Hi there! I’m Lars, a Dungeon Master for multiple campaigns for about 4 years now. My interests and inspiration has evolved all over the place during that time: From 5e to PbtA to OSR and beyond. On this blog, I’ll share my ideas about being a DM with the world, and hopefully add something useful to your personal DM toolbox!
Some stuff I write is specifically for D&D 5e, some stuff fits the OSR design philosophy, some stuff is for The Black Hack, some stuff is for Cairn, Into The Odd & Electric Bastionland, and some stuff is system agnostic.
Recent Posts
Wounds & Injuries for Cairn
The latest update for Block, Dodge, Parry includes a system for wounds & injuries. Since it also works for base Cairn, I figured I’d dedicate a blog post to it! Art: Dragon’s Breath 2 by Greg Rutkowski Adventuring is a dangerous profession. A way to reflect that is to use these rules for wounds. Wounds…
Defense & Survivability in the OSR, Cairn & Block, Dodge, Parry
A big distinction that’s often made between modern RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons 5e and OSR RPGs is combat as war vs. combat as sport. Combat as war frames combat as, well, life-or-death. It’s about surviving, not how you survive or what dirty tricks you had to pull to survive it. Combat as sport frames…
Block, Dodge, Parry 1.3: Luck, Complex Tasks & Magical Gear
Block, Dodge, Parry has received another update! Version 1.3 contains: I’ve also made a Discord channel, in case you’d like to share your own adventures with Block, Dodge, Parry: https://discord.gg/zB9PhT3chT Block, Dodge, Parry – A Levelless, Classless Expansion of Cairn by Dice Goblin Games
Rationalizing Rations – What’s On The Menu?
Adventurers must surely burn a lot of calories – but what’s actually in those rations, especially when magical Elvish lembas bread isn’t available? Image by Bert Bogaerts a.k.a. Bertdrawsstuff, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) I made a neat lil list of 35 different meals, that all answer the question “what am I…
Block, Dodge, Parry – Version 1.23
I’ve been continuously working on Block, Dodge, Parry ever since it released – and version 1.23 is out today! A short overview of all the changes: Furthermore, I’ve been working with the amazing LeCrapal on a full French translation. Once the most recent changes are translated, this version will be added as well! Block, Dodge,…
Example Characters for Block, Dodge, Parry
Forgive the relatively low-content post, but I made some example characters to demonstrate how Block, Dodge, Parry works, and So, a central tenet of Block, Dodge, Parry is that character concept, backstory and in-game abilities are basically the same thing, allowing you to easily translate ideas into actual PCs. So, let’s give that a try!…
Songs of Adventure: Using Songs To Boost The Party in Cairn & Block, Dodge, Parry
This amazing blog post by @riseupcomus was stuck in my head – much like a song, ironically – and this article hopes to build upon the ideas a bit, and make it easy to integrate into non-Tolkien settings. Also, HIS MAJESTY THE WORM is shaping up to be amazing, so go check that out. Image:…
Giddy Up – Horses for Cairn
In my previous post, I already lauded Cairn’s WIP 2e Wilderness Exploration rules. They got me thinking – how would mounts, specifically horses, interact with this system? (I’ve also been playing Red Dead Redemption 2, and Arthur’s confirmation that horses are, in fact, good boys/girls still rings in my head, so yeah). Image: Horse Riders…
If You Smell What The Party Is Cooking – Gathering & Crafting in Cairn
Image: Breath of the Wild Study 3 by Anato Finnstark I spent quite some time during the recent holidays working on a new hexcrawl setting, as a sort of ‘happy place’. Inspired by the tone of Breath of the Wild and Dragon Quest, I set out to create world of ‘adventure is exciting!’ and ‘travel…
Making Meaningful Dungeons with Cyclic Dungeon Generation
Every now and then, you run into an idea that kinda rewires your brain (in a good way!) as you read it. For me, a recent occurrence of that was when I read Cyclic Dungeon Generation by Sersa Victory, based on Joris Dormans’s 2017 roguelite Unexplored. As stated in the PDF, this blog article goes…
Celebrating The Launch: More Free Content for Block, Dodge, Parry
I’ll be honest – I had no idea if Block, Dodge, Parry would sell. Heck, I didn’t even do the project to sell, per se. To me, it was more about, “hey, I’ve been writing about RPG stuff for a while now, and some people seem to like it. It’d be really, really cool if…
It’s Done: Block, Dodge, Parry is out now!
After a considerable amount of playtesting, editing and whatnot, I’m beyond excited to announce the full release of Block, Dodge, Parry – A Levelless, Classless Expansion of Cairn! Block, Dodge, Parry – A Levelless, Classless Expansion of Cairn by Dice Goblin Games The itch.io page contains all the details, but to reiterate: It’s a 33…
Coming Soon: Block, Dodge, Parry
I’ve been hard at work on Block, Dodge, Parry; a classless, levelless fantasy adventure RPG, which combines many of the ideas I’ve written about on this blog into one coherent system. Besides bundling those ideas, it expands upon them, making for a toolkit of procedures that hopefully spark your imagination. But… what’s actually in it?…
Various Cyberpunk Musings for Into The Odd-Style Games
I’m a simple man – Netflix’s Edgerunners has rekindled my interest in the Cyberpunk aesthetic (though I’ve loved and revisited it many times already over the last decade). Here are a few byte-sized ideas I put together for running something Cyberpunky in Into The Odd, Electric Bastionland, Cairn and similar games. Image: Cyborg Yakuza self-tuning…
Intrigue & Investigation: A System for Urban Suspense
I’m in the midst of playtesting Block, Dodge, Parry, and I’m doing so with a 1-on-1 campaign with a friend. The campaign centers around a dethroned noble trying to seize back control of the land he lost, and in the most recent arc, he has arrived in a border city in order to gain some…
Locked & Loaded: More Firearms for Modern Into The Odd & Similar games
I came across Cyber by Oskar Świda recently, a really neat cyberpunk version of Cairn. Since I’ve been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and since I already made some firearms rules in the past and since I already made some new weapon tags for fantasy Into The Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn, I figured I’d combine…
Going Retro: Using Pixel Art on your Virtual Table Top
I recently experimented with using pixel art to create a lo-fi (and pretty comfy) aesthetic in Foundry VTT. Let me lay it out for you! Some more sample maps: And a dungeon example, based on a One Page Dungeon by Watabou: What I Made View post on imgur.com The above example is running in Foundry…
Block, Dodge, Parry: Careers & Skills
At the heart of Block, Dodge, Parry, the system that I’m writing, lays the Career & Skill system. The basic gist of this system is that it should be really easy to come up with a broad backstory or prompt (“A soldier who lost his favorite horse and is now a wandering minstrel, singing songs…
Modular Magic for Cairn
First off: I’m making a thing! I’m working hard on combining, tweaking, expanding, and upgrading my Cairn-related posts into a full publication. It aims to be both a toolbox you can pick-and-choose from, as well as a neat way to combine everything together to get a sort-of Advanced Cairn, if you will. I’ve dubbed this…
Mass Combat Expansion: Casualties
Image credit: Casualty of War by Camille Sule I’ve added a casualty calculator to my original worksheet. This means you can work rising casualties into your calculation! In this case, I’d define casualties as anyone unable or unwilling to fight, meaning those killed, injured, and fled. This is what the new tab looks like: Let’s…
Oh? You’re Approaching Me? Closing The Distance in Dungeons & Dragons Encounters
Most of my systems and posts are about adding interesting, meaningful choices to TTRPG procedures that tickle the players’ sense of risk and reward. This particular system was originally written for ships at sea, but can be repurposed just as well for on-foot encounters in the wilderness – or spaceships venturing into parts unknown. This…
Mass Combat: Expanding the Army Rating system from Barbarians of Lemuria
My drafts are filled with posts about mass combat systems. There are various ideas I really like (such as an infantry>cavalry>archery counter triangle, moving troops, Into the Odd warbands etc. etc.), but I can’t really get them to stick together in a way that I liked. That’s when I gave the Army Rating system from…
Nothing To See Here: City Guard Patrol Shifts for TTRPGs
Be it for a fantasy city, superhero game, or space station, these mechanics will help you flesh out ‘walking the beat’ for your party of law-keepers. Intersperse this with big, landmark cases – murder, heist, kidnappings etc.! Image: The Siege: Inside Town by Francis Goeltner The Stats Of A District First, determine the size of…
Intelligence, Influence & Might: Simple Faction Conflict in TTRPGs
I like the idea of faction play, but I find it often gets bogged down into a large number of variables and actions. I’ve tried to make a system that is trackable with simple tokens representing Assets, and allows for plenty of player intervention. Factions & Regions Determine the number of Factions at play, and…
Hostile Negotiations: A Conversational System for Into The Odd/Cairn
I’m a big fan of Emmy Allen’s Duels in OSR rules, so I made a small adaption for it to suit a game I’m running at the moment. Image: Senat by Pascal Quidault I also love OSR tendencies to just leave out any dialogue- or social stats & mechanics, leaving it to the actual players…
Lightweight Careers for OSR RPGs
Recently, I’ve been really interested in classless RPGs. I’m working on a quite extensive system that I’m currently playtesting, but in the meantime, I got a pretty lightweight take that I made in preparation for a Star Wars campaign I’m running. Image: Prepare to war by Darek Zabrocki Design Notes Careers
There Was A Firefight: Gunfighting Rules for Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn
This is an attempt to bring the risk-management decisions of my Dark Souls inspired combat to a more contemporary form of fisticuffs. Be it for Old West, modern-day, cyberpunk, or sci-fi type adventures, I hope these rules give you some bang for your buck (it helps that it’s free!) Image: Oscillator by Kevin Moran What…
Dodging, Blocking & Parrying in Practice
Image credits: Merciless by Vlad Marica I’ve started playtesting my aforementioned Dodge, Block & Parry system! I’ve tied it into the Weapon system as well, and it’s working quite good, so far! Design Notes Fight back makes combat even more lethal, by allowing for essentially a double attack (attacking in response to the enemy =>…
Old School Fisticuffs: Bar Brawls in D&D 5e and OSR RPGs
Samuel Bennett of Tales of the Lunar Lands wrote two neat blog posts about bar brawls in TTRPGs. I couldn’t agree more with “In a way, bar brawls could be considered a sort of mini-sandbox” – so here are some mechanics I personally use to spice up tavern-centered conflict! These rules are pretty generic, and…
Lightsabers, Blasters & The Force: Star Wars, But Make It Odd
To celebrate the release of Obi-Wan Kenobi, here are some equipment rules I tinkered together for exploring a galaxy far, far way with the ruleset from Cairn/Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland! Blasters Blaster Pistols Hand Blaster. D6. 100 credits. Example: DH-17. Heavy Hand Blaster. D8. 1000 credits. Example: DL-44. Blaster Rifles Crude Blaster Rifle. Bulky, D6.…
Stalwart – Superpowered Heroes for The Black Hack
Before my current focus on Cairn, I ran a lot of OSR games in The Black Hack. It is about as lightweight as a system involving the 6 classic stats can be, and is therefore ripe for the hacking. These are the homebrew rules I used to run a superhero/superpower game in The Black Hack.…
The Things We Find Along The Way – Filling The Gaps In A Hexcrawl or Pointcrawl
Here I aim to flesh out the step between “you are traveling” and “you found a dungeon” in a hex- or pointcrawl, in a way that hopefully feels natural and like actual exploration. I’ve taken some inspiration from, yes, Skyrim. It aims to add a bit of risk-reward to the process: discovering new locations might…
Dark Souls-inspired Weapons for Into the Odd/Cairn
Next up in my series on Cairn-inspired writing, weaponry! I love the quick combat of Cairn, so I don’t want to slow that down too much, nor do I want the character sheet to be filled with a load of special maneuvers. The main goals for this project, which I’ve given the working title of…
Time, Gear & Skill: A Different Approach To Skill Checks
The following was written with Cairn in mind, but would work just as well for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland and heck, D&D 5e if you’re doing a complete revamp. Performing actions involves time, gear, and skill. Generally, if you have none or one of the three, a task is impossible. If you have all…
Dodge, Block & Parry for Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn
An attempt to combine Dark Souls mechanics with minimalist OSR gameplay
Super Simple Stress/Horror Rules for D&D
Horror, dread and stress can add a lot of flavor to roleplaying. However, when nosing around, I found that a lot of mechanics (such as Mothership, Call of Cthulhu)… Take away player agency at one point or another, to represent them losing control. This is a neat idea, but a hard sell in a heroic…
I Have No Memory Of This Place: Navigating The Underdark Through Your Senses in Dungeons & Dragons
What This System Tries To Do “Oh! It’s that way.” “He’s remembered!” “No, but the air doesn’t smell so foul down here.” Gandalf & Merry Just Follow Your Nose A core pillar of this system is that the party has some idea of where they have to go, based on their senses. This can work…
We Cannot Get Out: Giving The Underdark A Mines Of Moria Feel with Noise & Alerts in Dungeons & Dragons
“Quietly now. It’s a four-day journey to the other side. Let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed.” Gandalf This is a specific implementation of my Noise & Alert system, applied to travelling through the Underdark. Part II of this post is up here: I Have No Memory Of This Place: Navigating The Underdark…
Books, The Best Weapons In The World: Simulating The Process of Reading Dusty Tomes in Dungeons & Dragons
What This System Does Implement books with benefits into your D&D campaign Make the experience of reading a book in D&D a bit more like reading a book in real life Have the relevant attributes provide relevant benefits How It Accomplishes That It makes Intelligence an important reading stat It makes progress through a book…
18 Amazing Online D&D Resources You Might Not Have Heard Of
The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons 5e means that it’s really attractive to produce content and tools for the game. This creates a self-propagating cycle of sorts; it’s the most popular because there’s so much tools and tutorials available, causing more people to get into it etc. Over the years, I’ve gathered a lot of…
Have A Little Faith: A Religious War in D&D in 9 Simple Steps
Meet Myra Myra is a kind-hearted 6th-level Human Cleric of Finrimbel, God of the Sun, with a problem. She just arrived in Khobai, the City of a Thousand Sins, and the people here don’t really worship Finrimbel. Apparently, daytime temperatures of +40 Celsius make a people unlikely to see ‘sunlight’ as a positive. Good thing…
Now I’m A Believer: Run A Religion (Or Cult) In Dungeons & Dragons (Or Other TTRPGs)
What This System Tries To Do Provide possibility for emergent storytelling through progress. Starting a real-life religion is probably pretty tricky (I never tried it), but just as Adventurers are capable in combat, I’m assuming that player characters setting out to spread the good word are also remarkably capable. I find it far more interesting…
Straight To The Moon: Adding A Stock Exchange To Your Dungeons & Dragons Economy
What This System Does Basically, we’re going to generate a table for stock prices of past and future. Players simply buy a stock for the current market price, and can sell it at some point in the future for the new market price. This system takes type of stock, volatility and general market tendency into…
Enormous Locations & Alert – The Amazing Versatility of Mothership’s Panic Mechanic
How to add meaningful gameplay decisions to big, dangerous environments.
4 Homebrew Rules To Make D&D Follow Fiction, Not Rules
I’ve been using the lockdown for, you guessed it, a lot of tabletop rpg’s. All this time has given me the opportunity to explore more outside of the boundaries of strictly D&D. As I’m about to return to D&D, I want to include mechanics that I’ve fallen in love with from systems such as Dungeon…
Right Behind You: Building A Combat Encounter Around Teleporting
Short-range teleporters can make for awesome combat encounters! Here, I use Dungeondraft to create some quick examples.
“How Were We Supposed To Know That?” – Introducing Fair Gameplay Twists in D&D
What can we learn from video games to introduce interesting gameplay twists (“gimmicks”) in a fair way?
Using Storytelling Conflicts To Create A Captivating Campaign
A central conflict inherently provides themes to structure your campaign around, and can provide motivation and background for one or more Big Bad Evil Guys within your campaign. These conflicts provide context to narrative choices made by your players, and will (hopefully) have them think about their choices and consequences until long after the session.
The Whispers: A Madness-based Patron for Warlocks
One of my players wanted something… different… for the short campaign I was running during the Corona crisis. We ended up with a rather interesting mix of abilities.
