The conversation about what is lost when shortcuts and conveniences are used in TTRPG writing can be extended to OSR mechanics mechanics meant to sand off "rote" aspects of old games. Overloaded encounter dice are the bullet points of game mechanics. traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/03/work...

Illustrations like these are important for kids because they feed the part of the mind that craves the grotesque. You learned the pages you never turn to, save for when compelled by morbid curiosity... better to be occasionally distressed by a picture in a kids book than anesthetized by cocomelon

Picture this: Carcosa but the visual inspiration is old school Tokusatsu

The only remotely good Harry Potter-adjacent thing is Wizard People Dear Reader and that's only because of the amount of times Brad Neely gets to say "lo." Period end of story.

Forget it, Fafhrd. It's Lankhmar.

Does the world have room for yet another OSR fighter fix? Yes. Specifically this one: traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/03/migh...

Working on a doc for my players about unlockable classes. One of the classes is unlocked by discovering it exists.

A common thing in JRPGs and other video games you don't see so much in fantasy TTRPGs is when monsters are a relatively recent phenomenon in the setting. It's either implied or outright stated that everything was fine and placid until the BBEG appeared, and now there are monsters everywhere

I heard 1d6 flies buzz when I died

Reading @idraluna-archives.bsky.social's Zurth hexcrawl and I'm thrilled. There's like a minimum of 10 good ideas per page. I'm Zurthpilled. I'm a Zurthhead. I'm standing on the street asking strangers if they heard of Zurth

Man-at-arms

Orc raiders

New month, new newsletter. Talking about why I didn't blog this month haha Also including a ton of links to posts I found interesting! elmc.at/catmail-2/

The Coen brothers have such a talent for creating overwhelming malicious and magnetic villains

Hot take on a niche topic: Carousing MISHAPS are better than general "carousing tables." The drift from rolling on a table of silly mishaps if you fail your save(/whatever) to just having a general table you roll on every time a PC carouses has watered down what makes carousing fun.

Turning Bluesky posts into a blog

If you're ever worried about your settlements being underprepped, remember that people used to run years-long campaigns with Wilderlands of High Fantasy which described towns like this:

I'm glad someone has the courage to speak out against Boblin the Goblin because that has got to go

Oh, you thought The Bloggies were over? The Bloggies haven't ended. They might never end. Vote in the Bonus categories this week! Ballot: forms.gle/d6YbnUqiuypv... www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-2026/

My home game is fairly orthodox human-centered BX, but now a different group wants me to run for them I'm going totally opposite. Play whatever you want. Sexy vampire. half-demon. Human-size mech with tiny pilot. Sentient pile of worms. Hell yeah. Just no bards.

Ten Types of Special Rooms is in the final! Vote for that and both entries with Colonial in the title if you want a special prize (my admiration) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The 10 Types of Special Rooms is in round three? Can we keep the dream alive? Only with your support. Join me on the path to glory. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS.

Something I like about the Dying Earth series is that Jack Vance calls deodands and grues and the like half-men. Much stronger than D&D's "humanoid." Calling orcs half-men has a kind of haunting & tragic weight to it whereas calling them humanoids sounds like you're about to bring out the calipers

The Tichnertime says: "You hear the man! Voting has begun!! Tick tock!!!" "The Tichnertime" sculpture is one of my favorite pieces from Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg, whose wonderful art graces my bloggie-nominated post The 10 Types of Special Rooms. Vote for it in the THEORY category!

Every now and then I think about how the design note for Adelle from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 must have been "make her as catgirl as possible without actually making her a catgirl." And I love it.

Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals should be the template

In a stunning reversal of the civilizational transition from orality to literacy, the bloggie nominees are becoming audio. Thank you @directsun.bsky.social for the stellar job narrating my post! You navigated my tongue-twisting typos with admirable alacrity. podcast.bloggies.org

My new game prep style is to thoroughly prepare only 80% of what I need and then vibe out the rest at the table.

Do yourself a favor and check this out. It's fascinating. And not just because the author has exquisite taste in blogs.

Gyaru Gygax

The My Weekend as a 28-Year-Old in Chicago video is funny but some weekends you find yourself being a 28-year-old in Chicago and you're like "damn that really is what it's like"

In a just and fair society everyone's inbox would exclusively be for newsletters like this instead of the personal wastelands of promotional emails we subject ourselves to.

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...

”Oh you’re still using a hex map? That’s nice. I’ve switched to aperiodic monotiles. Never get the same pattern twice. I found hexes to be too… *chuckle* monotonous.“

It’s nice when a player forms a close bond with their retainer but what’s under-discussed is how fun it is for them to have a henchman they absolutely hate

RIP Thomas Aquinas you would have loved arguing about the right way to imagine fantasy scenarios on blogs.

I wrote about the unique ways survival narratives build evocative settings and what we can learn from Scavengers Reign, Fantastic Planet, and a secret third thing to create more vivid worlds 🌎🐉 traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/01/vivi...

Disco Elysium-style game where you play as Cugel the Clever and every skill just makes you a bigger asshole

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

four Pig-faced Orcs inked today #osr #ttrpg #art #inkillustration #dnd

The most notable works of American isekai are A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Three Hearts and Three Lions, and Homestuck

Ow fuck!!

Why do I like sword & sorcery? The limitless potential of its hodgepodge worlds Its maps are blank, full of liminal spaces Weird mysteries and great wonders lurk around every corner It is the physical space of a dream You engage with it in short bursts, ere that dream crumbles

Sorry but Jack Vance>Fritz Leiber>>>>>Robert E Howard>Michael Moorcock

One mind flayer as a villain is cooler than many mind flayers, but TWO mind flayers? Fire.

Crackpot theory I'm working on: all games are expressions of a single ur-game; our impulse to endlessly hack rules is actually the game-spirit pulling us to toward itself. The peeling away of contingent elements in finite rulesets is an attempt to approach the inexhaustible Form of the ur-game.

watched Nausicaä for the first time last night