Blog Posts: Game Systems & Rules

Behold the gloriously brutal critical hit table from Arduin Grimoire! Prostrate yourself before its greatness.

I had almost forgotten about Arduin until I stumbled on the delightfully brutal crit table. This is from 1977 for those of you who don't know Arduin, which is its own great piece of gaming history from the David A. Hargrave.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is in my fat geeky hands! Added to the collection.

Pre-ordered from Labyrinth Games & Puzzles here in DC, best Friendly Local Game Store.

And that's not a stock photo, those are my books! I bought that original 1E DMG in 1980 at a hobby shop in Princeton New Jersey.

At the end of the day, covered in the dust of a few tombs, any adventurer worth their salt makes their way to the tavern.

A place to kick back, brag about the day's victories, mourn the losses, and enjoy a good pint.

This is a short piece demonstrating the mundane magic of a fantasy world. In this case a temple in a major city, and the kind of things considered impressive but expected in a world of dragons, gods, and magic.

Wolves, bears, garden-looting rabbits: real problems for medieval villagers. They also had bandits, plagues, and feudal wars. Add in some griffons, goblins, ghosts, dire wolves, and a few heartless fairies and you wonder how normal people get through a single day in a fantasy world.

How do things work in a world with magic? In games we tend to talk about monsters in the wild, in tombs, in dungeons. What about the villages? These tiny outposts of civilization have to have some way of surviving.

These are some thoughts on how it all can work, making better sense for a world while adding layers of story, and even a few adventure hooks.

Fat Dragon started with my first stab at a new system for sorcery and spellcasting and then expanded back to the main rules from there.

To be clear, these things kind of happen. And it will never be for sale, these are in-house rules.

Someone was asking about the old issues of Tempest Newzine that Hubris Games put out back in 99-01(ish), thought I'd post the links here if anyone else is interested:

Issue 1 | Issue 2 | Issue 3 | Issue 4 

As we rebuilt Telrhin a few years back, the impulse was a full embrace of nostalgia. The whole panache of beloved geek fantasy from our gaming years. We're living in the Old School Renaissance after all.

But there comes a time to de-elf the world. We may have re-invented everything top to bottom in Telrhin Mark IV, but the old names were still there, ripe with stereotypes and the stolen ideas of others before us. The backstory to the "older" races was re-imagined, history re-thought, origin myths re-invented.

Since last post many things have developed. The new HQ for Telrhin has moved cities for one.
 

RULES NEWS:

Playtesting the new spellcasting rules. It's coming along nicely. Magic as a 'gift' (both for mages but also 'true faith' for divine powers). This gift is class-independent, so the class of mage or priest is a form of specialist.

Die pool for casting, rules for 'subversion' and control tests, 'stealing vis' and other fun stuff. 
 

WORLD NEWS:

At long last I've finished the new Field Guide to the Lowlands, a player's guide to the main campaign region of the world. The old Field Guides, written over the years, had covered the whole world. And covered it poorly. So as I got about developing the re-imagined 'mark iv' I thought I'd keep it focused on one area. This also lets me keep a steady perspective and point-of-view based on the culture of the Lowlands.

Thought I'd tinker with rules again.  Not ambitious, mind you -- our in-house rules, affectionately called 'stabmaster', aren't meant to re-invent the wheel.  A happy blend of old-school nostalgia and story-focused simplicity. 

v7 was a cobbled re-imagining of the old broken house rules, band-aided and patched more than anything.  It did manage to simplify a little, which was a good start.  But it's time to re-work it all into something more congruous.  Well, as congruous as an AD&D inspired set of house rules can be.