Testing a House Rule for D&D from Almost 30 Years Ago

Here’s why: I was trying to fix a problem with a plugin on this site and there seems to be a cache I can’t figure out, which stops me from doing what I want to do. So, just to get out of that frustrated mindset I decided to do some other light coding instead. For some reason, I had also been thinking about this rule we had in our D&D games back in early 90s, so why not combine these two?

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The Past in RPGs

Here’s a tale from Finland’s past. It’s probably not wholly true, but who cares. (There’s probably some truth to it, but due to Christian propaganda and lack of historical documents, it’s all kind of on a shaky ground. I mean, in my childhood, this all was said to have happened in 1155, but now we are not even sure about that.) There’s probably also several versions of this, but this is how I’ve heard it.

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Creativity and Sources of Inspiration in RPGs (Blades in the Dark)

There’s a MtG-related Discord server, which happens to also have a channel for tabletop RPGs. It isn’t very active, but someone noted that Blades in the Dark was available in a bundle of some sort, so that sparked a little bit of discussion, as I claimed that because of how the game approaches the role of players, it’s actually easier to run than D&D, because there is not a lot of planning needed. Someone disagreed, so, as Ryan Hollinger would say, let’s talk about it. (Have I already used this somewhere? Not sure.)

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GMing Mistakes 17 – Teaching Your Players to be Murder-Hobos

Ever notice how players don’t trust anyone and just kill everyone over anything and with any excuse? Well, it might be your fault.

Now, I would like to note that this might not be only you. If players have learned from through previous games and GMs that violence is often the answer, perhaps the only answer (I’ve played under GMs, who have actually forced combat encounters, when players were actively trying to find other solutions), these players will have learned certain modes of operation, and unlearning them might be difficult. Continue reading

Old School World: Our First Session of The Black Hack

It had been some time since I’d last got to be a GM. After resolving a few challenging IRL random encounters, I was ready to step into the ring again and return to gamemastering withThe Black Hack, that made such a great impression on me upon reading it. My guild brother Harri had kindly printed out and bound a copy for me.

I felt the game would lend itself well to a First Session in the vein of Apocalypse World and its ilk. All the four character classes have a small table for some colorful items, and the players create a single, one-or-so sentence Background for their character which lets them participate in the worldbuilding, as well. My idea was to let the players make their characters and ask some more or less provocative questions from them, and use those as my main springboard for the world.

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Visiting the Beyond

In our current season of Eldritch Sigils the investigators finally made a premeditated choice to breach the Veil and step to another dimension. We have been playing this campaign since 2011 (or 2010?) and this was the first time the players weren’t forced to do it. And that got me thinking about different dimensions and how to present them.

I have discussed travelling through time in an earlier post from 2015 and while time is a dimension itself and many of those same ideas could have been used I wanted something different.

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