovering new player characters doesn’t have to be reserved for the start of a campaign. It can help you come up with new ideas, fresh steps on well trodden paths of your setting.

2. Generate a new town, settlement, city. Aim for small, or at most medium sizes. Too large can become its own daunting task, and there are better options for breaking those down anyway. But a small town is a few buildings, a road or two, some unique defining characteristic. Add some names for NPCs and maybe a historical event or two.

3. Magic. Sword. Do I really need to say more?

4. Create a historical event. This can be really fun. First, write what really happened. It could be big, like a war or a famine or a world changing discovery, or small, like the writing of a beloved play or song, or when a town was saved by a hero. Then, take that and turn it into myth and legend. What details were lost to time? How was it reinterpreted and co-opted to turn it into a fable, a parable? What does the other side say about the same event? This is a fun one.

5. Write a few mundane paragraphs of some slice of life moments. What is your character’s life like when they aren’t out saving the day or ransacking old temples for gold? What do they do when there’s nothing to do? What’s a conversation like with the people they need to talk to? The stakes on this are so low, you can’t get it wrong.

6. Build a monster from scratch. If you’re one of those lucky people blessed with the ability to draw from imagination, you’ve got a head start on this one. Maybe you start by mashing up some different ideas, or roll on some tables (my personal favorite source is the Tome of Adventure Design). Give it some ecological details, and maybe some rumors and myths about it that locals might know.

7. Introduce a new deity or cosmic entity. Whatever the cosmology you’re working with, there’s likely to be some sort of supernatural forces at play. What does it look like to come up with a new one? Is your pantheon fixed, meaning you need an explanation for why it’s not there anymore, or why nobody knows about it? Or is it more fluid, and these gods come and go, rise and fall? (The solo game Deify has been very satisfying for this!)

8. Detail a city street. Urban areas are often underdetailed simply because they are so vast and offer relatively small RPG value compared with the wilderness. But the process of elaborating a city street can reveal so many truths and adventure hooks and people. When I read Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser chronicles, Lankhmar reveals itself as a full-fledged character that the eponymous characters interact with.

9. Start a new spark table or oracle for your setting. Spark tables can be the engine that drives the improvisation of your world. Oracles at the table can get you out of a jam. These tools provide a truly remarkable return on investment. Start a new one, or add to an existing one in progress. Cairn has some great advice on spark tables (which is functionally similar to oracles.)

10. Draw a bit of map or some hexes. Building out some new geography is sure to spark some creative flames for you. Stuff has to go somewhere, so start with somewhere and fill it with stuff.

11. Jot down some terrible ideas. Sometimes, shit sharpens steel. Get some really terrible stuff out there, get it out of your system. Who knows - maybe in a few weeks it won’t seem as terrible as it does today. But until then, vomit some nonsense onto your ugliest notebook.

12. Procure a soundtrack for different parts of your game. Playlists of tracks for exploring the world, or just playlists that get you into the mood to do some of the workplay that we’re talking about here, or playlists of music that you think would be heard in your world! Whatever it is, do some musical exploration and see if that brings some rhythm to your sessions.

13. Design a little procedure, subsystem, minigame. This one’s for all the procedure lovers out there. If you expect a certain thing thing to happen in your game - lock picking, aero dog-fighting, cypher translation, whatever sounds fun - make a little minigame out of it. Write some simple rules, test them out, put them in your folder to have on hand for later. If you like it enough, you’ll find reasons to use them sooner rather than later.

14. Play an adjacent, but different game. When I lose the thread of my solo campaigns, I switch to solo dungeon crawling games like Ker Nethalas or NoteQuest. It’s a break from routine, but still in the same neighborhood. I’ll often feel like I’m working some different muscles, giving the old ones a break, and strengthening myself overall.

15. Kill an NPC in dramatic fashion. Sometimes the game just gets a little stale. If you really want to shake things up, get interested again, and have something to pursue, kill off a darling NPC, or even better, a highly important one. How does the world react to this sudden death? This sort of “GM Fiat” in a solo game may seem strange, but pulling the strings is sorta the whole point. Whatever gets you playing.

16. Tell a different story in the same world with a different system. The Lone Adventurer podcast is a fantastic example of this. He has three seasons of his main campaign, in his homebrew world, and they use different systems in each season, sometimes even using more than one system in a single season. This lets you tell totally different stories and makes the world feel more diverse and interesting.

17. Tell some part of your story from the perspective of the villain. This is easier in solo play, where you can assume the perspective of the antagonist and learn about what they’re doing while your protagonist makes their own way. But even in group play, you could give your players a glimpse of “what they don’t see”. Or better yet, run a one shot as the enemies, and give your players enemy characters to play. It’ll be that much more satisfying when they come back and get their comeuppance later.

18. Give your world to someone else, and see what they do in it. This one will rely on you having kept great, well organized notes about your world and what’s going on in it, or at least regular after-action reports that you can hand over. But to see someone else explore some part of your world that you’ve never visited, to see how they do things differently, to have a chance to look over their shoulder and see what sparks joy in them… that’s good stuff.

19. Choose a location, and detail its sensory experience. This one’s great practice for GMs especially. Decide a location, big or small, that is important to your characters or the setting, and describe what it smells like, looks like, sounds like, feels like. Grab all of these senses and describe each one of them. Get into detail. Interrogate it - why does the temple smell like pine needles? This is a great skill to hone, and it takes only a few minutes.

20. Create a menu, a list of services, or a list of goods for your world. One of the wonderful things about games like Vaults of Vaarn is that the list of items you can buy at a shop or an inn tell you so much about the setting and the system. What pieces does the blacksmith work, or not work? Why does the inn serve only bird meat? Make a list of items you’d like to play with, or see your players play with.

That’s it. D20. Took me a while to come up with 20, and some of them may not be as inspired or fun or flexible as the others. Feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have other suggestions along these lines. Until then, get back to your game!

I just wanted to share a quick thought on scenes, momentum, and responsibility at the table.

I’m getting kinda tired of asking players, “What do you do?”

Naturally, once a scene starts to come to a close and players are resolving their last thoughts, delivering the punch line of their last joke, and grabbing the last pretzel, there’s a lull in the action and the conversation. One by one, players turn to look at the GM, silently asking “What’s next?”

So I ask. I always thought this was a good thing. A lot of people actually suggest this as a good practice for GMs, and for good reason - it gives the GM a push the game along towards the fun, keeping the pace up. But there’s also a downside to it.

It feels like pulling the players along. It feels like they are waiting for me to tell them that something comes next, like I’m going to unfold the next paragraph of the plot in front of them. But I don’t want to tell them what comes next, I want them to tell me what comes next. I want them to confidently tell me they are going over there to do that thing. I want to arbitrate and justify the world for them as they pursue the story.

Also, it’s just more responsibility for me. I don’t want to have to hone the skill of ending every scene with something tantalizing for players to react to to keep the game moving without these lulls. That’s not easy, and I have so much other stuff going on that I have to be thinking about… please, take some of this burden off of me!

So asking “What’s next?” seems counter productive. I want to encourage my players to answer that for me.

I’ve been eager to play Vaults of Vaarn for a long time, but there are too many games, too many settings, and far too little time with my friends at the table. My Land of Eem campaign is a joy, but it does consume my current hobby time-budget.

But as I have developed a new love and fascination with solo gaming, I have the time to explore these settings and games.

And Vaults of Vaarn, which is getting a much anticipated second edition, is excellent for solo gaming. The entire setting is told via tables, lists, bestiaries, and procedures. There are no canon locations or adventure sites - they are all generated by the GM, and so those tools are made with quite a bit of love, care, and expertise.

In this post, we’ll generate our first Vault. In upcoming posts, we’ll generate the starting settlement, place those two locations on the map and fill out the rest of the region with Region generation procedures, adding interesting factions, locations, and NPCs. Finally we’ll build our character (or characters?) and when the stage is set, play a few sessions and see how it goes.

A note on Tools

I will be playing Vaults with the rules from the book, but adding on top of it the venerable Mythic GME. I’ll also be experimenting with a few other tools. The “Unfolding Machines” - the Scene Unfolding Machine (SUM) and the Game Unfolding Machine (GUM).

Vault Generation

Starting with vault generation is an interesting choice. You can see the philosophy of “start local and build outwards” at play here. Vaults, of course, are Vaarn’s take on dungeons, and it assists the GM by providing comprehensive tables of just about everything you want to see in a vault - monsters, features, flora and fauna, traps and secrets, treasure, strangeness, interesting things to play with, properly looped paths, and more.

It took me about an hour, a piece of paper, and a few dice to generate an 18 room vault that had interesting contents, and when I was finished, a sort of story around what the vault was began to form. The guide encourages you to not avoid the weird and whacky, and to not try to justify or come up with explanations for the odd ecosystem. This place is an antediluvian madhouse.

Before you generate the rooms, you roll up an entrance, the nature and aesthetic of the connections between rooms and nodes (what kind of tunnels, corridors, or passages are there), and what the site used to be - immediately helpful in creating a mental image of what’s going on.

Here’s what I rolled for those:

• Entrance: Air Filtration Vent

• Tunnels: Filled With Garbage

• Used To Be: Military Command Post

Right away, this feels cool to me. I’ve got an interesting mental image of what’s going on in the vaults.

Next I generated all 18 of those rooms. I won’t enumerate them here - if I end up sharing some play reports, you can find out what the contents of the vault are then!

Changes for Solo

What would I change for solo play? The game has you generate three clusters of 6-room “nodes”. Once you finish all three, you have the fully structured dungeon. For solo, I might generate either one cluster at a time or one room at a time. This lets me generate the vault as I go, leaving things in a quantum state until I encounter it, which I appreciate in solo games. But even that’s a very optional change; I’ve run Shadowdark dungeons solo, even with full knowledge of what’s coming up in the next rooms, and enjoyed it just as well.

In the next post, I’ll build the first settlement, and learn what’s happening in our particular set of blue sand dunes.

My cello professor told me something that stuck with me forever. He told me that his job was not to teach me how to play cello - I already knew how to do that by the time I was in his studio. He was there to teach me how to learn cello. As with most things, one can continue to learn and improve for one’s entire lifetime. Pablo Casals, one of the all time great cellists, was asked:

“Mr. Casals, you are 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived. Why do you still practice six hours a day?”

Mr. Casals answered, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

Potent stuff.

How do we hone our skills as a DM? I think if you posed this question to most communities, they’d say to play more, run games, play in games - you’ll get comfortable over time.

I’m here to suggest that while this is true, it may be possible that there is a better way.

Practice and Performance are two different things. When you run a session or play in a game, you are performing. Sure, the stakes are low, and it’s all for good fun, but it’s a performance. You are performing the skills you have prepared and developed.

So how do we practice?

Dungeons Were Boring Until…

I’ve become enamored with dungeon crawling. I used to find it terribly boring, probably because the systems that I were using were simply the wrong fit for the content. Once I was introduced to His Majesty the Worm and Shadowdark and read some more articles in Knock Magazine, I started to understand the appeal again. But running dungeons is hard. Like, properly hard.

Diogo Nogueira, in Knock #2, talks about Boring Dungeons. He states that you should never describe a room like this:

you get to an intersection and there is a door to the north and two passages, one to the west and one to the east

I feel attacked.

But he’s right, and it’s probably the core reason why most dungeons feel so miserable for players and game masters. It’s hard to do this at the table if you’re not very well versed in the dungeon, but you need to hint at what’s to come. He provides this alternative (paraphrased):

You see an open door frame to the north covered in dangling spider webs. The webs twitch - as if something is probing the web. There’s a passage to the east, and down that passage you see a faint glow of bioluminescence and a faint cool breeze.

Ahh, that’s the stuff. Players have some agency here - they have an idea of what they’re getting into, and get into the right state of mind for what may be beyond those doors.

I want to be better at this. I need to be better at this, because dungeons are calling my name, and I want to run great games. Let’s figure out how to practice.

Practice Makes Perfect

Practicing can be a deep rabbit hole. There are lots of methods and opinions out there, and they’re all likely valid. But, since this is (as far as I’m aware) a burgeoning field of practice, let’s keep it simple.

Take a dungeon off your bookshelf. I’m sure you have one, something you ran a long time ago or haven’t run at all, and then consider the following exercises.

Find a room with more than one exit. Look at what rooms lie beyond those exits, and then describe the exits.

Use the information about the rooms on the other ends of those passages to telegraph the ideas to the players. You might find that in the dungeon you picked, the author didn’t include these details when they described the doors or passageways. Make it a habit in your prep to consider these details.

Pick a monster off of the random encounters list, and come up with a conflict motivation for them that isn’t just “kill the players.”

A well designed encounter does not lead inevitably to knock down, drag out fights. What does the monster want? Does it want to steal jewels from the players pouches? Does it want to pick off the weakest looking party member and drag them into the darkness? Does it want to hold the door and wait for reinforcements to arrive? Does it only attack if someone in the group has stolen something? These questions are what make dungeons feel like more than just board games where you make funny voices.

Pick a room that has a clear theme but is a little sparse on descriptors, and add more detail to it.

Sometimes the rooms are a bit.. empty. It’s on the GM to add little bits of set dressing and decor and tidbits of life to these rooms. Get used to doing this - your players will never encounter another boring room.

Look for opportunities for players to fail at something, and come up with some consequences for failure.

One way to make dungeons very boring is to have the players fail at something and nothing in their situation changes. The thief picks a lock but is unsuccessful. Cool.. do they just get to try again? There are lots of opportunities to fail, but if nothing changes, they should just succeed instead. Change the situation meaningfully when players fail - and you can practice this by looking for things they can fail at.

These are the things I’m going to be doing to try to get better at running dungeons. Do you have other ideas? What would you practice in your own games? What about outside of the dungeon - what if you were practicing overland travel and wanted to get better at interesting random encounters? Or generating NPCs in the city that have stories and hooks attached to them? There’s a lot of possibilities here, but the question I want answers to is:

How can I practice this?

I don’t like the former cause it’s usually a lot of work on my part. Most adventure writers haven’t gotten in the habit of creating player-facing maps with secrets redacted. If I have one wish for the next few years, it’s that authors start providing these maps. It’s so helpful.

And the latter just isn’t as useful - yeah, everyone’s on the same page, but you can’t take notes on your own map, and you have to stop and draw the map every time they discover a new room, and that feels tedious to me, and time consuming.

So, I set out to find a best of both worlds, and landed on… Scratch Off Dungeon Maps!

Believe it or not, it’s dead simple, takes no time, and is incredibly fun for the players and the GM alike. Here’s how it goes.

1. Print and Laminate the Player Map

Free League provided player facing maps on their website which makes them an S-class publisher in my book. I printed this off at home on card stock, and then laminated them with a little home laminator (Link is to Amazon, it’s not a referral link, I just wanted to link one to show you they are cheap and small.) This took like two minutes total for two copies of the two maps.

You could also use tape to do a faux-lamination. Just layer the map with packing tape. It won’t be as clean, but it’ll work. But I’d buy a laminator if you don’t have one, you’d be surprised at the number of times you find a use for it (especially if you have kids.)

2. Mix up your Scratching Solution

I got the idea for this from this Youtube Video. I decided to try just acrylic paint with a little bit of dish soap. I mixed it up without paying any attention at all to the ratio. If I had to guess, I probably added one part soap to five parts paint. It’s really not precise at all, you don’t have to worry about how much of each. I used cheap Apple Barrel craft acrylics and Dawn dish soap. Whatever you have laying around will work.

3. Brush the Solution onto the Map

I used a big craft paint brush and just brushed it on the parts of the map I wanted to cover up.

4. Let it Dry

It doesn’t take long, but I let it dry overnight to be safe. If you’re in a time crunch, you can dry it with a hair dryer in a few minutes. (I had to do this when one of my maps got wet.) I suppose I should call that out here - if you get this stuff wet, it reactivates and has to be dried again, so take care not to spill on it.

That’s it.

Dead simple. Took me 15 minutes and I had never done it before. You could pre-mix some of this and put it in a sealed container if you do it regularly. You can even keep the maps, scratch off the whole thing, and re-paint it if you want to run that same dungeon again for a different group.

You could even do regular acrylic paint over top of the gray layer if you want to add details or symbols or text or something. I can’t think of a use case for it right now, but I’m sure someone out there will have a creative thought about how you could add details on top of the scratching layer.

Overall, I can’t recommend this enough. I asked for my players opinion, did they enjoy it? Did they feel like it added value? Everybody answered in the affirmative - they enjoyed scratching it off and revealing the next rooms, they loved that they didn’t know exactly what awaited them, it was satisfying to scratch. I will be doing all my dungeon maps like this going forward and you should give it a try. Who knows - maybe big publishers will start including scratch off maps in box sets and published adventures. I’d certainly be in favor of it.

First, I need a few entries for the "Big Ideas" table. I'm just sitting at my kitchen table asking myself what I want to see here. I want to start with 4 entries - enough to have a meaningful dice roll to see what idea I'm going to end up using in my flash fiction, but short enough that I have room to grow later and don't feel obligated to fully envision my entire setting before I even get started making useful things.

Big Ideas

1. Elementals

2. Political Power Struggles

3. Rigorous Magic

4. Fantastical Landscapes

These all make sense to me in my head, but since I'm writing this for your pleasure, I'll explain in brief:

1. Elementals are pretty self explanatory, but I like them as a core, fundamental part of the world. I was hooked on the Djinn in Golden Sun and the idea of the Elemental Bird trio in Pokemon. Stuff like that just scratches my itch, so I want them present in a big way in my setting.

2. Political Power Struggles. This is the black sheep of the original table, but every time I sit down and think about strange worlds, I think about pretender kings and hidden lineages and deposed monarchs.

3. Magic being rigorous - maybe there's a different way to say this, but I like magic that feels like science, something you can study and learn and innovate and improve, moreso than magic you're born with and suddenly can be proficient in. Meritocratic magic systems! They also give the players downtime hooks and adventure hooks and make sense of systemic advancement.

4. Fantastical landscapes are something I adore about Minecraft and especially some of the more mainstream Minecraft mods like Terralith. Shattered lands, floating islands, permanent whirlpools, vast, inhabited crevices, massive walls. These set my imagination on fire.

Stuff

Now I need a "Stuff" table. I have inverted these from my last post - I recommended doing Stuff first and Big Ideas second, but I don't have a strong feeling for the ordering, and as I sat down to write this, I intuitively felt like Big Ideas should come first, so perhaps I'll swap those around in the end.

"Stuff", here, is vague, and perhaps a different moniker will reveal itself, but it's meant to be Nouns that are of particular interest in the setting. If swords are really important to your world, carrying lineages and magic and power and respect or whatnot, Swords might go on your Stuff list. But if swords are just swords, it would be silly to put them on your Stuff list, because they won't inspire truly cool ideas.

Similarly, I wouldn't recommend putting an entry for characters, or NPCs, on this list. Since the last step of the session is to write some flash fiction, the presence of characters is baked into that step, making it redundant in this one.

So what kind of "stuff" do I feel will make for interesting fiction in this setting?

1. War

2. Magical Discovery

3. Elemental Incursions

4. Mercantile Companies

I operate in a very stream of consciousness method. I just start listing things that sound fun. Several of these obviously line up with the "Big Idea" list, because I wrote them in the same sitting. (Note: This may be an unintended consequence to doing this kind of session work, and may very well be a downside, leading to unintentional homogenization - but I think the blending of various ideas into flash fiction and the fact that you're always going to be rolling new combinations of these things will mitigate that downside.)

What are Elemental Incursions? No idea, but it sounded cool when I wrote it on the list. I'll have to actually play out some flash fiction to know what they are, and how they impact the world. I like how, in this system, I don't have to answer these questions until later. Little figments of ideas are just as valuable as fully fleshed out domains will be later.

Let's Roll!

So now, I need to roll on these tables, and I'll break out my Ironsworn Starforged Action+Theme table to see if I can roll a decent oracle result on that.

Big Idea: Elementals

Stuff: Magical Discovery

Action+Theme: "Explore Price"

There's an additional step in my original description. Create a table for the "stuff" entry. In this case, I would create a "Magical Discoveries" table and roll on that, and add that to my recipe. This is a tricky step - what kinds of things go on a Magical Discoveries table? Alas, this is where the world building magic happens, so let's make that table and roll on it.

Magical Discoveries

1. The Inversion Sigil

2. Elemental Mixing by Subtraction

3. The Tenth and Eleventh Words of the Lingua Arcana

4. Arcane Energies Present at the Birth of Wondrous Creatures

Again, pure stream of consciousness. Notice how specific these are. These tables are allowed to be more specific since I don't have to do further derivations from these tables. And what's more, being more specific in these tables feeds right into the prompt for your flash fiction, giving you something concrete to build on, and each entry is a spark for further ideas.

Rolling on this table, we can add "Elemental Mixing by Subtraction" to our list of ingredients.

The Action+Theme oracle is the step that requires interpretation. As stated before, I rolled two d100s, one on each of the Ironsworn Starforged's Action and Theme tables. Explore Price is like the fundamental, mother sauce of this recipe, the roux upon which the rest of this meal will be laid.

The next step is Flash Fiction. This step can be as short or as long, as terse or involved as you like. It can take virtually any form you like. I can imagine myself doing a quick sketch, or a painting, to explore these ideas. I can imagine many different types of narrative frames if you intend on doing writing - journal entries, short stories, audio logs, research papers, advertisements, descriptions of crimes, translations... the possibilities here are endless.

I'm going to write a quick bit of Flash Fiction here. To reiterate our prompt:

Big Idea: Elementals

Stuff: Magical Discovery, "Elemental Mixing by Subtraction"

Action+Theme: "Explore Price"

Joao looked haggard. The student displayed the kind of sapped, desiccated tired that was almost painful to look at, much less experience. The rims of her eyes were the same scarlet as the veins that ran through them. She had not slept for days, on the ill-reached theory that if she stopped here, she'd lose the momentum that had powered her so far, so near to the conclusion of her work. And worse, she wouldn't be able to pick up the work again after what would certainly be a long hibernation. The elemental ice might keep, if enclosed in a nickel flask, but there was simply no way to keep the smoldering ashes from cooling, and the cube of pyros was the last of her supply.

It would be one thing if a cube of pyros was replaceable, but the grant that the Triarch had given her was as exhausted as she was, and pyros was the most expensive part of this work. Bleary-eyed, Joao returned to her notes.

*The conjuring of... what was it again?... returning some energy to... a lower plane? a higher one?... And she had paid for so much catalyst powder. That must have gone somewhere. Did she use it already? She must have. The pyros was still burning, wasn't it? So she must have.*

*Gods. Maybe just a little bit of sleep. Just a bit.*

Joao awoke to the sound of lantern beetles vibrating against the windows, and shot up right. How long had it been since she had fallen asleep? The pyros was a cold pile of ash in its glass dish, and the elemental ice had melted, overflowing the low rim of its own glassware, hopelessly mundane water now soaking the sleeve of her alchemical coat and the linen shirt beneath.

"Oh, gods no, no no no..." Joao scrambled, still scraping the lingering sleep from her eyes, desperately tilting the glass bowl toward her in hopes of finding even a small sliver of ice, but in vain. It had all melted, and the pyros was not more than ash now, their elemental energy uselessly dissipated back into the plane to rejoin their respective prime essences. The experiment was ruined.

Tears welled in the student's irritated eyes. She looked through the last few pages of notes she had taken. Theories and proofs regarding the movement of elemental energies directly, without conversion, using only catalyst and proximity... all of it worthless without a demonstrable result. She was so certain that this would work but without more funding, she couldn't deliver it. Maybe she could show this to the Triarch's principal alchemist and get more funding... but no, they had been clear that this work only merited minimal funding, and only because Joao's mentor had been so well respected by the Triarch themselves.

And there was no other way to get her hands on more cubic pyros.

Unless...

That's all. That's the flash fiction, and I wrote it very stream of consciousness as I always do, letting whatever interesting ideas came to my mind flow through and onto the page, knowing that I am writing the world I want to see played out. There's some cool stuff in here - what is the Triarch? The interplay of elements is rich for adventure. There's hooks hanging off of this as well - if the party encounters Joao, they certainly have a quest waiting for them related to these elemental materials.

If I were so inclined, and maybe I will be after I get home from vacation, I could convert some of these ideas into a more structured, wiki-like notes in my Obsidian project. Storing there the NPCs, concepts, worlds, politics, and tables that I write here is an easy bit of cleanup after doing all of this more challenging creative work.

That's the end of one session of my little world building framework, or game, or whatever you'd like to call it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the process, thoughts on what certain things should be named, what I could add or take away to make the process more effective or easier to get into. My next article will be an attempt to summarize my results into an easy to use, easy to read framework.

There's shockingly little practical advice in RPG world building. There's a metric boat load of opinions on what you should have in your world, and my experience, they are darts thrown at the wrong board. It isn't exactly meaningless to list out the things that make a world interesting, but the insidious thing is that you could spend a year filling out that list and you'll be no closer to having fertile ground for new stories than you were on day one. You have checked off every item on the list of things that makes someone else's world interesting, but it's not the contents of that list that are important, it's how the items on that list interplay and mingle and breed into new ideas and, most importantly, weave themselves into interesting stories, that creates an interesting new world.

Today’s Problem

My experience so far is that the common world building advice for the purpose of RPG play falls into two categories:

1. Start small, one town, three hexes, no more than you need for one session of your game. This is well intended but fails to separate two distinct activities - world building and session prep.

2. Start with the big truths of your world - pantheons and continents and epochs and creation myths. This is similarly well intended but is only practical for people with a ton of time on their hands and no children or, well, responsibilities. (I jest, but only a little bit.)

Personally, I need a framework that meets these criteria:

1. The output is usable and practical for TTRPG-ing.

2. The process is organic, and has a low barrier of entry.

3. It scales well with time and effort.

4. It's not prescriptive to a specific style of play or genre of fiction.

The most useful and practical output for TTRPG play. That's a big question, but at this phase of my life, my answer is tables and NPCs. They're also a bit hard to do. Tables are hard because of quantity (unless you're the demon-possessed Ktrey), and NPCs are hard because of quality. To address these problems, I'm aiming to build a system for solo GMs that alleviates that difficulty, and consciously tries to solve the other problems in turn.

My Idea, a Work in Progress

My idea is that world building, like play, can happen in sessions, and that each session has the same structure. It revolves around tables, oracles, and short stories. It's... basically solo RPG-ing. I'm not making something novel ground breaking here, but looping solo play back around to feed the early stages of the RPG hobby. It starts with a few tables, but you start off with only a few entries on each.

The first is the Big Idea table. This is stuff that you want to see in your game. Start with as few as four entries. The tricky part here is finding the sweet spot in between generic and specific. You want it to be generic enough that you still have to do some interpretation, and specific enough that it is interesting and meaningful as a concept in your world. "Elves" is good. "People" is too generic, and "The shadow elves of the Umbral Crater" is too specific (for the big ideas table). Maybe. Maybe you really want them to be present in a big big way in your setting. Go nuts.

Second, you need a Stuff table. This is the more generic "what type of thing am I going to write about" table. Some good ideas for this table are Weapons, Food, Shrines, Cults, Inventions, Spells.... archetypal stuff.

And lastly, you need an Action+Theme oracle. This may be the only table you want to steal from somewhere else, and have complete before your first world building session, because oracles have to be diverse early on to tell interesting stories, and writing these tables won't help your world building. I highly recommend the Ironsworn oracles for this activity, which are free online.

You can start from here, but you're going to end up building way more tables than this, which is the big point (tm).

So what do you do? Each session, you:

1. Add an entry to your stuff table, and then roll on it. Record this roll.

2. Add an entry to your Big Ideas table, and then roll on that. Record this too.

3. Roll on your Action+Theme oracles. Record that.

4. Your roll from step 1, the stuff roll. Whatever category you rolled up, you need to make or add to a table for that category. If you rolled weapons, create a new table for interesting weapons for your world. If you already have one, add an entry to it. Roll on that table.

5. Mash all those rolls up into an idea for some short writing. A paragraph, a few paragraphs, a few pages, whatever you're in the mood for.

6. Document your story. You probably had a character or two, a location or two, a bit of juicy lore. Write those down, using the context of your story. This is the lore that you just discovered about your world.

That's it. You make or extend useful tables, you discover a bit of story and lore and people in your world through play, and you can do it all in an hour max. That's one session. The more sessions you play in this world, the more of it you will discover.

My theory is that this will make world building easier, more fun, and more useful for your RPG sessions. Your little flash fiction stories will become quest hooks and factions and NPCs and lore. You get to do it by playing and discovering it and you end up with tables of stuff that's specifically cool for your world.

My next article is going to be an example of this. I'm going to run through my own steps for my own setting and show the outcome. Then, the third article will be an attempt to incorporate any feedback (including and most importantly my own) and make it more concise.

Being a good player is harder than being a good GM. I say this as someone who is mostly a GM, and one who is very insecure about his own abilities and output, and who believes that being a good GM is very difficult. But my experience as a player and my experience with players tells me that being a quality player is even harder. Here’s a couple reasons why I believe that, and hopefully, if you’re a player, you can take some of these thoughts and build on them. So here’s an incomplete list of things that make being a good player a serious challenge.

Taking good notes is critical and so tough

How many times have you looked at your notes (even as a GM) a week after you wrote them and thought to yourself, “What the fuck was I trying to write here?”

Half of my notes, on either side of the table, are chicken scratch, incomplete phrases, single words not tied to any other thoughts, misplaced numbers pointing to words that don’t need numbers… In the moment, these notes probably made perfect sense. Later, when it’s supposed to be useful? Chuck it in the bin.

I’ve made a concerted effort to take much better notes - contextualizing them, using full sentences whenever I can, using a consistent pattern so that I don’t have to wonder what this type of arrow means or why some things are underlined.

It’s also very beneficial to go over your notes after the session and rewrite them without the added pressure of time and being present in the scene. If you do this while the scenario is still fresh in your mind, you will find it much easier to refer back to them later. You might also reorganize them into session notes, character notes, plot notes, on different pages of your notebook or journal. God forbid, you might even make an index. Gasp! What nerdery have we gotten ourselves into?

Can’t be steppin’ on toes, that’s for GMs!

As a player, I feel very insecure suggesting a scene, or suggesting a course of action that involves another player. I’ve been running Grimwild recently, where players are encouraged to be directors of the fiction by suggesting scenes and suggesting plot twists and treating it like a writer’s room for a TV show. But it’s not easy, and when I am a player in other games, I feel that insecurity keenly.

How do I know what scene should come next? That’s the GM’s domain.

How do I suggest a course of action for another player? That’s their agency!

How do I proclaim goals for the party? The GM knows what the fiction is!

All of these insecurities are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the game, but as a person who studies these games and runs them and plays them all the damn time, I can tell you that it’s not easy to overcome. The GM is discovering the fiction just as much as the players are, and is likely to be thrilled to have someone suggest a scene. Other players are eager to work together, and your idea is probably great - it’s not robbing them of their agency unless you don’t take no for an answer (which makes you a problem player.) It’s going to be fine, I promise, even though it feels like jumping off of a cliff.

Don’t be afraid to step on toes - it’s all part of the dance.

Sharing the Spotlight is harder in character

As a GM, I find it easy to say, “Hey, what is Jorb thinking as the spider devours the party’s goblin buddy?” (Yikes, what is happening in this game?)

As a player, I find it much harder to bring another player into the roleplaying with me. I feel compelled to do it in character - because asking the question out of the character feels like stepping on the GM’s toes. (It’s probably not though!)

Finding a seamless, immersive way to bring other characters into the spotlight or to put the spotlight on them, and doing so in character, is hard. It can feel artificial or contrived. Again, no solutions - it’s just insecurity and it’s tricky. There’s no way to do it but to do it. Experience will guide you towards the good ways and away from the not so good ways.

Scenes and Goals are the Players Domain

For players who are new to the game in particular, it can feel impossible, daunting, and even wrong to apply your own ideas to the fiction. That’s so obviously the domain of the GM and their prep. You can’t just inject your own stuff in there, or it’ll break the whole thing, throw it all off the rails, frustrate the GM, frustrate your players, pretzels are flying, beer is spilled, children are crying!

It’s not so bad as that. As a long time forever GM, let me tell you this in no uncertain terms:

I am eager, nay, desperate, for players to inject their own ideas.

It’s pure gold. It’s daunting, and I get that, to even suggest what scene might come next or what path the group should take at a crossroads. It feels selfish to insist that this might be a moment for your character to resolve some thread or start a new one. It feels like you’re hogging the spotlight to inject a moment of your character’s backstory into the fiction.

But it’s what must happen.

Good luck overcoming that insecurity. I’ll let you know if I ever do.

For example, in the real world, a wise person and a smart leader will absorb blame and failure while praising others and giving credit for success to everyone around them. It’s not just good politics - it’s how you motivate people to work hard for you and give you everything they’ve got.

But if you’re the GM of a TTRPG group, you should sort of do the opposite - make your characters the source of all their success, and the best part of the story, and make sure their failures are all a result of an unfair world.

In other words, your character’s successes are internal - they win because they are superior, morally, martially, magically. They are the heroes, and they are so cool and good and awesome at what they do that of course they won. And your character’s failures are the fault of the world - some unseen random chance, a cruel and uncompromising universe, bad actors doing bad things.

This is a very simple mindset that will make your players enjoy the game more. Let me give some examples.

Scenario

Blair rolls to calm the riotous crowd down, giving a motivating speech to channel their energies into defending the city walls.

Success

The crowd is laser focused on Blair’s speech, and within moments, they seem to calm and focus. A few elders in the crowd start directing the rest of the people towars useful activities in defense of their homes.

Failure

The crowd seems restless during Blair’s heartfelt plea, and without giving them a chance to finish, someone in the crowd throws a burning torch towards Blair, threatening a conflagration of the homes behind them.

The success case here will make Blair’s player feel awesome - having full control over the situation, putting all of their skills to use, and having a meaningful impact on the situation and the world. And the failure case serves two purposes - one, it indicates that Blair didn’t stumble and fumble the speech like a buffoon - it was heartfelt and well made, but the people didn’t want to hear it. And then, because this is a failure, we escalated the situation by having the thrown torch threaten to set the buildings alight. The universe is acting against Blair here, they didn’t just suck at talking. Let’s look at another one.

Success

Alenia darts through the trees adeptly, alighting on root and stone as softly as a feather, leaving no tracks nor making a single sound that would alert her pursuers of her direction - she’s lost them.

Failure

Alenia runs fox-like through the thick undergrowth, the sounds of her pursuers and their dogs hot on her heels. Then, a loud rustle in the undergrowth ahead - a wild animal, maybe a boar or deer. The startled creature’s path takes it right underfoot of Alenia, who stumbles and crashes to the forest floor. Alenia can’t even identify the creature before the bounty hunters and their dogs reach her, crossbows leveled at her chest.

Play up your character’s successes here - they don’t just run fast, they run quickly and don’t even leave a trace, that’s how swift and dextrous they are. It’s an amazing visual, a character stepping only on solid surfaces, bouncing swiftly from tree to rock to tree. It’s something out of.. well, a fantasy story.

For the failure, we see that random cruelty of the universe. Our character here is still doing something amazing, but a stroke of bad luck as some startled creature trips her up. This failure is external to Alenia, which takes the sting of failure off and lets her lay the blame at the feet of cruel fate. And maybe she’ll hold a grudge against wild boar in the future.

What about humor, though? If the stakes are low and the mood and tone are right, feel free to make the character fail in a perfect storm of stupid decisions and amateurish execution.

The value of this technique should be pretty plain, and it’s very simple to set into practice. You don’t have to do it 100% of the time for it to be noticeable and to have a positive impact in your games. Being conscious of it will make you a better GM.

Because I am so thoroughly invested in this hobby, I sometimes struggle with the thought that my players aren’t as invested as I am. This is a simple matter of fact - I spend 10-20 hours a week away from the table just reading and enjoying learning more. And prepping for games that I may be running that week. I don’t expect my players to do the same things, but I do want them to be invested in the games we play.

To that end, I’ve been working on my pre-campaign setup. I think I have nailed down the formula for getting a great start to a campaign, maximizing player buy-in and investment, and smoothing out the early stumbles that come along with every campaign.

It starts with a blank slate. My players are active participants in figuring out what kind of game we are going to play. I don’t decide it for them, even if I’m yearning for Elder Ink or Drune cottagers. I want this to be their world - I want their investment.

This formula is designed to get them maximally invested in the game before it even begins, and in so doing give me a metric ton of material to work with. Here’s the six steps.

Step 1: Decide on the big picture themes of the world and the campaign.

Start with the big ideas - genre, story types, what is or isn’t included in the setting. Do your players want to play sci-fi bounty hunters in a universe where humans are nearly extinct? Or do they want to be Tolkien’s hobbits living a peaceful life in the Shire? Your players can come armed with things they like - settings and stories that inspire them, tv shows and movies they think would be fun to emulate at the table.

Have an open conversation, and in this step, the GM can and should contribute as well, but be wary of dominating the decision making or forcing your own preferences onto the table.

But ask questions - what excites your players about that movie? What sort of things do they not want to see in their new game? What resonates with them about a game they played before? Be a very active listener here. Asking good questions will generate excitement in the group, and then listen closely to the conversations they have with each other - the conversations they have with each other will give you rivers of material to work with later on.

If you’d like, the free Worlds Without Number book has some useful tables and ideas for how to create some of this - just skip the parts about cosmology and global truths. We’ll zoom out later, if the players are interested in doing so.

Step 2: Create the region that you’re starting your campaign in

Once you have the big picture in mind, create the starting region. Some practitioners will say you need Just Three Hexes (and they aren’t wrong) - but for our purposes, we’re gonna zoom out just enough to give each player something to do in later steps. Think small - a small kingdom for medieval fantasy, a single solar system for interstellar sci-fi, or a single biome for something more sword and sorcery. Give yourself enough space that you can put down the most interesting landmarks.

At this point, I have to recommend Perilous Wilds. It has a lovely little procedure for starting from a blank piece of paper and ending up in a usable setting. Draw this out on a map, on the table, with your group. Let them be part of the process of creating this region, and they will understand it better later, in an intuitive way, in the way their characters would understand it if they hail from this region.

Before long, you’ll have a rough idea of what the region is like, and what themes are in your world. Don’t go too far ahead though - you need blank space on the map for later. But put down regional markers like mountain ranges, rivers, and other geological features, as well as major cities and the biggest and most significant landmarks. Then, we’ll get to the interesting stuff.

Step 3: Create the party

I wrote recently about creating the party before the characters and I stand by it. Creating the dynamics of the group before putting characters into it is a phenomenal way of smoothing out early game weirdness, awkwardness, and roleplaying hurdles.

Create the group based on the themes you’ve established in step 1 and the region you’ve established in step 2. It should feel coherent, but you still want to add as much weirdo spice as you can tolerate, because it’s the incongruent ideas that make for interesting contrasts, conflicts, and ultimately, great stories.

This is a part of the process where the GM really needs to shut up and listen. You are a note-taker here. You are listening to the players dialogue, listening to what’s interesting and exciting to them, taking notes about the roles and relationships that the party might have, and panning that river for big ol’ golden nuggets. Don’t interfere here! Be quiet! It’s so hard, but it will pay dividends later. Honestly, you might even tell your players - “I’m not going to talk during this section, just listen and take notes.” That way they know not to look at you to drive the conversation forward.

Step 4: Create the characters that go into that party

At this point, you probably have a good idea of what system you want to play, but I’ve left that out entirely because, frankly, it’s not that important! The system doesn’t drive investment and engagement. The setting and the party does. But, if you’ve not figured out what system you are going to be playing, take a few minutes to figure that out so that you can create your characters within that system. Or, don’t - make the characters systemless, and figure that cruft out later. System isn’t that important.

Your players will probably have a smooth time creating their characters and meshing with their roles. Probably smoother than any other campaign you’ve experienced, if you haven’t tried this process before.

Step 5: Have the players place important locations for their characters onto the map

You have a map, and you have characters with rough ideas of backstories. Now, they get to drop some important parts of their backstories onto a physical map. This is a very exciting part of the process, because the players get to do some light worldbuilding and claim ownership over the very map of the world. That’s good stuff, right there.

Places like home towns are obvious, but also consider places where memorable things happened to the characters, or places where they discovered something about themselves. If they killed their mentor on Pinnacle Rock, or lost their hand to dire vipers in the tar pits of the East Mire, drop it on the map. You don’t have to, or want to, add a ton of detail to these locations yet, but you know they are there and you know what makes them meaningful to your players, and that’s worth it’s weight in sterling silver.

Step 6: Solo GM time

Okay, your players went home. Session zero is over, and you have a ton of material to digest, investigate, and ultimately, elaborate. Now you get to do whatever fun process you normally do for prep - add NPCs and factions and location details and magic and wonder. Your players will have knowledge of the region and will have some sense of ownership over locations, but they are still willing and able to be awestruck and bedazzled. You should understand the tenets of the world, because you were there for the conversation and helped shepherd it. But you are also free to throw twists in there they won’t see coming - maybe there’s magic in the world, but it’s nascent and poorly understood, or forbidden. Maybe there’s an intergalactic empire in the region, but a resistance is growing and hiding in the shadows of the moons.

It’s all fun times from here on out.

I hope this formula inspires you to collaborate on your next campaigns. I genuinely believe it can turn a good group into a great one. I believe it can turn good ideas into phenomenal stories. I believe your players will be more invested in this process than one that is dictated from on high and doled out in agonizing, tedious lore drops, and misunderstood in vague shared imagination spaces.

Let me know if you have thoughts, ideas, tools that you’d use to supplement this process. I’m all ears.

You should create the party before you create the characters!

Oh man, what pure genius. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for any new campaign is “why are these people together?” You meet in a tavern, some stuff happens, then you spend years killing kings and gods and becoming great friends. But why did they stick together in the first place? It was plainly obvious to each of them that the others were trouble.

But if you make the party first, you not only have an answer to that question, your character will magically fit in, have relationships, know things about the others, and have something interesting to play off of - from the very first scene.

With that in mind, I wanted to make a short table of what the party might be. Here’s some ideas. Feel free to comment with your own.

1. Firefly-esque guns-for-hire crew

2. A noble house's advisors/council/house administration

3. A book club whose field trip idea went south very quickly

4. A research group sent to study something commonly found in ruins

5. Spiritual warriors from a small clan who received a powerful spirit vision and seek to circumvent the dangers it warned them about

6. A mercenary group tasked with staking out land for a petty lordling’s new keep

7. Scout refugees of some crisis searching for a new homeland

8. A traveling circus - with a secret agenda

9. A family of exiled nobles seeking old allies to right the wrongs done to them

10. Falsely convicted criminals fleeing the law

11. The crew of a trade caravan, waiting for a buyer to come through, hungry in the meantime

12. The crew of a cursed ship, unable to make port until they relieve themselves of their terrible burden.

Playing RPGs is fun, but have you tried… playing other RPGs? The allure of the next game is a chain tied around my waist, constantly pulling me away from where I am, and into the unknown. The appeal of that other system, the one you haven’t tried yet with those innovative ideas, is gravitic, magnetic, a psychological compulsion.

I think I have, in the living of this habit, burned some bridges. I started with 5e, as so many of us have, and truly I loved the games I played with it - and enjoyed the people I played with. In the moment I had no fear that I was doing something lesser, that I wasn’t reaching such great heights, because I didn’t know there were other things out there.

Ignorance is bliss, haven’t you heard?

Once I learned that other games contained better games and once I read a few of those games and learned the new philosophies and the upgraded ideals, I simply had to play them. I went from that 5e campaign to CY_borg, Dolmenwood, Worlds Without Number, Mothership, and now my newest game is Dragonbane (a neat little system, a bridge between 5e and more rules-light OSR games.) I hosted the first session of that campaign this weekend. When I looked around the table, it hit me.

My entire original group was gone.

There’s nobody in my game anymore from that original 5e game, nor the one after that. I play different games with different people, and I can’t help but wonder if the luster of a new game is partly responsible for friends who are “gone.” I hope that I will still see those friends socially, but it’ll be different.

Dragonbane is reminding me what I did enjoy about 5e - what it had that some of the more recent games didn’t. There’s a familiarity to it, a comfort level. “This feels like home.” It’s stock fantasy, there’s no innovative twist, just some rules that feel nicer to use and a formula that doesn’t rock any boats. I don’t have to break out my Knock mags and my thirty zines and dig into the blogosphere to find inspiration for this game - I can rely on well worn tropes and a system that feels like an old pair of boots that were recently discovered in the back of the closet. Shined them up a bit, and they still fit.

Will I find the same satisfaction in this game that I did in those early 5e games? Maybe. I had a lot of satisfaction in the other games, too. I suppose what really matters is at the end of the day, some new friends, and some old ones, get together in our homes and escape from the real world a bit.

I can be satisfied with that.

Ask the players to describe the movie their character would be the main character of, the hero of. We’re playing games about heroic characters, so it should be easy to imagine some story that their character is the star of. What is the story? What are they like? How do they change over the course of the movie? What is the thing that sets them apart from the rest of the cast?

If your players are not film makers (as mine are not), you might want to give them some structure to answer this prompt. A few questions, the form of the movie narrative, the name of the movie - this might make the question easier to wrap one’s head around and easier to find a satisfying answer.

Use the Hero’s Journey structure to write the plot of your character’s movie. It consists of three acts - the Departure, the Initiation, and the Return.

The Departure

The status quo, the Call to Adventure, the Refusal of the Call, the Meeting with the Mentor, Crossing the First Threshold… all steps in the first act of the story. Something happens to the hero, and they reject it - are they afraid? Are they unwilling to change? Are they unwilling to leave something behind? Whatever the reason, they are hesitant to engage with the new world they’ve walked into.

But then, they are pulled in. The mentor doesn’t have to be a person, but it is often easiest to think of them as such. The mentor shows them that the road can be walked, and more importantly, that it must be. Finally, they cross the threshold - leaving town, getting off-planet, walking through the wardrobe. Whatever it may be, the journey begins.

We don’t have all day at the table to hash these things out - I like to spend about 15-20 minutes on my pre-session prompts, so summarizing this as the departure and not diving in too deeply into each step is valuable. What caused your character to leave home? Why did they not want to, and who or what compelled them?

The Initiation

The initiation is the meat of the story. It includes a series of trials, the acquisition of new tools and powers, the crises that form the climax of the story, loss and tribulation, the elevation to new heights. This series of questions will help elucidate the initiation:

1. What happened that set you back significantly?

2. What did you gain or find, what power was given to you or learned? Magic swords, ancient spells, a new ship with alien technology.

3. What was your main obstacle or enemy? How did they serve as a contrast to your hero? What weakness of yours did they expoit, and how did you overcome them? And what treasure, at the end of that conflict, did you gain?

Three questions, but certainly the most challenging to answer. This forms the crux of your character’s movie, and the meat of what they have to overcome.

The Return

The return is the most ephemeral and least action packed of the three acts, but the one where the most moral, emotional, and intellectual parts of the story occur. The hero must journey home from the dangerous, wide world they just adventured into. After what they have been through, home might seem as foreign and hostile as their journey. There may be new lessons learned here - how to deal with trauma, how to forgive, and what to forget. Bilbo returned home to the Shire only to find that there was no real place for him there anymore.

Remember that this movie isn’t actually your character’s backstory. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be - in my opinion, the exciting things that happen to a character should happen during the campaign, not before it. So what use is all of this exercise?

The point is to understand what kinds of stories your characters might tell. The first act, the departure, might thoroughly inform the way your character acts and feels now, during the early parts of the campaign. Their interests might align with the kinds of stories you’re telling during this exercise. The conflict and the enemy of this movie we are directing could illuminate the kinds of change a person wants their character to go through - or what they are dreading confronting. And the return home will certainly illustrate the kinds of personal growth that the character still needs to go through, and point all of you in the right direction of exploiting their deficiencies over a satisfying narrative arc.

If you use this idea, please comment below about how it goes for you and your table - I will leave a comment soon with my own examples.

On top of all that though, I have still been trying to keep my creative work flowing. There hasn’t been much, to be fair, but what I am currently lacking in output I am more than making up for in input. I have been devouring more content than ever, reading more books, visiting mind blowing museums in Europe that gave me all sorts of devious ideas to throw at my players.

But most importantly, I’m a part of a few fantastic communities.

His Majesty, The Worm

This game is remarkable. It’s innovative, it’s fresh, every system within is meant to bring joy and it fully accomplishes that goal. Check it out here!

I’m a member (and volunteer administrator) for the Discord server for this game. It has been wonderful to see this community grow. For a new, niche game, it is a large, vibrant community that is always willing to help, always willing to contribute, and very collaborative.

One of the best things about Discord servers (or really, communities in general) for the TTRPG space is the amount of collaboration that tends to go on. I have heard wistful romantic retellings of the days of Google+ in the TTRPG space, and how much compelling work was done there and eventually published, and I am eager to proclaim that Discord is just as viable a place to collaborate. Members of this discord are creating new dungeons, new creatures, new character features and spells, and new items and toys to play with like a veritable Santa’s Workshop. They are also collaborating to convert other megadungeons and content from other system into His Majesty the Worm’s system specifics.

The creative output of the members here honestly brings me joy, and some other, less intuitive emotions - some kind of gratitude for being present for it, optimism for the future where these people are doing good work, even a strange sadness that there is a limited time in this world to see these things happening.

Come join us, it’s worth it.

The New School Revolution

The other community that I make the absolute most use out of is the New School Revolution Discord. Similar to the OSR, but more inclusive of different types of gaming, the New School Revolution encompasses too many types of games to be strictly defined. What is clear, however, is that it is a collection of some of the most prolific and talented creators out there, including Yochai Gal (who originated the server), Chris McDowall, the creator of the wide-spanning Bastionland and Into the Odd and it’s various Oddlikes, Joshua McCrowell of the aforementioned His Majesty the Worm, and so so many others whose works I am not yet cool enough to have consumed and been consumed by.

But apart from these giants of the hobby, every member of that Discord is eager and willing to answer question and help you create new experiences in the hobby. There are channels for all sorts of types of games (although nobody is too much a stickler about what goes where!), they have channels where cool links and blog posts are shared (an invalauble resource for me, a gold mine),

Find Many, Make Some

Go forth and find communities to participate in for this hobby. It will make you better, and you can make it better. You will, I am certain, find the joy and value in it that I have.