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Still here, barely! Mostly I find I don't have the creative energy to pick up my dungeon23 notebook if I'm tired, which ends up being most weekdays. Even though the idea is that it shouldn't require a ton of energy! Anyway, continuing on with my urban Mausritter idea. The residents of this...

Well the red box rule book is double the page count, so Mentzer had more room to work with. The authors of the basic box sets were also somewhat limited by the unintuitive aspects of the base game, e.g. attack matrices etc.

You think? Admittedly, I'm not super familiar with it, but from the pdf I have I'd say the writing is fairly clear, the layout keeps topics to one or two pages (something 5e still can't manage to do), and at 60-some pages is a complete (dungeon crawling) game with a sample adventure. Granted...

In terms of the TSR era, I think any of the Basic sets over the years were well designed and marketed as products, in large part because they had a very clear target audience: 9-12 year olds, and their parents, who needed an easy to understand introduction to the game.

In terms of 'types' of fiction, I think TTRPGs most easily convincingly do what we might call "genre fiction." This extends beyond just dnd's appendix N stuff; Jason Cordova often talks about how leaning into tropes can often be successful in getting everyone at the table on the same page. To...

Good marketing is an essential part of any successful kickstarter. It's also a skill, and one a lot of game designers, writers, and artists may not have. To say that Dionne is also good at marketing is obviously not a knock on her and says nothing about the design merits of the game...

It could just be that I read enough OSR games that nothing about Shadowdark strikes me as new, but for people coming from a different perspective it's a breath of fresh air. In terms of my current game of choice: Mausritter! Based off Into the Odd, it's in my opinion the best attempt to...

I was interested in this game but didn't want to jump to any conclusions. So I downloaded the preview, read it, and offered my opinion on the mechanics. 🤷‍♂️ It seems whenever a kickstarter comes out (or for that matter any 5e book), you either have jump onboard the hype train or be a hater...

This has been helpful for playing OSE, specifically how OSE fits (race-as-)classes onto a two page spread. Actually my favorite set up are when character sheets/playbooks have all the necessary rules on them already

Do you mean for appealing to 5e players? I think the fact that you roll for talents on level up, and the fact that those talents are relatively modest stat bonuses, will be a bit of a tough sell for 5e players, based on my experience with other OSR games. This is why Worlds Without Number is...

Apologies for trying to contribute a design analysis with comparative examples for anyone who might be on the fence on backing this kickstarter. Let the hype train recommence! Will it get to one million dollars??!?? Who's getting the premium cover??!!?

Well, I've never heard anyone claim that the black hack--a rules lite, minimalist game--has a learning curve, but you learn something new every day I guess! re: being accommodating to 5e players Here's the Shadowdark Fighter class from the quickstart. Super simple, based around improvements to...

Well great! Hopefully it will accomplish that goal! From a design perspective—and as someone who has introduced 5e players to various OSR games—I don’t see why I’d use this system in particular (from what I see in the QuickStart). Aside from some terminology like “DC” and the basic idea of...

Finally got a chance to take a look at the quick start. The art is great and the presentation is clean, and I'm glad it's doing well. ...that said, it seems pretty middle of the road in terms of games within the OSR. It reminds me the most of The Black Hack (unified resolution, 4 classes...

“Hasbro sends their regards”

Though, I actually wish more media had "bad" endings. Like it annoyed me to no end that Stranger Things were unable to let any of the core characters die; it has the effect of lessening the stakes there too

My Apple II game memories are probably mostly to do with educational games, so I immediately think of Oregon Trail and Carmen San Diego. Also Word Munchers, various typing games