Adept Play
Dungeons and Dragons, as a title or with minor modifications, was first published in 1974 and is represented by at least ten distinctive, non-sequential versions by diverse authors and under several ownerships.
This play report started as a comment on Issues 1–7 but ballooned into its own post. I ran an impromptu game of “generic OSR” (whatever that means — as I have seen playing these games, a lot of different things to different people) last week. We went spelunking in the module Caverns of Thracia by…
We play hour-long sessions of a rules-light homage to D&D that uses oracular game mechanics based on the Deck of Many Things.
Playing an ongoing Pathfinder 2e Campaign and a curious situation has come up twice now: Most recently in a Negotiation, run as a “Social Encounter”, with a band of Demons that were hired to kill the Party, one of the players wanted to make an offer to help the Demons achieve their goal instead of…
I see much underlying unity across these questions, and I hope you can too. The central concept is situation in play, which certainly needs more practical clarity among us as it relates first to texts, and also to straightforward behavior. Oddly, too, it matches with the final question concerning explicit role-playing references in music, as…
The first video is long as I wanted to keep my reply to Mark in a single packet. His question was a comment in the previous Q&A post, regarding my recommendations for myth inquiries & ideas regarding popular culture. I’ve attached an outline which may make it easier to follow. I did not manage actually…
I’m ecstatic to report that the text & layout for In the Realm of the Nibelungs are finished, though publishing may take awhile: I still want to write up my introductory adventure, polish two DM flowcharts and finish a booklet of optional rules. In any case, let me look back on some design challenges: Tackling…
There is a question that people tend to avoid asking in roleplaying game discussion, in my experience, even as they spend a fair amount of time articulating answers and implicitly presenting them. This question is along the lines of “How much am I allowed to deviate from my social positionality and my lived experiences in…
Today, at the discord, I express my curiosity about why Moldvay Basic D&D catalyzed so much the attention today, instead of Mentzer’s BECMI or Holmes’s D&D. Ron recommended checking this with Sean who has the experience of the presence of Moldvay’s version. Sean reacted and triggered a conversation with contributions from James Nostak, John Wilson…
I’m using simultaneous initiative (with an action declaration phase) and one-minute combat rounds for In the Realm of the Nibelungs, both a first for me and my group. Combat mostly runs via Swords & Wizardry Continual Light, a D&D ‘retroclone’, albeit with some changes (such as simultaneous initiative). One question which has come up is…