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Yeah, the game I GMed went for probably about that number of sessions. It was every other week for just over two years. We wound up adding a second group of PCs when the first group spent a good deal of time away from town. We had two PC deaths… one that took the Thrall playbook and another...

This issue you have is based on what? Some games, as has already been pointed out, don’t have “holes in the lineup” because they don’t require role specialization. They talk it out like friends. Or at the very least, like adults. What if someone shows up at your game and doesn’t want to...

I’d say play resources. Like reference sheets and the like that can be used at the table. Some games do this and it’s very helpful. Other than that… I just want to keep seeing new games.

Most of the games I’ve played over the last few years have some element of collaborative PC creation. It works so well that I don’t really expect I’ll ever run a game in the future where we don’t do that. Some games have very formalized rules or procedures for it, others are pretty loose. My...

Steal. Need a frontier town filled with NPCs? Take Deadwood and plop it into your campaign. Make Sheriff Bullock a grim dwarf and Al Swearingen a foul-mouthed orc. Reskin everything just a bit, and you can have a vibrant location filled with NPCs that you already understand. Seriously, just...

I don’t know which Mothership modules you may have played or are familiar with… but the couple that I know (the aforementioned A Pound of Flesh and Gradient Descent) aren’t really less complex. One’s a dynamic setting and the other is a mega-dungeon. Both can provide dozens of hour of play...

One man’s trash is another’s treasure. It’s all a matter of preference, really. But for me… I grew up running modules. I did plenty of homebrew stuff, but we played every module we could find. The further back you go, the smaller they were (generally speaking). They were also less complex...

As someone who has run a ton of published adventures over the years, I would certainly say that as time has passed, the idea that they’re meant to be read more than played seems more and more legit. I generally don't run published material anymore, but there are a few things I’d like to...

Absolutely. But even in a classic dungeon delve type adventure, you don’t need to go to the lengths of prep that a module does. You can just use bullet points for room descriptions… you don’t need full descriptions and separate boxed text and all that.

I think one of the effects that modules have had on the hobby is the idea that what you need to run a game is the equivalent of a written module committed to writing before play can begin.

It varies quite a bit depending on the given game we’re playing and also where we are at in play. For example, for my recent Mothership campaign, most of my prep consisted of familiarizing myself with the module A Pound of Flesh. It details a space station that was to serve as a home base of...

This year I’ve only played a little D&D. The bulk of my RPGing has been with other games. I’d say about 30 to 40 hours of D&D. I played in a short 5e campaign of about 6 sessions. And I played in a OSE game that was a little longer. That’s been it for D&D this year.

I have a weekly online game on Mondays. I was running Blades in the Dark, but recently we transitioned to another member of our group running Masks of Nyarlathotep. That’s 3 hours a week. I have another online game that takes place weekly and we rotate games fairly often, all have been...

I just don’t accept that a game is better if there is more prep. Some games benefit from more prep than others, absolutely. But no matter the game, there comes a point of diminishing returns. The word counts that have been mentioned would feel incredibly restrictive to me. Let alone that it...

Dungeon/Exploration Turns. These dictate resource management and the possibility of random encounters, key aspects of dungeon exploration. They are absolutely designed to keep play moving and help portray a dynamic environment. I would say that D&D 5e and many similar games involve handwaving...

Connecting the Hickman Revolutionaries to the Forge in the way you seem to here is, in my opinion, a significant misread of the Forge. It also very much ignores that many OSR procedures share the same goal as that of the Forge. And that’s to resist the idea of GM as storyteller.

Sure. The idea that elves who live hundreds of years and who seem to have some innate connection to magic would somehow not be able to master magic as well as short-lived humans is pretty silly. So much of the lore of D&D that’s just accepted is little more than rationalization for gamist...

I’m sure games prior to this point used it, but not any versions of D&D. Or at least, not consistently. I do recall some products that had NPCs that were clearly designed the same as PCs… but there are numerous contrary examples. Oh, I agree with that, for sure. The most GM burnout I’ve ever...

I don’t think that all GM side procedures constitute GM fiat. Sure, a GM could always ignore the expected procedures by exercising fiat… but I’m talking about when they follow the expected procedures. And I’m thinking of versions of D&D prior to 2e AD&D. So when the players decide to spend time...

The claim that parity between NPC and PC creation is somehow “old school” just seems revisionist to me. It’s a perfectly fine preference… but I don’t think it’s in any way essential to or emblematic of old school approaches to RPGs. One of the things that drove me crazy about 3e was that...