The Novel Game Master

Gamers! Get yer Hodag Mag! The Mag is short for... MAGIC! by @hodagrpg.bsky.social
Just look at the first half of this sweet comic strip about an arcane and mysterious pastry treat:

@elmc.at serving the greater good again for all of TTRPGdom!

Love this approach for using a d66 table to generate different settlements in a sandbox!

Into the Oddish is Heistfunding Now — Prismatic Wasteland Pre-Order a Pokémon tabletop roleplaying game parody of Into the Odd with Vileplume Mountain, a funhouse dungeon adventure.

Catch ‘Em All while you can! In commemoration of the 30th anniversary, I’m heistfunding a Poképocalyptic game based on Into the Odd. I call it INTO THE ODDISH!
You can pre-order it now (until ???)
#ttrpg #pokemon #osr

Taking the Highest Die (Make Dice Work For You #4) Make Dice Work For You is a series where I’ll regularly talk through a new way to use dice in your game. It came out of conversation surrounding What to randomise when you’re randomising, and what …

Continuing my little series on basic dice math, I talk about advantage and its variations: idlecartulary.com/2026/02/27/t...

Text on a desert background: Gods of Sky and Dust Shannon Rampe An amnesiac robot A psychic scoundrel A scholar out to change her world

GODS of SKY and DUST
Now on submission!

A jaded treasure-hunter is offered a chance at personal redemption when he and a scholar-friend discover an ancient, sentient robot that may be key to unlocking the secrets of an ancient civilization.

#WSPit #OS #A #SF #F

Learn more: www.shannonrampe.com

Illustration of a mountain town with the words The Company, Shannon Rampe Descriptive text: A human woman with a sword and a dream, A half-gnome thiefwho can’t resist opening every door, And an elf sorcererss who knows more than both of them combined On an old-school dungeon-crawling adventure!

Inspirations Images of Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, Dungeons & Dragons red box edition, Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui, and Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree Themes and Tropes Found family, cozy, adventure, dungeon-lit, dungeon crawling, unexpected romance, weird magic

Synopsis: Dariel dreams of becoming an adventurer but quickly learns it's far more dangerous--and expensive—than she'd ever imagined. With help from her friends Quintus and Jase and funding from the questionable Shadow Dwarf Cabal, Dariel braves the megadungeon Mythbarrow, where she discovers wonderous treasures, surprising allies, and an unexpected romance. But dungeon delving doesn't come without risks—slime wizards, drug-addled hobgoblins, and mysterious fairies to name just a few—and to make it out alive with her friends, she'll need every bit of skill and bravery she can muster.

Excerpt: Dariel peered through each open doorway, trying to guess which way she should go and more than a little worried about stumbling into another trap. The opening the first dwarf had gone through led into a chamber filled with stacked pots, most of which looked like they’d been smashed open. The center doorway led down a short hallway that opened into another chamber, this one holding what looked like stone plinths. The third one was another hallway that sloped down further underground. She was about to try the center doorway when she heard a scream and shouting from down the sloped hallway. She yanked her sword out of its scabbard—the loose hilt rattling a little in her grip—and charged down the hall. As she rounded the corner, it occurred to her that most sensible people would have turned and run the other way. Well, no one had ever called her sensible before. There was no reason she should start being sensible now.

THE COMPANY

A dungeon-lit cozy fantasy adventure in the old school style!

#WSPit #Ag #NA #A #F #R

learn more: www.shannonrampe.com

Join us for the last #ZiMo workshop of 2026.

Where do you get good #TTRPG layout?
YOU STEAL IT!

At 3pm et today @clearkeep.bsky.social unleashes his next manifesto of design and invites you to join The Layout Rogues Guild.

twitch.tv/TonyPlusOne
1/2

NULL_SPACE by Binary Star Games Freelancing in the solar system of the 24th century

The final pamphlet job for NULL_SPACE is up! (This is the last week of itchfunding. Get in while you can.)

binary-star-games.itch.io/null-space

Prepping Plots, Part 3: Enter the Players So you've gone ahead and  sketched out a rough outline  of where you want your campaign to go. Now all that's left is the most important ing...

From the brilliant mind of Magnolia Keep comes the high-octane third part of Prepping Plots! This time we talk about how to onboard players into the campaign, and some tricks for learning more about the heroes!

https://magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2026/02/prepping-plots-part-3-enter-players.html?m=1

Fish-Eaters of the Enlightened Empire (A Character Background for King of Kings) These Ichthyophagi subsist on what their name is derived from, — fish. Yet only a few of them fish out in the deep, for boats to do it wi...

Disappeared for two months now I'm back with a post over at Save vs. Worm: FISH-EATERS! a character background and some worldbuildy stuff for my late antique Iranian D&D setting. #OSR savevsworm.blogspot.com/2026/02/fish...

Designing Lore Blocks An alternative to stat blocks designed for The 1 HP Dragon.

It's been a couple years since Reach of the Roach God was published, and I'm still thinking about how it pulled off stat blocks without stats.

It's a load-bearing piece of tech that's criminally underused.

www.explorersdesign.com/designing-lo...

I'd like to say my comment inspired this fascinating analysis of NULL_SPACE, but reading @binarystar.games's blog post, you can tell this stuff was all there waiting to rise to the surface.

In an effort to bribe you into voting for me, I have once again broken my record for longest post.

Enjoy my review of Daggerheart.
It's full of statements that are approximately true.

valerialoves.com/daggerheart-...

Awesome thread!

Pulling the idea of "cyberpunk-esque" out from several days ago because I wanted to expand on that: What is the intended vibe of NULL_SPACE, exactly? 🧵

I got reformed (or rather, deformed) into a project manager, but I've always enjoyed the opportunities to wear the instructional designer hat in my day career

Yes, if the PCs are actively participating in the faction, like doing a mission for them or trying to stop them from doing something, then I wouldn't roll for the faction turn procedure. I'd just record what happened based on what the PCs did.

It depends on the scope of your campaign, but I tend to start with a high-level list of factions when I'm doing big-picture campaign planning. Once we start playing the game, I get a better sense based on player decisions of which factions might cross paths with the PCs, and focus on those (3-6ish)

As a reformed Instructional Designer, I absolutely adore this!

Running Factions and Faction Turns Factions that pursue their own agendas regardless of the PCs are a great tool to bring your RPG setting to life, and can help the world feel...

I've been enjoying using factions in my game to evolve the world outside of just what the PCs are doing. Here's a simple procedure I use to figure out what the factions are doing and how:
www.thenovelgamemaster.com/2026/02/runn...
#sandbox #ttrpg #blogpost #osr #dnd

The Bloggies: Round 3 Welcome to The Bloggies. You're currently voting in the third round of all five brackets. Why are all of the categories included? Up until this point there were a lot of matchups. Now there are only t...

And you can vote for all of the current contenders for round 3 in this form!

forms.gle/bgzyuLaCQAYF...

The Bloggies 2026 A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Time to vote!
www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-2026/
#bloggies #ttrpg #rpgblogs

We Read The Bloggies (@WeReadTheBloggies) • Episodes We’re volunteers turning Bloggies-nominated blog posts into audio. So you can enjoy them anywhere, in a more accessible format.

Four days in, and 53 nominated Bloggies posts have already been read and recorded by wonderful authors and volunteers, then published on the We Read The Bloggies podcast.

Truly incredible!

Great post from Viridian Void on the challenging conversation we all eventually have to have with our parents about rpgs. He is wisely not on Bluesky 😊

viridianvoid.bearblog.dev/how-i-explai...

I've been itching for a good SF game for awhile. I like the theme of near future space exploration and small time piracy. It seems like it's got a low-powered mothership feel but leaning towards more cyberpunk-esque rather than space horror. I'm looking forward to giving it a spin at the table.

This was a fun read

We Read The Bloggies (@WeReadTheBloggies) • Activity We’re volunteers turning Bloggies-nominated blog posts into audio. So you can enjoy them anywhere, in a more accessible format.

The awesome @bommyknocker.bsky.social, @elmc.at, Grace of Choir of Fire @seraphimseraphina.bsky.social and many community members have organized a group recording effort of every Bloggies post as podcast episodes inspired by Blogs on Tape!https://podcast.bloggies.org/

The Bloggies 2026 A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

The Bloggies' page has updates!

1. "We Read the Bloggies" A fan-made podcast is live and linked!

2. A new submission has been nominated, "Book [Verb] Play" in Theory. The other post was removed on the author's request.

3. I've redesigned the page to keep things short and sweet.

Happy reading!

NULL_SPACE by Binary Star Games Freelancing in the solar system of the 24th century

Excited to get my hands on a print copy of NULL_SPACE by @binarystar.games binary-star-games.itch.io/null-space