I'm starting a new blog over at bearblog.dev. I'm migrating away from hey.com. The founder has made some troubling remarks over on his blog on this platform and I'm not comfortable supporting this guy any longer. If you are interested in following my blog, I invite you to subscribe over there instead. You can access that blog's rss fee...

EDIT: I've learned that the Angry DM has apparently already come up with this idea and has even called it the exact same name. I'm gonna leave this up because it's not like I get any ad revenue off it or anything, and mine is very slightly different, but I'm feeling a bit red in the face, I'll say that much. TLDR: A game mechanic where...

The long and short of things: The shorter your campaign, the less investment your players will have in the story, but the more focused and experimental you can be. I've run many games (though never as many as I'd like). The length of the campaigns has run the gamut from very short one shots (3 hours being my shortest), to an ongoing 5e...

I'm running a West Marches style game. I've written about it before. Last night we had our first session in a while, and while it went well (streamlining my navigation rules seems to be paying off) we also identified some weaknesses in the format. I'm now looking to make improvements in these areas. One of my players pointed out that t...

I really like the Petrification mechanic from 5th edition D&D. A few creatures have this ability and while there are some slight variations, the gist of it goes something like this (text adapted from various 5e materials): “The affected creature must make a saving throw. On a failure the creature begins to turn to stone and is restrain...

I am running a West Marches style game. I've written about it before. It features several factions of varying size and flavour and I needed a way to represent their actions in the world between sessions without overwhelming myself with homework. Here is the system I've devised: Goals The Faction has two goals: Long Term and Short Term....

I am running a West Marches game called Falling Tides. It's set in a 17th Century analogous world; not our world, but similar in terms of technology level, fashion, culture, etc. It's using an OSR rule set that's a combination of The Black Hack, 17th Century Minimalist, and Tiny Pirates. So far I have run 3 sessions in this setting. I'...

The Scorpion King (2002) was a real mixed bag of a movie, but it was undeniably full of great action sequences. In one particularly excellent sequence, the protagonist Mathayus (played by Dwayne Johnson) must escape from the top of the villain's citadel by running pell mell through a variety of unfamiliar rooms. This encounter was desi...