Nancy By Ernie Bushmiller February 08,1948

Map dungeons with this warioware-style minigame. #OSR #TTRPG bommyknocker.bearblog.dev/another-gimm...

All bloggers are hereby cordially invited to participate in a new blog bandwagon on the topic of MAPS, featuring art (which you can use, remix, distort as you see fit) from @amandalee.bsky.social (Garbage Barge, Vampire Cruise, et al) You have 80 days starting now! #osr #tttpg #blog

DQ&D is a game about getting into a knife fight and having everyone walk away unhappy. For fragmentary blog post #2 i'm telling you how to run those fights, which are secretly negotiations. thegardenbelow.blot.im/dq-d-design-...

LET US PARLEY! is out! It's a free system-neutral reaction/parley system for solo RPGs - I've been tweaking it for about a year now, and have been actively using it in my games! I'll probably continue to tweak it, but it is complete in its current state - Enjoy! chaoclypse.itch.io/let-us-parley

Made a big post about poisons. We're talking about: ✔️Medieval medical opinions of poison ✔️Poisons in D&D ✔️Poisons in OSR games ✔️Poisons in blogs ✔️My new system of poisons for Cairn Check it out! Still happy for anyone to send me more about poisons too! blog.catshavenolord.page/de-venenis/

I made a blog post about a dungeon map I'm retiring from my underworld: www.imaginaryhistory.org/scribblesand...

With the blessing of @chrispwolf.bsky.social I've started a reboot of his classic session report series Thursdays in Thracia! Stay tuned as we work our way through the module and I share my prep and thoughts on the classic dungeon and running a megadungeon in Shadowdark.

What do you do when the ship arrives in port? More work! www.bastionland.com/2026/02/dock...

There's a thing I mentally refer to as "tick-tock-tock game design" which is useful for prototyping a #TTRPG The name is meant to evoke simplicity, procedurality, and asymmetry A tick-tock-tock game is three things:

Encounter Table as Ecology - very cool blogpost on a brand-new blog. It's awesome to see an actual ecologist extending the ideas from my Write Encounters as Networks blogpost! #osr #ttrpg monstrouscompany.bearblog.dev/trophic-enco...

The Bloggies 2026 submissions are officially closed. Get ready for the nominations next Monday. You can get the full schedule and submissions breakdown here: www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-sub...

The free core rules for #solorpg DANGER CLOSE are updated to version 0.9, and the Commander's Toolkit will be updated alongside it soon, as well! Get it now for €3 - and get all future updates! dicegoblingames.itch.io/danger-close...

It's Sunday here, and time for this week's review! This time we're looking at Fort Sanglot, a French tri-fold for OSE. It's got vampires, and bandits, and twists and turns to surprise your players! I like it! blog.catshavenolord.page/review-fort-... #TTRPG #OSR

Dredge Quick and Drown is a project written as a joke attempt at recreating the OSR from first principles. It has unsprisingly failed to do that but I'm very happy with whats come out of it. Enjoy Design Diary #1: covering stats, checks, skills. and equipment. thegardenbelow.blot.im/dq-d-design-...

Inspired by @elmc.at's post this week, I wrote up my own framework for how to handle knowledge questions in RPGs - table46.bearblog.dev/knowledge-ge... #nsr #osr #posr #rpg

Updated the blog map with the first data set of 2026. graph.elmc.at here is what it looks like if you filter for this year

There are folk who see new tech, settings or procedures and say, “No thanks, too silly. I’m pretending to be an elf here - this is serious business.” To them I say, “Pah!” In this blogpost, I present House of Cards Encounter Tracking. bommyknocker.bearblog.dev/a-gimmick/ #blog #ttrpg #osr

No more rolling for random weather. Your calendar and the weather are one and the same. In this blogpost I present a full year of weather, with simple mechanical effects for #osr games. I particularly like the water drinking rule for the month of Scorch. foreignplanets.blogspot.com/2026/01/cale...

2/ So, I bought this broken down, split spine, board separated, sorry state AD&D 1e Monster Manual. The idea is that I'm going to colour my way through it. A bit of meditative self time. Call it sacrilege, but I figure this book can have a second life, albeit under my amateur hand. :O) #OSR

I done a hack of #Cairn to play Spelljammer with it. Blogged about it. Please don't sue me. paxreptiliana.blogspot.com/2025/03/cair...

Nemesisssss

New Blogpost: Speedily write encounter tables by making a simple food chain network. bommyknocker.bearblog.dev/write-encoun... #osr #ttrpg #blog

Inspired by brilliant card fanatic @69dinguses.bsky.social, how about the Dungeon Deck: darker reactions as you go down… dreamshrike.blogspot.com/2026/01/hung...

Am cheering for Cairn Press's success, because their terms: + Creators retain their IP; + Seeking a license to publish and distro, not to own creators' work; + Transparent production process and accounting; + Straightforward royalty structures + Etc All of this should be standard practice!!!

Draft Goblin Market page / handout from the Treasure Overhaul. Special deal, toady only.

I read Kingdoms, which is and OSR game full of cool ideas but in the end fails to cohere for me. You can read my review! personable.blog/zine-zone-ki...

In my latest blog post, I give thee A Tactile Technique for Tracking Time in TTRPGs! Do with it as you will ⏰ (It can also track other stuff; I talk about it in the post) #osr #ttrpg

Add it to the canon

Rolf von Hoerschelmann (1885-1947)

Hello. It's my final week as a full time game designer, and as if to underline why I can't do this anymore, I currently can't afford to cover my bills at the end of the month. All of my work on itch is on sale. Tell your friends, buy something, thank you very much. itch.io/s/179351/jan...

idk man my current barometer for whether LLMs are creating order-of-magnitude increases in programmer productivity is this website, where the staff all post almost exclusively about Claude and yet they haven't shipped a meaningful feature in forever

A blog post that is nearly 3 years in the making, one of my longest posts, and a treatise of dungeon design advice that is disguised as a review of an old module. Patreons get to see it about a month or two early #osr #ttrpg

I haven't drawn in literal months, so my fingers now hurt a lot. But it does feel good to draw something joyful.

New tech that feels like it should have been here forever

My masterpiece.

The Shadow of the Torturer.

It's interesting, there is at least one of the little supernatural stories reported by Ji Yun (in "Passe-temps d'un été à Luanyang" Luanyang xiaoxia lu) involving little peoples visiting a guy. That Ji Yun en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji_Yun

Get chopped up, if you want to. A free-form Death and Dismemberment method for #osr and other #ttrpg games. (Now with a better title) foreignplanets.blogspot.com/2024/12/bodi...

Found the world's greatest clipart for my new blogpost. The bottom line: rolling 2d6 with advantage or disadvantage can give your weather tables a functional memory. bommyknocker.bearblog.dev/lightweight-...

🤔 What about PC backpacks as secondary objectives for monsters? Taking them off gives +1 to all d20 rolls, but will the walking brains of the Crystal Library walk off with them? icastlight.blogspot.com/2026/01/your...

When children are allowed to pilot mechas and school becomes the launch pad ❤️ (from "Gosaurer", 1993)

Time to shout out some of the major inspirations for WYRM! These games and/or designers had an impact on the game's development at some point. Some of it stayed in the game, some of it stays in my brain. It's all there in one way or another. gilarpgs.itch.io/wyrm

Little January update for Melsonia. Watch me do an amazing job of burying the lede. TLDR: January is killing us. Share it around, help a small TTRPG publisher out. www.melsonia.com/blogs/news/w...

@perplexingruins.bsky.social has some good solo stuff for free/cheap on their itch.io page, specifically: perplexingruins.itch.io/deluxe-campa... perplexingruins.itch.io/solo-gaming-...

There's a lot of good discussion of randomness in tabletop, so I wanted to be a real sicko and talk about how to model random engineering processes with dice tbr.bearblog.dev/reliability-...

files are in English. OSE Dark Sun

Randomised character advancement by reaching levels of dungeons? Get weirder as you delve deeper #osr #ttrpg