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GM: You see a short hallway [presents the situation] P: I search for traps [describes their action] GM: ok, make a perception check [call for ability check]

I think you can run 5e in a way that centers rulings over rules; 5e definitely took inspiration from the OSR on that front. I just doubt that rulings over rules play (for example, largely eschewing ability/skill checks) is the norm in 5e play culture. It's not part of what makes 5e "5e." In...

I guess whether it's fun or not is down to personal taste. I'd imagine a good chunk of 5e players might not find that style fun, and would prefer to disarm the trap by making a dex check, which the 2014 DMG clearly indicates is the way it is supposed to be done per the rules (p. 121) But...

It's hard to generalize about what 5e gameplay looks like across the whole hobby, to be sure. Though I don't know if it's such an exaggeration, given that 5e rules do offer these kind of mechanical solutions to particular kinds of problems that don't really exist in the OSR, namely through...

Fwiw, I don't thinking "rulings over rules," a phrase taken from the OSR, actually applies to most 5e gameplay as it has evolved over the years. A lot of 5e gameplay is all about parsing the rules to resolve a situation, particularly in combat, but also out of combat when it comes to task...

It's not mechanics, it's play culture, heavily influenced by Critical Roll, Dimension 20, and general social media zeitgeist

Actually, the 2014 5e DMG is a good example of what might be ok rules buried by terrible layout. It looks like someone just copy-and-pasted the whole text into indesign and rushed it off to the printers without checking if it actually looked ok A lot of people hate Mork Borg's layout and...

One of the things that makes running UVG tricky for me is Luka Rejec's interesting idea of "anti-cannon worldbuilding." He describes his setting as more like setting-generators: On the one hand, I think this is fantastic, as it really pushes out the openness of a ttrpg world. Now the...

There's a good generator here https://usa.soulmuppet-store.co.uk/pages/stygian-generator?seed=50346&depth=0 (used to be on the technical grimoire site but I guess they moved it)

Perhaps an odd choice, but Winter's Daughter is fantastic at environmental storytelling

Give me 2e Planescape tieflings over 5e tieflings any day

More OSR adventures: https://icastlight.blogspot.com/2024/12/you-can-keep-your-borderlands-adventure.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I love this book and Luka Rejec's general style. And yet, every time I take it out, I just have no idea how I would run it.

For some people, or for some campaigns, maybe. But a lot of people take world building more serious than that, or at least sometimes do, and would like a campaign world with characters that feel more than one dimensional "good" or "evil." Even Planescape, which relies upon alignment, is all...

You’re not kidding about Kuntz twitter feed. It’s very toxic

I'd definitely call the Stygian Library an adventure. It's a dungeon crawl, just that the procedure for generating the dungeon happens on the fly. Works great for a one shot

Run: Reach of the Roach God Mausritter - The Estate Necrotic Gnome Adventures Vaesen adventures Crush Depth Apparition Play in Ultraviolet Grasslands Either The Dracula Dossier

Owlbear Rodeo. Free, simple, easy.

If orcs etc in one's setting are demon-spawn monsters with no will or subjectivity, then posing them as inherently evil is consistent worldbuilding. However, as soon as your orcs (or goblins, kobolds, etc) have children, families, cultures, society, free will, and the like, questions about...