Worldbuilding in Five Glasses

Worldbuilding Beverages: Beer

This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. This is part one of my new "Worldbuilding Beverages" series. Click here to see the whole series! One of the

First Year Reflections

New Years Resolutions

If you've missed the past few weeks, for the month of December, I'm reflecting on my first year in the TTRPG industry. Today's focus is the upcoming new year, and what I hope to accomplish in my second year. Goal #1: Bigger Products My

First Year Reflections

Articles of 2024

If you've missed the past few weeks, for the month of December, I'm reflecting on my first year in the TTRPG industry. Today's focus is on the articles that I wrote this year. I'll pull out some favorite highlights from the blog,

First Year Reflections

Products that I Wrote in 2024

If you've missed the past few weeks, for the month of December, I'm reflecting on my first year in the TTRPG industry. Today's focus is on products I wrote, and how I feel that I grew over the course of the year; next week,

First Year Reflections

Article Stubs of 2024

The December 2024, end of my first year in the TTRPG industry reflections series continues! A lot of research goes into a lot of my articles, particularly the history ones, which means sometimes a topic gets completely abandoned after I've begun researching it. So, without further ado, here&

First Year Reflections

A Year in the TTRPG Industry

It is December, and it feels like time has completely flown by. Most of you probably know that my day job is being a teacher, and something that has always been stressed in my teaching career is the importance of reflection. Take a moment – what went well? Where is there

Review

Review: Dread by The Impossible Dream

As I mentioned in my October roundup, in late October, I ran my first (ish) game of Dread. Dread is an award-winning, best-selling RPG by The Impossible Dream. Unlike a lot of RPGs, this is NOT one that you can play online, so you do need an in-person group. If

Interview

Interview: "Tian Xia and Adapting Myth" with Eren Ahn

I enjoyed my interview back in September so much that I decided to do another interview! This time, I had a call with Eren Ahn, a college friend and a member of the team that made Pathfinder: Lost Omens: Tian Xia (both the world guide and character guide), the 2024

GM Resources

Making Better House Maps for D&D

A shorter post this week, as a real-life wave of weddings to attend and other commitments have given me way less writing time over the past month. I stumbled upon the image below while exploring the previews about the new "Bastion" system in the 2024 Dungeon Master'

GM Resources

Lessons in Building Factions from Frostpunk 2

Since its release in September, I have been playing a lot of Frostpunk 2, a post-apocalyptic survival city-builder video game... so excuse me while this blog briefly becomes a video game blog. And while Frostpunk is an entirely different genre than most TTRPGs, except maybe The Quiet Year, it still

Review

Review: Thousand Year Old Vampire

October 2024 Series – check out the rest of the series! We've been focusing this month on vampires and using vampires in TTRPGs. I've also shared at other times how much I enjoy solo RPG journalling games (see my reviews for Classified! and Quill). This week, we&

Supplements

Now Live: The Vampire for Vaesen

October 2024 Series – check out the rest of the series! A shorter post this week, as I encourage you all to check out my newest product release instead. This product is, in keeping with the month's theme, a Vampire creature--but not for D&D. The Vampire for

Design with Me

Vampire Thrall Player Species: Design With Me

October 2024 Series – check out the rest of the series! This month is all about vampires. This series started last week with a breakdown of the history of the vampire myth, from its Eastern European origins to some of the modern permutations of that story.  This article is a “Design

History

Vampires: History & Myth

October 2024 Series – check out the rest of the series! This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. Welcome to the series for October! For spooky season, this month will

Review

Review: Cast Away by Afterthought Committee

Since the end of my last campaign, my plan has been to experiment with a variety of systems in shorter-term experiences. My past few campaigns have each spanned multiple years, and I am tired and need a break from sprawling epics. While it has taken a while to get organized,

Review

First Impressions: 2024 Player's Handbook

An extremely important caveat to this post: I have not played D&D with the updated 2024 rules. As a result, I'm not calling this a review. I'm just talking about some of the things that particularly jumped out at me--both good and bad. There

Interview

Interview: "Putting History in Historical Fiction" with Carol Coventry

This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. A very special post this week, and something completely different than my normal TTRPG fare. So, in advance, this might not be

History

Organized Crime: History & Myth

Two weeks ago, I talked about how we should stop using thieves' guilds in our medieval/renaissance fantasy worlds because a guild hierarchy would not really make sense for a criminal organization. So today, I want to talk about three different historical modes of organizing criminal activity, as potential

What I'm Reading

No real blog post this week, as I prepare for the end of summer break, plus an exceptionally busy week in real life. Instead, I want to share with you all a few things that have caught my fancy in the past week(s), and to shout out some other

Rethinking Fantasy

Rethinking Fantasy Feudalism: What's a Guild?

This week's post is sort of a continuation from this post about the ways that we misunderstand feudalism in our fantasy worlds, and how we can have more engaging worlds by learning more of the real world's history. This week, we're focusing on a

Upcoming: VaesenCon

Hi everyone! Just a quick update post this week. I'm hard at work trying to get Guide to Goblins actually written in its final form, rather than just the blog posts. I'm also getting my next actual games up and running--I'm trying out some

History

Who Were the Aztecs?

This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. I just read "The Aztecs: Lost Civilizations" by Frances Berdan, and because I'm functionally incapable of absorbing new

Guide to Goblins

Guide to Goblins: The Trickster

This post is part of my Guide to Goblins series. Click the link to check out the rest. When kicking off this series, I wrote about the historical and mythological roots of the goblin. While it was not a universal trait among some of the more common modern interpretations of

Review

Review: Lineage: Epoch Edition by Wash Your Hands Games

Once again, I'm interrupting the Guide to Goblins series--which I think now it's safe to just call a biweekly series. This time, it is to bring you another review of yet another solo RPG--but this time, after reviewing two solo games that I really enjoyed (Quill

Guide to Goblins

Guide to Goblins: The Explicit

This post is part of my Guide to Goblins series. Click the link to check out the rest. Today's goblin focus comes from @tiberianpun on dice.camp (you can follow me here!), who recommended me the Greco-Balkan goblin, the Kallikantzaros. While details of the Kallikantzaros vary from location