Terry

Top of page of A Guide to Dungeon Mastering (Part 1: Setting up Adventures) by Lewis Pulsipher, from White Dwarf #34. The picture by Alan Hunter shows a sword-wielding adventurer, dwarfed by a horned demon looming over him.

#34 Lots of GMing advice on Bluesky at the moment - what goes around comes around.
A Guide to Dungeon Mastering, by Lew Pulsipher, illustration by Alan Hunter.

On sources of ideas - it mentions Bullfinch's Mythology & the Motif Index of Follklore Literature "amounting to six large volumes, literally lists every basic plot and oddity of every known folk story of dozens of cultures". Now we also have the "all devouring pop-culture wiki" tvtropes.org :-)

Contents of "Best of White Dwarf Articles III", including "A Guide to Dungeon Mastering" by Lew Pulsipher and "Designing a Quasi-Medieval Society for D&D" by Paul Vernon.

Indeed - the "Best of White Dwarf Articles III" did re-print this guide from Lew Pulsipher along with Paul Vernon's "Designing a Quasi-Medieval Society for D&D". (And the Monstermark system had already apparently appeared in the first "Best of..." - but that was before my time...)

Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic? A lot of people ask questions like “should I write a module as system-agnostic, or for a popular system?” or “if I write a module for an unpopular system like X, will nobody read my module?”. I’m a…

Today, I wrote Got Not Game! It's a discussion of system agnosticism in modules, how different modules approach it, and what process to take when deciding whether it's right for your module. Check it out here! idlecartulary.com/2025/07/22/g... #osr

This is what our group found with Arcs as well. Over a few sessions we played one or two games of the "standard" version, then on to the epic Blighted Reach campaign. Lots of interesting new elements, but I still need to play more to internalise how they fit together to get anything like a strategy.

Fiasco Castle Amber Diceless Playset by actionyann Fiasco playset and Hack to play in the Castle Amber.

I'd enjoyed the #Amber diceless #RPG, now found an unofficial Amber playset for #Fiasco: actionyann.itch.io/fiasco-amber.... On a read it hits plenty of the right tropes, & I expect Fiasco's focus on rivalries and relationships suits. (And if it ends up more comedic than the original, so be it :-) )

Just posted: The first in a series of blog posts about in-jokes and pop-culture references in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition.

graemedavis.wordpress.com

Before I actually crack open Daggerheart, I want to talk about a very important related topic: THE BOX.

Because I had not been paying attention, it was only when I walked into Games & Stuff that I realized that the hardcover book came bundled with a box.

I was very curious about this.

At Dragonmeet last year I saw FIST is now available as a one-off purchase (compared to the 25p or 38p per minute it cost to play when it was a premium-rate phone line - around 70p/£1 per minute in today's money): www.sound-realms.com/fist

TTRPG DND Thoughts:

Elves 🧵

We know them, we love them, too often we fall into the role of letting them just be the "better than everyone else" race and allow them to feel that way about themselves.

Another element is there is too often too many flavors of elf.

This has a massive overlaps with something called “Bait and Switch”.

It’s generally seen as a bad thing hated in #TTRPGs. Difficult to pull off and lauded in other media, but far far too easy to do in a game. It’s not as clever as we think.

And as soon as you give a warning, the twist is spoilt.

Update on Ludonarrative Dissidents, the RPG analysis podcast I host with @rosspayton.bsky.social and @gregstolze.bsky.social. We've just released s3e11, covering stylish technoir epic CYBERPUNK RED, and you can hear it and read the shownotes here www.ludonarrativedissidents.com/season-3-epi...

I have a joke about Midas, it's absolutely golden.

Could tell you a joke about Prometheus but what am I, chopped liver?

I have a joke about Orpheus but, looking back, it's not a good idea.

I've got a joke about Cassandra, but nobody will listen to it.

If you think that's bad - I've got a joke about the Sirens but it seems people would rather plug their ears with beeswax than hear it.

Pelgrane Press Welcomes Robin D. Laws as New Creative Director We are beyond thrilled to announce that, after two decades of brilliant collaboration, Robin D. Laws has officially stepped into the role of Creative Direct

I have very happily accepted the newly established position of Pelgrane Press Creative Director.

One could say they're both good at Stayin' Alive? :-)

I will never stop telling people to go get the Schema sheet and put it in their GM clipboard:

Thanks for the real-world experience! (Of games I've played where I've been consciously aware of the initiative mechanic, that's recently been D&D, so as you ssuggest, compared to *that* it sounds smoother.)

The Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast also had an episode discussing RPG initiative methods (Season 2 Episode 9): www.ludonarrativedissidents.com/season-2/

Interesting compendium of variety of RPG initiative mechanisms.

Intriguing sandwich method: "At the top of the round, every PC rolls a simple pass-fail initiative check... Those who succeed go in a pod first. Then all the NPCs / monsters go as a pod. Then all the PCs who failed go in a pod last."

EVERY Initiative Method?? Not really. But maybe, with your help, we actually can. Let's give this a shot. Every now and then I've seen a blog post attempting to cover...

I'm reading an absolutely fascinating blog post that collects many different kinds of Initiative in RPGs. It's really eye opening. It shows just how hard it is to find a good answer to "who goes first" when a fight breaks out.

knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2024/06/ever...

You are right about GDS/GNS, of course - I must have forgotten or missed the shift. (I only discovered the Forge years after its heyday.)

It's prompted me to find the old FAQ of rec.games.frp.advocacy to remind myself of the other topics of the time.

Snapshot of #RPG discourse past (prompted by another thread): 1997 FAQ of newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy. Intro (www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/t...), the threefold model (www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/t...), plotting (www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/t...) & diceless (www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/t...)

Are you also prepared for discussions of the three-fold model of Gamism, Narrativism and Simulation to rise again? ;-) (I recall GNS as a recurring theme on Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy back in the day.)

For me: "Murder, She Wrote" was the 1980s, Saturday night TV in my childhood. "Friends" was the 1990s, university, and starting working life. Yet I later learned they *overlapped by two years* - *and* that "Murder, She Wrote" had done an episode set at a Friends parody.

Usher of the Black Rod receives new sword from King Charles A senior officer in Canada’s Parliament received a rare honour this week: in an audience with King Charles, Usher of the Black Rod J. Greg Peters received a new ceremonial sword.

Not to seem ungrateful but it’s only a +2 sword

Quote fron White Dwarf 88 (Apr 1987): "So we are going to stop printing traditional reviews of GW products. The question of whether the game is good or bad doesn't enter into the fact that it is mentioned in Open Box. The fact that the game is available means we think it's good. Read the 'reviews' in OB thogh. They will explain why we think it's good, and what makes the game worthwhile. Other company's products are still going to be reviewed, of course. But we'll still be biased. Biased in favour of quality."

Indeed! (Recognising similar perceptions of conflicted interests, White Dwarf's "Open Box" review column became up-front about its future approach to Games Workshop products in April 1987.)