Go Build a Dungeon!

A better-late-than-never wrap up of all the great posts from August's RPG Blog Carnival, plus bonus gems on the subject of dungeon building:

If you build it, they will come... Image (cc) Kanut55

Lapidary Ossuary gave us this series of insightful posts detailing dungeon building from the ground up, with the finished product as a showcase. As a reader of dungeons/adventures, the layout analysis is particularly interesting.

Campaign Mastery gives us another, equally detailed, dungeon building methodology with an emphasis on lore and history.

Codex Anathema goes all out with posts on dungeons in both Eberron and Ravnica, and guidance on building dungeons and running dungeons in your games!

Dreaming Dragonslayer provided an excellently referenced framework for dungeon building, with an example 5 room dungeon, with a well reasoned argument for keeping the number of rooms in the 5-9 range.

Dragon's Keep shows how we can apply any of this dungeon building methodology to any node-based adventure location - in this case the jungle - by looking at it through the right lens.

Swords & Cloaks also takes the dungeon outside of the dungeon, and defines rooms in this context using classic video games in part of an ongoing series on outdoor dungeon crawling.

All rounded off by shorter posts from Rising Phoenix on building dungeons from terrain pieces and from The Other Side on exploration in the Vault of the Drow.

Bonus: a classic post in this vein is Goblin Punch's Dungeon Checklist from 2016; seven timeless things that every RPG dungeon should actually have (in my opinion too)

Now go build a dungeon (and let us know how you get on) and don't forget to check out September's RPG Blog Carnival over at the Five Foot Square!

10 more gems from the blogosphere

First off, Sheep and Sorcery featured an unspeakably cool post that is not only a serviceable and colorful light OSR game but also a reference post for some excellent, flavoursome random tables it utilises. That's about as indie as indie games get. I should have told you months ago.

Prismatic Wasteland made a strong case for the application of freeform, player driven truths in mystery RPG scenarios. This is definitely something I'm going to try sometime as I find it hard to plan and run mystery scenarios myself.

Angry GM manages to write about story structure in a way that's usable for me as a GM, and it's been a revelation. Angry is sweary, opinionated, and wordy, and the other thing I like is that his advice is pretty much always good.

Library of Attnam has this random regional trouble table for shaking things up in your neighborhood - although some of it is campaign-starting stuff in its own right.

I'm in an OSR mood at the moment and really liked this short adventure over at Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings. It's for GLOG but I would definitely use it for e.g. Mork Borg...

Rats! Image (cc) TmoeGee

...and d66 Classless Kobolds has this wonderful list of crowdsourced quick settings that is definitely too good to not share!

And Against the Wicked City presents d100 reasons your wizard had to drop out of academia and go adventuring instead.

Spiceomancy reminds us of the importance of players being rat bastards, and how to foster that devious quick-witted behaviour.

And as my own thoughts turn to dungeons and megadungeons I am reading this post at Bat in the Attic about minimalising dungeons, and this one at The Yak Man Cometh about mapless (roomless!) dungeons with interest...

As always please support the blogosphere, and let me know of any more gems in the comments.

6 more brilliant blog posts from around the web

Some older, some newer. All worthy of your time.

First off, one I stumbled on and used in my Stars Without Number campaign: Coins and Scrolls has a comprehensive - and often hilarious - d500 mutations random table.

Image (cc) MassCreed

Bastionland makes an excellent point about some important key questions, and their answers, around how easily we are able to pick up and play RPGs and game settings.

Another great random table - there are never enough tables - this time Graphite Prime asks "what happened in that town?"

The Grave Robber's Guide asks "How can games teach themselves", which has started off an interesting train of thought in my mind...

I stumbled upon an interesting experiment in reusable dungeons over at Lapidary Ossuary which looks at a problem I am mulling but from the other side.

Papers & Pencils has a whopping SIX d100 dungeon-creation tables up - the rest are linked from this one.

Please support the blogosphere and, of course check out this month's RPG Blog Carnival which is hosted right here!

Six blog posts I should have told you about last year...

Some stuff you may have missed from the blogosphere - now I'm off to find out what I may have missed since last year!

Image (cc) Kevin Dooley

I've been pointed to some interesting starting material for OSR games at Paul's Gameblog - having started D&D at 4e and disliked 3e I never experienced "the old school" and wouldn't know where to start.  There is a lot of OSR sensibility that appeals to me...

For those wanting to add some flavour to NPCs, DIY and Dragons has this fantastic link list for backgrounds and occupations.

Thinking about both Cthulhu and Blades in the Dark, and now just in time for Hallowe'en, I was happy to stumble upon this ghostly generator at Archons March On.

Against the Wicked City imagined the Warhammer universe in the context of classic English literature - and it's absolutely beautiful!

More OSR goodness over at Slugs and Silver - a collection of all sorts of great random tables (and you know I love random generators)

I have to include this plug and play dungeon room from Sheep and Sorcery just because it's such a good idea, and well executed too.

Please support the blogosphere and let me know any great finds of your own in the comments.

9 Blog Posts I've Enjoyed Reading in June

Image (cc) Rachel Swallows

Here's a brief rundown of some of the gems I've found in the RPG blogosphere since the last digest, I'm going to try to do this every month...

Sheep and Sorcery breaks down what I always felt about how people build characters in D&D/d20 games vs other games. It's interesting reading as a player and a DM.

DIY and Dragons makes a very valid point about hallways and how to describe them, and provides a link to this very interesting post on how (not) to describe dungeons; we've all been faced with arbitrary left-or-right decisions...

I have enjoyed the idea of "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" over at The Other Side, and the few of the featured blogs too, you should check it out.

Rolls, Rules and Roles provides thought provoking insight into "Post-OSR" gaming and the Interactionist mindset - which I never realised I belonged to until it was pointed out here.

I stumbled upon this (admittedly OLD) post on Coins and Scrolls about an OSR Pirate game - I've always wanted to play a Pirate game - and from there to the fascinating concept of the "Counter-colonial Heistcrawl"...

There's a very interesting article on Legacy of the Bieth on a Leftist OSR and PCs investing their spoils of adventure in the community - It appeals to me as a way to root characters in the world and have them drive and see change.

Meandering Banter meanders into player death and the brilliant idea of letting the rest of the party sit in judgement of where the character ends up in the afterlife.

Unlawful Games has a fantastic d100 Bottled Things table which frankly just about covers everything one could imagine!

And of course the Blog Carnival is focusing on Faerie/Fey themed content this month; head over to Pitfalls and Pixies for the prompts and links.

Please support the blogosphere and let me know any great finds of your own in the comments.

Rollin' around the 'sphere

Image (cc) Igor Esaulov

Having been away a long time I wasn't sure what was left of the blogosphere but it's great to see all these marvellous things already:

Library of Attnam has a handy list of d101 Sci-Fi gadgets, for when the players need to find something interesting out there...

Someone recommend Trilemma Adventures for one sheet (well, two page) dungeons and I'm glad they did.  The site has a Kickstarter for an adventure compendium which looks well worth backing and closes at the end of May.

I stumbled across d4 Caltrops' ongoing list of interesting forest hexes which is well worth checking out if you're a hexcrawler - or just looking for things to fill in the blanks!

I was intrigued by Roleplaying Tips' d6 ways to spice up next session as it made me think I must be doing something right; this sounds like business as usual at my group's table and if it's not the DM doing it to the players the players are doing it to themselves!

Charisma over at Stuffer Shack makes a very good point about ruling with players in conflicts - and it's great to see one of my old favourite blogs still running.

It's been great to see that the RPG Blog Carnival is still going strong too.  Drop by Roll4 and see what's going on before it moves on next month.

It's clear I need to update my blogrolls but I'm looking forward to exploring and finding new favourites and hidden gems, recommendations in the comments would be very much appreciated!

What's been a'happening in the Polyhedral Tower...

It's been a while - insanely busy at work, I'm afraid - but although I've been too busy to post, I've not been too busy to game!  See photographic evidence below:

Our group's been working on our own near-future / SF skirmish rules, although some of the factions are expanding way beyond "skirmish" size!  Pretty cool-ly, the rules still hold for larger forces too... hopefully we'll post a beta soonish ... if anyone's interested in playing.

Giving Back Sunday #1

I have invented the blogback.  It's like a pingback or trackback, but more personal.  Here's the idea:  on a Sunday, every month (or once in a while), I'll go through my Analytics data and check out all the blogs that have sent us traffic.  I'll briefly link to something I found interesting or noteworthy, thus returning some traffic.  Networks don't count, they already get a feed and a badge!

Without further ado - Blogbacks for the last rolling month:

• Colonel Shofer has been sharing amazing amounts of great miniatures lately, including a - sadly photoshopped - Ork DreadKnight.  Waaaaagh indeed.
• Super Galactic Dreadnought continues to pump out more on space combat games than I could ever hope to get around to - and as such, should be saluted.
• The Savage Afterworld gets bonus points for a Haz-Mat suited Legoman and a post-apocalyptic take on the "hot elf chicks" meme, on top of the usual Thundarr-related goodness.
• In keeping with my own thoughts on RPG "adventure path" design - hinted at here - Errant RPG has very interesting discussions of the weaknesses inherent in modules, and seeds of a solution for no-prep GMing.
• http://tomsche69.blogspot.com has some very nice con pics, featuring painted models on some very nice terrain - loving the hexagonal modular stuff - which is refreshing :P  If only all battle reports had pics like this...
• diceRolla has me (pleasingly?) filed under "Itchy" - as opposed to Scratchy or Poochie - and would like some input on NEW GAMES as well as having some beautiful LandRaider pics.  Don't we all love finding new games..?
• Mad Brew Labs has been madly brewing an online Pathfinder character generator - see, it's good for me to get out there and see what's going on too! - which will be seeing quite a lot of use in the near future.  [And bonus points for making Tourq weep (again) because his group resists PFRPG... time to convert them, my friend!]
• On the subject of which: Stuffer Shack continues to go from strength to strength, accumulating staff like no-one's business and featuring helpfully topical (to me) articles on improvising and designing fantasy cities.  This is what happens when you open up guest blogging early!
• ...and finally, StalingradBob is still yet to tell us what's going on in the RuneQuest / SpyCraft game that will be run when Nathan's finished his spell as Pathfinder DM.  Hi Dave!

Make sure you jump on the blogback bandwagon join the craze sweeping the blogsphere and blogback - and post a comment telling us about it.

Thanks all, over and out.