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There's the second and third parts of the problem though... A) Can you have a functional system that heavily mechanically supports EVERYTHING. I don't think you can, not if you expect to actually prepare and play games. Complexity takes play time, it takes prep time and it takes both player...

I'm with you so far, but... I think here you're placing the typical fantasy genre dressings in the front rather then the underlaying mechanics that make classic Dungeon Crawls work. Nonsensical "Funhouse" or "Mythic Underworld" style dungeons are one way to design for dungeon crawls - but so...

Having been writing about, playing and writing old school dungeons for a decade plus now my take is that we use the word "Dungeon" too flippantly in RPGs. It's often used as very specific or very general descriptor: a dark maze of stone corridors or any location the players enter. I think it's...

Much of the foundational OSR stuff is in blogs - here's a good list: https://chiquitafajita.blogspot.com/p/keystone-readings.html Questing Beasts List of Posts (QB is a bigger name Post OSR Youtube channel). https://questingblog.com/posts/ and blogs: https://questingblog.com/blogs/ Another...

Here's the thing though... OSR play and B/X play (Not BECMI - because play style is the major difference) is a style focused on exploration. Combat, intrigue, and puzzle solving are all part of it, but in general it's about what I like to phrase as "The procedural navigation of a fantastical...

The short answer is that it's very much a BECMI adventure - meaning it can be summed up with the reoccurring BECMI design mantra "The monsters attack until killed" ... more specifically the advice isn't terrible, nor is some of the keying, but what it teaches a new referee strikes me as some...

I can't fault that - but I don't think most of it today really touches on "OSR", which is fine in that we're in a Post-OSR period and the sort of ultralight/classic system with 5E sensibilities is one of the dominant Post-OSR scenes. Sort of the equivalent of 1980's Pop-Punk vs. 1970's Punk...

I mean ... I think we can find worse? Can we? Undermountain? DL2 - Dragon's of Story Arc? Railroad of the Slavelords? B11 - Welcome to the World's Smallest Orc Hole?

One example would be that posting links to one's blog is basically forbidden as self promotion for example ... this is absurd given that the OSR was for most of its formative period a blog driven scene. Then of course if someone else actually links your blog or product Reddit (and identifies...

Hommlet always feels to me like Gygax being his most excessive and actuarial. Keying the town like it's a dungeon rather then making its social connection clearly structured, and then the dungeon is a bit much at times - Those 6 concealed 2 HD frogs in the moat for starters. It's not bad for...

As James Brown once said "GODDOG!" The idea of "science" and "race" in the same room as each other makes me a pretty queasy. Because history. Now kindred, folk, lineage, culture etc - it's all equally fine... But ... the core assumption of fantasy "races" is going to be near impossible to...

So "His Majesty the Worm" just came out, and I haven't read it yet, but Playful Void dropped this hope review and she thinks it's pretty cool. https://playfulvoid.game.blog/2024/07/18/i-read-his-majesty-the-worm/ I think it sounds interesting and will put some of my absurd amounts of DTRPG...

Seems fine as far as it goes. In general I dislike flat bonus weapons, they seem like an artifact of a war game. Likewise the "baseline" abilities of all magic swords (glow like a torch and such) make them far more boring then I think they need to be. When all magic swords are the same, with...

The Old School Baroque designation is Marica's, I don't necessarily buy it fully, even though I count many of these designers friends and have been involved in a lot of the discussion of "Proceduralism". I see some similarity in their work, but I'm not sure it's fully a unified design trend...

I find Errant quite interesting, and Cairn is very well supported by its community. The Cairn 2nd edition certainly seems to fit into this category that Marcia designated. Electrum Archive is also fun, but I'd call it a setting more then a game (though it has one attached). In general these...

I think J Mal of Grognardia was doing so for a while? There's some post son it over there. Personally I'm indeifferent to Mork Borg. Pros: Grear aesthetic, strong supportive community, for getting started creating things with an OSR style system. Cons: No real exploration mechanics...

Yes - that was a point I made within the post. I may not have been clear enough - I write boilerplate for a living, so I love the hidden gist. See: As to your general point: I trust my own gaming community, but if the past 10 years have taught me anything it's that people are awful, hiding...

I think slavery in RPGs, especially older style D&D is a tricky subject because while the text may make it clear that the slavers are evil and bad, the open nature of play and the fact that human (or humanish) chattel have value in a game where success is often judged by how much value the...

It looks to me like NY's "new-new" anti-SLAPP is still getting tested right now... though the Trump v. Trump case from 2023 suggests that the courts are ready to use it fairly effectively. The plaintiff here and/or his attorney may not have realized that NY Anti-SLAPP finally had teeth, because...

So this is one reason people have criticized B2 - it can be played as a monster zoo of endless fights. It becomes more interesting if the players don't do that and treat it as a chance to enter into schemes and negotiations. The best way to do this is actually make the monsters a bit friendlier...