reference

Long Live the Fighters!

Aron Clark2 Comments
Fight On! Issue #1 cover art by A. Reyes

My on-going Black Tower adventure game had long ago stretched out beyond the initial dungeon location with transits between nearby town and back, then on to other regional dungeons, and now across the high seas. Placing before my players an far away ocean destination I had intended offer a few island locations sketched by a favorite designer Gabor Lux. Though I couldn’t recall if these were fist published in Knockspell or the Fight On ‘zines.

As I set about leafing through hundreds of pages of OSR material from the halcyon days of 2008, and thinking to myself: “there is so much interesting material here. How will I hope to recall it’s location for some future game? I need a sort of index…”

Checking with an academic friend I settled on the conspectus model, collecting details on: issue, page number, article title, article category, author, and any additional notes I might care to add.

noun
con·spec·tus (kən-ˈspek-təs)

1: a usually brief survey or summary (as of an extensive subject) often providing an overall view

You can find the start of this conspectus here, which currently covers the first 4 issues of Fight On! My plan is to publish regular updates to this work, but I would certainly welcome other contributors. Also I would be happy to see anyone take and expand on this format for other materials.

As this material is published in a Google sheet it should be easily sorted, filtered, analyzed, or exported. I would suggest making a copy of the file for these purposes if necessary.

Streamlined To The Strongest +Battlefield Generator

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Information spread across multiple sources, locations, or systems is difficult to access. This is a maximum of my professional world and applies equally to my hobby world, especially with complex or evolving rulesets.

To the Strongest is one such use case where periodic updates via the Even Stronger compilation add or clarify rules from the core book. I have taken on a small project to summarize the core rules, simplifying where I can, and adding the ES amendments.

That streamlined TTS effort is now available here.

I’ve posted previously on the topic of To the Strongest here, which includes:

  • A reformatted quick reference sheet,
  • Video tutorial on playing the game with Table Top Simulator, AND
  • A video of a demonstration game

April 18 Update

Have just finished another random generator tool, this time for TTS battlefields. That tool available here, sample output follows:

July 13 Update

Here’s my first attempt with the random battlefield generator, working as designed.

I’ve had a thought about roads, which should always be an easy activation if following the track.

This house rule provides a further improvement to the use of a road even while in open ground.

This Is How We Play

Aron Clark2 Comments

My return to RPGs in 2012 started w/ Dungeon Crawl Classics, struck out into the OSR frontier, explored three little brown books, revisited “blue box”, and have generally been rambling around the DIY indie scene. All this I’ve done as both a DM & a PC. There have been successes and failures on both sides of the screen.

I recently joined an Old School Essential (OSE) campaign run by Jason Hobbs. Part of the introduction to the campaign was a review of Jason’s house rules, those variants & rulings Jason uses in his game. This reminded of a similar compilation of my own.

I’ve re-organized my own house rules, which I consider a living document. Sharing those here as an example of the concepts that I find interesting or helpful in a game like Dungeons & Dragons.