A NEW CHALLENGE FOR EVERYONE: Hunt down the blog posts that have forever changed how you have run your games, prepped your games, done your game design, or is otherwise terribly significant or personal to you. Here are a few of mine.
7 MYTHS EVERYONE BELIEVES ABOUT DRUIDS This was the first post I'd ever read from an OSR blog. I think it was linked to in a Power Score post, and I was instantly hooked by the style and flavor. By that point, I was pretty exclusively 5e, so the intensity and gritty flavor really took me aback, and instantly opened my eyes to the wider possibilities of grittier worldbuilding.
THE APE A post from perhaps my favorite OSR blog, Basic Red RPG. Out of all the posts from this blog that have inspired me, I chose this one because it was the spark of inspiration for MARROW's advancement system. Just as I was discovering this new vista of ways to play (the OSR scene), I saw this class, which got abilities randomly each level. The idea of a table you rolled on instantly inspired me, and I opened up a google doc and began to draft the tables you now see in MARROW.
OSR CLASS PYRAMID An incredible labor of love from the Manse, a favorite of mine. 100 unique and rich-feeling classes built out of a single ability. It really helped me "understand" retro-style class design, and a lot of the stuff here also went into the MARROW tables.
CHANGES I'D LIKE TO SEE IN NEW RPGs This is a newer one, but no less significant to me. A well-reasoned set of pointers for writing and presenting new RPGs and RPG material. I'm always hunting for new ways to write up games and adventures, and while I as a consumer don't agree with all of what's presented, I appreciate the thought and scrutiny that went into this list, and it's defining how I do my stuff here on out.
SMALL TABLES I just really like this philosophy, it's always intimidating to go into a project expecting to have to write really long lists of random encounters to have everything be complete and usable, and so this sort of creative release allows you to put more effort into making a few things as good as they can possibly be. This is at a tie with the one about railway-style route mapping, that one is also lovely and you should check it out.
BONES. I've talked a lot about this game on my blog, and it was the seed from which grew MARROW. This got me into GLoGhacking, an unparalleled gift.
There are so many more, and this might become a series here (because I love spotlighting content from others in the RPG community who know how to do this whole blog thing so much better than I), but I want to turn the torch to you. What posts have changed your games and given you food for thought? Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.
Good post!
ReplyDeleteThe SMALL TABLES post from Bastionland was a revelation for me. I use that format constantly in my games now.
ReplyDelete