Ty

I think I agree, but imo it really comes down to adventure design.

Designing a hexcrawl with the idea of one of those modes might make it stronger? game board relies on obstacles (get to the forest temple before full moon) vs. shell game which relies on discovery (seek out 5 magic orbs)

game board: you have a little guy (character) and a big board. You want to get places on the board in the best way possible

shell cup: you enter a hex, lift the shell and see what's under it

there are two and ONLY two types of hexcrawls:

1. game board style
2. shell cup style

Save vs. Total Party Kill - Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming 2025 My friend Warren messaged me a few days ago. “Ram,” he said, “reminder to write the Rammies, Ennies are in 2 days.”Wait, what? The year zooms by and I’m always caught on the back foot. Even with the w...

Fuck the Ennies! No hype, no fanfare, no award shows, no spell checking, no nothing. I didn't even grab pictures for this post yet. Just the Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming 2025.

make sure to write them all down in a physical notebook and at the end of the campaign you have yourself the Standard Operating Procedure for Protecting Your Little Town from the Horrors Left Behind

The Explorateur: Issue #10 Monthly design discoveries for tabletop rpg designers including jams, critique, theory, and tools. Vetted. Looted. Curated.

The latest issue of The Explorateur is live, but I can’t talk now, I gotta get coffee with about 75,000 other gamers.

Also: A kid challenged me to a Yu-Gi-Oh duel in the elevator.

www.explorersdesign.com/the-explorat... The Explorateur: Issue #10

August 2025 - A Beast of a Newsletter Once more landing in your inbox, here's Carouse, Carouse! If you're ever bored and don't know which issue to read, there's now enough to fill a d6 table. However, given that you're reading this now, y...

August is here, that calls for a party! A new month means a new Carouse, Carouse! and thats something worth celebrating! www.carouse.blog/august-2025-...

TABALDAK'S GEAS- just submitted to the #AppendixN Jam!

"Who has misfortune thrown into this trap’s jaws?"

PCs are trapped in a 23-room dungeon villa with dream-mad lords, hungry familiars, pallbearer bees, while trying to get past an ever-watchful guardian to get a deck of many things and freedom!

Invaders of Atlantis A coral-encrusted pulp-fantasy adventure. Designed for Cairn 2E. | PWYW

Before I head off to Gen Con this week, I put Invaders of Atlantis (My PWYW pulp-inspired adventure) on Itch, DrivethruRPG, and Explorers Design.

If you're a paying subscriber to Explorers Design (thanks) you can just download it there as usual.

www.explorersdesign.com/invaders-of-...

I playtested this and had a lot of fun!!!

The Eternal Empress by Amanda P. An adventure for Cairn and old school roleplaying games

Today I'm releasing The Eternal Empress, a short location-based adventure for the Appendix N. jam. #osr

Special thanks to @explorersdesign.bsky.social and Gus L. for the great cover and map!

weirdwonder.itch.io/empress

Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition The second edition of Vaults of Vaarn, the acclaimed science-fantasy adventure game.

Vaults of Vaarn 2E is now live on Backerkit! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/v...

but what if I want a monolith sized book?!

My partner lives in Philly and going to PaxU this year should be a no brainer!!!

... and yet... and yet....

Get more from Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon Creating Tabletop RPGs

Been hinting at it for a lil bit now, buuuuuuuuuuut, my patreon page is now live! Featuring early drafts, playtests, and other #ttrpg experiments that might never see a wider release up here now!

There's already some Posts available, including the full playtest doc for Stampede Wasteland!

Image of a wizard-type character standing in front of a fount of pink-colored arcane energy.

Carved from Brindlewood Fantasy Adventure Game: Thoughts...

I made a joke on here a few weeks ago about a Carved from Brindlewood fantasy adventure game. It was good for a laugh at the time, but I've been having genuine, earnest thoughts about it ever since. (1/X)

Cool, I'll just think about this endlessly for a few months 😂

Blogwagon Announcement: Appendicitis N If you have a blog, blog about what influences your design on September 8

What up, bloggers. A new blog bandwagon approaches. Read about it, then write about it and I’ll round up all the posts.

Sharing appreciated because I feel like every time I do one of these, someone says “ah jeez I didn’t realize this was happening!”
#osr #ttrpg

ANOTHER mindstorm post on tape?? You better believe it!! Check out this campaign framework and zelda-spired contraption magic!!

Hello and thanks for this! I'm Norn Noszka, a traditional and Digital illustrator working and teaching in Philadelphia.

I do comics and figurative fantasy art!

where I proceed to then stand in my smooth, featureless, colorless bedroom until it's time for bed

that's why I refuse to let anyone make an impression on me

10 Reasons Why the Guild has a Partial Map His Majesty the Worm advocates for the GM to give the players a copy of the dungeon map . In my opinion, this is all positives and practica...

His Majesty the Worm advocates for the GM to give the players a partial copy of the dungeon map.

But of all my good and time-tested advice, I've seen gamers balk at this frequently. "Why would the adventurers have a map and not know what's in it?"

Here's 10 reasons why.

Invaders of Atlantis (Early Access) by Explorers Design A pulp-inspired micro adventure to loot an Atlantean submersible.

Hey, do me a favor, give my game a look. I forgot to categorize the damn thing under #physical-games instead of #rpg. Nothing like stealth launching your pulp adventure on Itch because you forgot "games" means "video games."

explorers.itch.io/invaders-of-...

Mechcrafting - Benign Brown Beast A MOSAIC Strict framework for giving your character a mech suit. The size and weight of a cinderblock, all three common cores are basically

A #MosaicStrict entry into @diyanddragons.bsky.social 's Second Summer LEGO RPG Jam, now with giant robots.

*looking at a heterosexual couple* so which one of you plays daggerheart and which one of you plays draw steel

Single Roll Combat I’ve been trying to figure this one out for years: How can you resolve an entire combat with a single roll of the dice? I finally figured it out and the solution is wonderfully clean. OK, firstly, …

I finally figured out a little bit of design which has been eluding me for years! ominosity.wordpress.com/2025/07/21/s...

#rpg #ttrpg

Episode 174 – LARPing Lessons Learned, by Joshy McCroo Episode 174 – LARPing Lessons Learned, by Joshy McCroo Reading performed by Nick LS Whelan. The original post can be found on Joshy’s blog, Rise up Comus! Help offset our hosting costs …

Are you listening to Blogs on Tape? You should be listening to Blogs on Tape. It's like audio Knock!.

Anyway, here's an episode about how I think LARPing is like historical research via reenactment, but for fantasy: blogsontape.paperspencils.com/2025/07/21/e...

Information Architecture in Non-RPG Books Technical writing is a profession that is literally hundreds of years old at this point. Interestingly, the essential techniques and fundame...

I am a technical writer as my day job. On my weekends, I write RPG nonsense. Here is a post about good technical writing from non-RPG sources that I draw on inspiration from: riseupcomus.blogspot.com/2025/07/info...