Insert Critical Miss/Criticism pun here

As characters progress and level up, a core process in the D&D play experience, the predefined nature of the mechanical upgrades can often be at odds with the player’s image of the adventurer they thought was their creation.

Rolling Dice and the Myth of the Perfect System

I’ve been thinking about dice rolls, how they work, what they represent, why we can’t agree on what makes a good dice mechanic. Let’s start simple, a Thief picking a lock, one of the oldest skill checks in gaming. If the Thief player rolls less than or equal to their Pick Locks percentage, they pass […]

Fighting Fantasy and Character Advancement

There are a few issues I often find with rules-light RPGs. Some have easy fixes, others are simply compromises that you have to live with if you want to minimise your mechanics. The one I’m thinking about today is character progression. Watching your character develop as they achieve their goals and survive their failures can […]

Don’t Ditch Race As Class!

I’ve recently realised that I really like Basic D&D’s odd race-as-class system. You know the one, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are treated the same as choosing to play a Fighter or a Thief, as if being another species was just another job. To put it another way, if you are happy to play a human […]

Ditch the wilderness maps!

I love maps, I really do. I wish I could cover my walls in all sorts of different maps. I could happily cover my sitting room walls in different maps of the world, my bedroom in all the fantasy maps full of endless forests, and my toilet with favourite dungeons. The thing is though, I […]

Brian’s OSR Overview: Settings

(Part 1, Part 2) I was going to write about the various Swords & Wizardry games today but then I had a better idea. Before I burn away all the goodwill my OSR introduction post earned me I want to tell you all about the best bit of the OSR. OSR products are mostly small […]