Martin Orchard

"But doctor... I *am* Pagliacci the ski lift operator"

"Most comics actually *lose* money on Riyadh, hoping that it will pay off in exposure, an award and a place on a future series of Taskmaster"

'Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God' is my wife's top cult doc pick

Any creature sufficiently mean/spiteful/annoying that you don't feel bad taking advantage of their gullibility and/or cowardice.

Grotto of the Golden Gargoyle was my most recent GMing of them (cursed, but in such a way that you don't tend to evoke much sympathy for them)

Mothership Campaign Framework: The Anti-Carousing Table - Pointless Monument I have many pamphlets but I must campaign: A Mothership table story Mothership one-shots are a lot of fun! (enough to make me write a blog post

For a low prep, semi-open table using published modules, I came up with this, which is going well so far in playtesting:

pointlessmonument.blot.im/mothership-c...

I was one of the playtesters for this and it's very good - Amanda's NPC are some of the strongest the OSR/NSR has to offer.

Stephen how did you give my wife a cold?

Writing a Cthulhu by Gaslight scenario for playtesting next week, in advance of taking it to the @apocalypseplayers.bsky.social mini-convention in early October.

Adapting real world places to horror scenarios is always an entertaining way to approach design.

Cairn 2nd Ed is <£5 on both Lulu and Amazon print on demand.

You do need a full set of dice, although a character sheet is simple enough that you can just write it on a sheet of paper.

The creator will send you copies to put in Little Free Libraries and similar.

Sufjan Stevens vengeance mode has been activated, evacuate the studio.

(the secret is having a general idea for a blogpost when you realise a game has hit a notable anniversary, then not writing it until a bandwagon presents an opportunity/incentive)

Pick Two Inspirations and Combine Them — Prismatic Wasteland I present a cheat code for breaking through writer’s block and coming up with a gameable idea from all the cultural detritus that has built up inside your brain.

For the appendix N blog bandwagon, I talk about smashing together disparate inspirations as a method for coming up with new ideas for your games #osr #ttrpg

Also probably the only time I'll tag @kierongillen.bsky.social and @rossignol.bsky.social in a blogpost, since PC Gamer's championing of the game was a key moment in me being reassured about my own critical appraisal of it.

Appendix N: The OSR of the first level of Deus Ex - Pointless Monument 25 years ago a videogame introduced me to sandbox level design. Spoilers ahead. Deus Ex (2000) is a game that sits within a lineage which extends

In which we look through an Appendix N of the various videogames that have inspired me when I'm running/making TTRPG material, and focus on one level of one game in particular.

Blogpost: Appendix N: The OSR of the First Level of Deus Ex

Make sure you have 4 controllers and agree whether players are allowed to use blue shells.

Note for Americans, the 1 protestor to 5 police is known as the 'floppy to bobby ratio' or 'Peel's Constant'

You'll be pleased to hear this phenomenon exists in model engineering as well - my Dad gets a zine where people reprint/dissect how people built model planes in the 1940s and 50s

Enringification

How to Make Huntable Monsters - Pointless Monument There are many ways to defeat a monster. Here is a list so you can enthusiastically support any mad idea your players want to try. Note: I’ve used

Some traditional OSR blogging for Labor Day...
Blogpost: How to make hunting tough monsters an interesting challenge for your players, with multiple paths to success
pointlessmonument.blot.im/how-to-make-...

Lasagne has never seemed more exotic

"I named him Shepherd because he will gather friends and protect them!"

"Everything, Is, Tables"

Competing for a bloggie with my take on where to position carousing within the gameplay loop, "It's, Wine, O'Clock"

It's important to spread the word - we only need 15 more three word blog titles to complete The Hypercube

(Which in turn implies the future existence of yet to be written blogposts such as "Time, Hidden, Impact")

Note that you can create a pleasing 3 x 3 grid of words by combining this with @diyanddragons.bsky.social Landmark, Hidden, Secret and @dicegoblin.blog Time, Gear, Skill

diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/land...

dicegoblin.blog/time-gear-sk...

Both the artist name and cover art for my debut album

One of my most Boomer takes is that the sub-editing has gotten noticeably worse and the style guide has been dumbed down e.g. kids instead of children

Snail Fancy, by @feralcharlie.bsky.social and @alexcoggon.bsky.social is a perfect interactive one shot for your OSR/NSR system of choice. The PCs spiraled from shoplifting hats to feeding someone to a giant snail and unleashing an ecological catastrophe on the local borough.

Once I've playtested it the plan is to release a free zine with all the additional/alternate rules