I tend to write series on the blog so to make it easier for new readers here is a list of the series I’ve published. I’ll provide you with a bit of context about each series so it will make it easier for you to choose which ones you would like to check out.
Alternative Book Covers
Occasionally I like to make alternative book covers for role-playing books that capture my imagination. They’re usually something that gets me excited to explore the book more than the original covers. I hope you like them as well.
House Rules
These are some of the home rules I’ve been using for my games. I generally run Dungeons & Dragons, typically 3e through the current edition. I’ll mark which version it’s for in the entry but you’re more than welcome to use these if they would be helpful.
- A Variant Combat Mechanic.
- Dealing with Panicked Characters
- Determining Crowd Size
- Breaking Up Crowds in RPGs
- d8 Street Pamphlets
- An Alternative Method for Skill Checks in 5e D&D
- d100 City Names
- Alternative Ability Score Generation Methods
- Using Bennies in D&D
Dyvers
The great love of my role-playing life: Dyvers. A city that is detailed just enough to wet your appetite and to make it truly your own. I’ve been writing about Dyvers across two blogs and the better part of a decade. I’m still writing about it and I still love it.
Dyvers Propaganda Posters
Like the Greyhawk Propaganda Posters that you’ll find later down this list these are designed to evoke the sort of city I want to explore. It’s a bit tongue in cheek, with a lot of attitude cast at the City of Greyhawk itself, but always with an eye towards being funny.
- Dyvers: Go to Jail in Style with the Watch
- Dyvers, Telling Greyhawk to Fuck Off Before it Was Cool
- Tell Greyhawk to Fuck Around and Find Out
- Dyvers, Maybe You Should Start a World War
- Dyvers: We Make Money
- We Don’t Fear Strong Women, We Promote Them!
- We Will Not Fall
- Dyvers: Get High, Commit Crimes, and Pray Iuz Doesn’t Come.
- Dyvers: A Land of Refugees
- Come Take It
- Let’s Get Fucked Up on Some Crazy Wizard Shit.
- The Alliance is Everywhere
Greyhawk Lore
These articles are explorations of the lore of the Greyhawk setting. Sometimes you’ll find an exploration of a character’s development. Other times you’ll find me trying to understand the migration patterns of various civilizations. No matter what, though, the articles in this series focus on the lore of the world.
- Where Were the Suel and Baklunish Empires Located?
- The Migration Routes of the Suel and Baklunish Empires
- The Curious Evolution of Sir Kargoth, Greyhawk’s First Death Knight
The Greyhawk Wars
One of the big events in the world of Greyhawk that I’ve spent years trying to wrap my head about is the Greyhawk Wars. It’s this massive, overly complex world war that reshaped the setting and attempted to establish a narrative for the world for the first time. This series is my attempt at understanding what happened, and how it changed everything that came after.
- An Incomplete Chronology of the Greyhawk Wars
- Organizing My Thoughts on the Greyhawk Wars
- Let’s Read the City of Greyhawk Boxed Set (LRCGB): Introduction
- LRCGB: Demographics
- LRCGB: Climate
- LRCGB: It’s All About the Trade
- LRCGB: It’s All About the Trade, Part 2: Factories
- LRCGB: When You Talk about Money You’re Talking about Power
- LRCGB: Guilds and Unions
Greyhawk Reconsidered
These articles are all related to the World of Greyhawk. Some of them will be baseline articles to help establish what I’m discussing with the world and to help me build up my understanding of the world. In others I will be examining a topic and then attempting to ground it better in the sort of world I would like to explore. You can expect it to be a bit more pulp with mixed technology levels, strange magics, and all the stuff I love.
I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
- Where to Start with the World of Greyhawk
- Make Greyhawk in Your Own Image, Gary Said So.
- The World Ended, and Then We Got On with Our Lives.
- The Baklunish and Suloise Empires, Reconsidered.
- The Prelacy of Almor Reconsidered
- Welcome to Greyhawk, Where You’re Always Welcome to Play
- So Where to Start with the World of Greyhawk?
- Let’s Go Exploring – If We Can Ever Find Somewhere Unexplored
- The New Greyhawk of the 1990s
- The Gritty, Grimy, Self-Serving Greyhawk of the Early 90s
Greyhawk Propaganda Posters
One of my favorite things to do in my free time is to make up these silly Greyhawk posters that help me think about the world as I would like to explore it. They’re a bit like me: mostly funny, sometimes a bit over the top, and sometimes a bit confrontational.
I hope you like them as much as I liked making them!
Series I:
- Where We Were Strange Before It Was Cool
- Where Our Animals have Rangers as Companions
- Where Bards Still Inspire Imaginations
- Where Even Our Bards will Kill You
- Bards, Bears, and the Greatest Concert Ever Played
- Fuck Yeah We Got Space Ships!
- Our Clerics will Kill You to Save Your Soul
- Where Every Dapper Giant Longs to Be
- Where We Play Because Gary Sent Us
- Setting the Standard for Gaming Since 1972
- Dust off the Daddy of them All
- A Land so Deadly that They Give You a Knife and a Gun When You Buy This Book
- Our Rangers Set Camp Wherever They Damned Well Please
- Not Your Typical, Mainstream, Corporate Setting
- Where Our Monks Will Punch Your European, Culturally Appropriate, Setting in the Face!
- Murq Must Die!
- Where Our Orcs Still Have Pig Faces and Dress How they Want
- Where Our Women Will Kill You, Look Good Doing It, and Talk About Your Family After
- Stop Objectifying Our Prince of the Apocalypse
- Where Rangers are Still Cool
- You Damned Right We Had Robots First! Suck it RIFTS!
- Our Shamans Were High When We Got Here
- Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You About Tasha
- The Sons of Kyuss Await You at Wormhall
- Where a Succubus is more than Just a Pretty Face
- Where One Woman’s Laugh Would Haunt the Dreams of Millions
- A Land Filled with Women Who Don’t Give a Fuck About Your Woman’s Work
- Where We Noticed Tasha’s Laughter First
- Where Our Hawks are the Color God Intended: Grey
- In Boccob Can We Trust Because Our Magic Never Fails Us
Series II:
- Where Tasha Still Remembers Where She Came From
- Let’s Kill Rary the Traitor
- You Didn’t Really Think She Told You Everything Did You?
- No Matter How You Dress Her Up, She’s Still Greyhawk
- Even Our Pets have Familiars
- Greyhawk Wars: No One Sits This One Out
- A Wizard’s Only Regret
- Let’s Get Drunk and Never Find Our Way Home
- She Said it was to Keep Out the Tourists. She Lied
- The Greyhawk Wars
- In Vatun We Trust
- No One Makes it Out the Same
- How Did I Get These Medals?
- Always Look to the Future, But Never Forget the Past
- Bigby Made Spells So He Wouldn’t Touch You
- Enjoy the High Life
- Greyhawk and the Legion of Black Death
Magic and Technology
Over the years I’ve spent several posts (over on Dyvers and now here) discussing the use of more modern technology in fantasy games and as it keeps coming up I’ve decided to organize them all here. This will only feature Dragons Never Forget content.
The Gygax ’75 Challenge
This series follows out the path that Gary laid out for readers of the fanzine EUROPA in the spring of 1975. It’s streamlined compared to some of his later methods. So I thought it would be fun to actually make a campaign the way that he told us to in the early days – before he really formalized his thinking on the subject. If you’d like to join along you’re more than welcome, just send me a link and I’ll add you!
- Introduction
- The Setting of the Campaign
- The Map Around the Dungeon
- How to Build the Gygax 75 Dungeon
- The Dungeon Level 1
- The Dungeon Level 2
- The Dungeon Level 3
- The Local Town and All the Trouble
- The World Plan
- Conclusion & Links to Other Challengers!
Sights and Sounds
A series of posts that feature tables to help with building a deeper sense of your underground dungeons. The idea of these tables is to create new opportunities for your players to help propel the story forward.
Crowd Control
A series of posts working on how to handled panicked characters and crowds in D&D and RPGs in general. The rules are system neutral and have been used by me for years to make my life easier. I include downloadable copies of each of the sheets I have created which you are free to download.
Dealing with Panicked Characters
Determining Crowd Size
Breaking Up Crowds in RPGs
Nobody Makes it Out Alive
An actual play about the World’s Largest Dungeon and a Game Master no one liked who thought he was far more dangerous than any of us. It was a fun game, but contentious like few I’ve ever played in before or since.
- Picking a Fight
- A Meeting of Minds
- Words of Wisdom and Hits of Dissension
- Orcs and Traps, Oh My!
- Death on the Floor and Attacked from Above
- The Trouble with Rats
- Smoking with Your Girlfriend
- Forget the Door, What’s Behind that Wall?
- Empty Rooms and Whispered Betrayals
- Say it Ain’t So
Dungeons, and Walmart, and LJN?
A look at the toy line LJN created for TSR in 1983 and 1984, and the world that those toys were supposed to inhabit both as toys and in official TSR, INC products.
- Dungeons, and Walmart, and LJN? Part 1, Series 1
- Dungeons, and Walmart, and LJN? Part 2, Series 2
- Dungeons, and Walmart, and LJN? Part 3, The Shady Dragon Inn
Learning to Play AD&D 2e
Arguably the biggest project I’ve ever attempted on either Dyvers or Dragons Never Forget. I’m attempting to learn how to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition. If you’ve always wanted to learn, then you’re welcome to come along with me for the ride. If you already know how to play, then please come keep me on the right track!
Project Introduction
Welcome to the Game! (PH pgs 1 -17)
Player Character Ability Scores (PH pgs 18 – 25)
- What does Maximum Strength in AD&D 2e Really Mean?
- Why did D&D 3e Ditch Exceptional Strength?
- Opening Doors in AD&D 2e was a Gamble
- Ability Score Restrictions in AD&D 2e
- System Shock in AD&D 2e
Player Character Races (PH pgs 26 – 33)
Player Character Classes (PH pgs 34 – 64)
- Class Restrictions and Level Limits in AD&D 2e
- The Impact of AD&D 2e Classes on D&D 5e
- Learning to Play the Wizard, Part 1: The Basics
- Learning to Play the Wizard, Part 2: Specialist Wizards
Chapter 6: Money and Equipment (pgs 88 – 105)
Chapter 7 Magic (pg 107 – 115), Part 1
Chapter 7 Magic (pg 107 – 115), Part 2
Chapter 8 Experience (pg 116 – 117)
Dragons Never Forget 