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 … Continue reading Defense & Survivability in the OSR, Cairn & Block, Dodge, Parry
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 … Continue reading Rationalizing Rations – What’s On The Menu?
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: … Continue reading Songs of Adventure: Using Songs To Boost The Party in Cairn & Block, Dodge, Parry
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 … Continue reading Giddy Up – Horses for 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 … Continue reading If You Smell What The Party Is Cooking – Gathering & Crafting in Cairn
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 … Continue reading Making Meaningful Dungeons with Cyclic Dungeon Generation
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 … Continue reading Various Cyberpunk Musings for Into The Odd-Style Games
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 … Continue reading Intrigue & Investigation: A System for Urban Suspense
📖 This post is an expansion on my previous post.Read Mass Combat: Expanding the Army Rating system from Barbarians of Lemuria for the full context! 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, … Continue reading Mass Combat Expansion: Casualties
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 … Continue reading Oh? You’re Approaching Me? Closing The Distance in Dungeons & Dragons Encounters
