I was rereading some AD&D 3E/5E fan projects the other day and noticed the clown-haired catoblepas in that old piece of PHB art has a tramp(ier) stamp.

Sooty Beards by @furtsburrow.bsky.social and myself has its first live play yall! youtu.be/WoDCuNjubXM?...

Since there's another bank-bustingly successful #shadowdarkrpg Kickstarter going on, I was inspired to finally take a stab at a class in the game's style. It's more an answer to my own anxiety over the real-time torch mechanic than anything, though. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/04/lamp...

NEW GAME ALERT... What if I told you that you are a mech pilot, doomed to burn out? This deck of cards? It’s your mech’s battery pack. Every time you use your mech, you take one step closer to burning out… Finish your missions before you run out of cards and deplete your battery.

I think I've finally concluded my conceptual game mechanics kick by expanding on an experience system taken from a weird old Dragon Magazine article. ... Not sure where to go from here. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/04/earn...

Ever wanted an ancient, majestic dwarf-hold mashed together with a dying coal town? Sooty Beards has your back! Check out this grimly whimsical micro-setting zine and supplemental booklet of D66 TROIKA! backgrounds, or some of the other bearded goodies we’re offering! plusoneexp.com/pages/sooty-...

Did some salvage and fiddling with the bones of an old draft and tried to hammer alignment into something resembling the 'cosmic battle without [Good] and [Evil] tags' approach from the Elric/Eternal Champion series. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/03/adap...

Aaand one more post for the day looking at a d100 system for BFRPG, where I looked at some of the merits of an experience system that rewards successful rolls vs one that grants experience for failures. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/03/new-...

Another little indulgence in my problematic trashfave, this time welding bits and pieces of OSE together into a couple of Warcraft-inspired character classes. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/03/azer...

Forgot to share this mess I wrote the other day theorizing a better way to do Dragonlance's ambient magic from the 5th Age, using Talislanta's freeform spellcasting as a reference. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/03/musi...

Spent a few hours ripping apart a PDF for font files and tracking down never-reprinted French edition character art to create a Talislanta 4E archetype with maximum fidelity to the half-page card format. As high-fidelity as MSPaint allows, at least. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/03/khar...

This month was very orky for me for some reason, not that I'm complaining. I decided to finish it off with a d20 table of ideas for nonstandard half-orc combinations. If something doesn't logistically make sense, you can probably blame a wizard. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/half...

I always liked helping the half-orcs at the end of Shamutanti Hills, so I figured why not give one the opportunity to do some adventuring too? furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/vent...

What is Sooty Beards? A setting zine about a fantasy dwarf-hold crossed with a decaying American coal town. People are leaving and things are falling apart. If something doesn’t change– if things can’t change– it’ll become a ghost town soon. Check it out at TTRPG.link/SootyBeards 2/x

Been reading Supplements I-III and decided OD&D could use some playable half-orcs. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/conv...

A quick background inspired by one of my favorite bits of worldbuilding from Sunless Sea and Fallen London, looking at how the Khanate keeps its old sky-worship alive, deep underground. I feel like Sunless Sea is pretty TROIKA!, horror elements aside. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/blue...

After a longer wait than usual, my next entry in the history of shamans in D&D is out! This one looks at one of the Mystaran Gazetteers, The Orcs of Thar. You can read along this time, since someone threw the boxed set up on the Internet Archive. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/spir...

Learned about the D&D material published in early issues of White Dwarf magazine last night and found a character class that lets you play as a pack of 16 blink dogs. I feel like we need more of this kind of thing. archive.org/details/whit...

Deep down, I always knew my disembodied head would find its way onto your desk someday. Seriously though I love it. 💚

"Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" is basically just Girl Dinner with extra steps, isn't it?

Found a tantalizingly incomplete character class in an old BECMI zine and felt the overpowering compulsion to fix it and make one of my own. I say "fix", but it's not actually trying to be BETTER. Maybe just a little more, ya know, playable. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/01/shep...

Get ready for dying coal towns and drunk canaries!

I was reading the 3E Underdark book for Forgotten Realms again and noticed that thanks to their 2 starting levels in monstrous humanoid, the eyeless and completely blind grimlocks have Spot as a class skill. I love this kind of jank.

I was inspired to jam on the Thoul a bit, and ended up turning that hobgoblin/troll/ghoul/typo monster of old into a character class for OSE Classic. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/01/rene...

Reject dwarfmanity and return to insec in another one of my weird Norse-inspired classes for GLOG, this time with more flies but just as much hating on the gods. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2025/01/pupa...

Guess I lied when I said that was going to be the last of my posts for the month. So have some gryphons, gryphon-riders, and a random diss of Pliny the Elder just for fun. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/12/gryp...

Needed to round out my blog posts for the month and decided to make a cozy Troika background inspired by a pun. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/12/hob-...

A Blessed Narblesnard to my dear Burrowers, and also all the normies. May your acorns quell the ravenous squirrels until spring, and may you find a moment in the quiet stillness.

I elected the way of pain and wrote a handbook for an obscure class from one of the more egregious 3E Gold Rush books that is nonetheless near and dear to my tiny beige heart. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/12/mast...

Two more posts for my history of shamanism in D&D mini-series, in which I cast some shade on Gary and wring every last bit of content out of the BECMI core boxed sets that I possibly can, respectively. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/11/spir... furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/11/spir...

To be fair, @unlawfulgames.bsky.social @furtsburrow.bsky.social have given me COPIUS inspiration to draw from. Sooty Beards is almost done with layout and art!

Something silly for those who need it right now. I made a background and creature stats for Troika inspired by the Shoopuf of Final Fantasy X. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/11/ride...

Another year, another ponderous look through a Dragonlance spinoff series. Seems I've gone and gotten myself invested. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-...

I’ve recently been working on Sooty Beards with @furtsburrow.bsky.social and @feralcharlie.bsky.social but we’re in layout stage with writing pretty much over. I think beyond all else, I just need to do something with people who aren’t my family.

Started a pet project about the history of shamans in D&D, starting with OD&D (and a dry etymology lesson) and continuing up to our present day in... are we calling it 5.5E yet? Anyway, come check it out if you like my book dives. I brought footnotes! furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/10/spir...

Mashed together a dungeon synth concept album and the mechanics from Charlie F-A's "As the Gods Demand" to create a humble little deity of found treasures and helpful strangers. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-...

Decided to screw around with the myth of Ymir a bit and ended up making a weird and unbalanced GLOG class out of it, as is traditional for me. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/08/aven...

I went for a flip through Land of Mist for Old-School Essentials recently. It's a lightweight campaign setting with lots of little optional rules, and a gigantic wall of fog that erases memories. ... Does that count as an isekai? furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/08/land...

Wrote a submission for the latest community jam for Troika! This month's theme is character backgrounds, so I dug up and revised the concept of an elongated forest archer from deep in my blog. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/08/long...

Contributed to our neighborhood book box! Gave a copy of Bridgetown by John Gregory and @furtsburrow.bsky.social And picked up a copy of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

Woke up and my body decided today is a day for full-caff coffee and anarchist minotaurs. I'm only regretting one of those so far. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/06/tram...

Adapted a 3E prestige class into a normal 14-level class for Old School Essentials (advanced fantasy) on a whim. I always liked the ashworm dragoon, but never found a desert game for one. Bonus monster stats at the end. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/06/dest...

Made a funky little darkness dweller for the newest Troika! community jam. Go check it or the other submissions out come June 20th! furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-...

Found a very old splatbook some weeks back while looking for something else, and decided to write about it. Bet you've never seen a class that turns your character's guts into crystals before. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-...

Tried to write what I know and came up with a table of weirdly specific inconveniences to use as minor curse effects. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/1d20...

It's been a pretty productive month for my blog, but I haven't gotten my aimless rambling in yet. So I looked back on my experiences with a MUD I played some time ago. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/lets...

Another day, another Troika background. Sky burial officiators this time. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/troi...

Another quick Troika background inspired by one of my pedantic episodes where I get so wrapped up in the feeling of "fantasy never uses the -mancy in necromancy or pyromancy correctly!" This one talks to sand. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/troi...

I thought about "mages" who are just handlers for their magical familiars for months, but then I watched my SO's SO play Palworld and some dark comedy factory farm influences crept in. I have no idea where the corporate cowboy talk came from, though. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-...

Been watching too many video essays again and decided to make a short retrospective on Diablo tabletop RPGs and their mechanical decisions, similar to that EverQuest post a few months ago. furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/04/dung...