Ive been chilling with Fallout76 mostly and writing homebrew stuff on paper, and nothing set enough to blog about. Patreon is in a freeze, but will try a non-charged release this year.
In my 12th Lv game players are more like a game of Diplomacy now, where they deploy troops, teams of followers and personally do some raids on specific enemies. Its quite good really. Players trying to recover a golem-powered industrial potion factory. Finally got a deal for 12 ton of pine resin they needed.
Revising my classes currently and rethinking stuff in light of new ideas in gaming. Ive been trying new modern games and reading OSE and DCC retroclone stuff and Dolmenwood. The latest D&D5 books have not interested be much, but i might get the Artificer book so i can use with my Theros game a setting full of mechanical monsters. I played D&D5 about 6 years and mostly didnt get it and found it overly complex. Then I started getting rules in last year and playing better and the new books i found easier to read and use with a superior index (2024 is unreadable index-wise wise even with glasses). More and more I think D&D needs multiple versions like a hardcore adult metal version, a tactical battlegame and solo game and simpler one for furries and social interactions and combat simpler than Fighting Fantasy. Cairn would be fine for Ravenloft and Witchlight. These adventures only suffer with over complex combat characters, necessary for boring and tedious combat event chores.
I would like to run Midderlands and Midderlands in 2026. Ive got my last games for year this week and will only run one shots till early february. I was playing OSE online but over now but I finally got the two box sets and advanced players book. I never got my advanced DM book from USA. My first postal fail drama in years. Now very hard to find here. Lots of games barley available in Australia. Shadowdark won't sell to dealers who supply shops here only shops which are small and only want a few copies so the line here is 130 a book and hard to find. Quite a few game companies I can't touch over the postal price. Amazon. Drivethrough and NobleKnight, but I mostly use the latter for bulk items. So I finally chose Oldschool Essentials (and possibly Dolmenwood later - the best KS I ever got).
I had a few licensed adventures I liked already, and their information design is superior. I got some DCC adventure comps and they are a bit all over the place. Ive been told best way to run is print copy and highlighter basics. The "Hole and the Oak" and "The Incandescant Grottoes" are some of the fist adventures. They do look good, they are a bit weird despite the walking cliche classes and are settingless. They possibly could with some extra flavour fit in dolmenwood or midderlands. Those settings have great easy to use villages for a basecamp. I think next time I write an adventure it should be about my design and my game as examples of the tone I want. I think every dungeon needs some wilderness and a home base with npcs. I did like old adventures with new monsters, magic, etc at the back. So I might try something. I like these 2 OSE adventures named above but to me lack good hooks. Despite no explicit setting it has implied weird stuff like an empire that might come up again later. I like it if everyone has a personal sidequest in a dungeon and a personal rumour. Despite the bullet point dungeons sometimes the format a bit cold.
The DCC stuff is fun, large print and imaginative and i will nab the tomes of adventure. The art is great but information design is a bit of a mess. Purple Planet is fascinating vol 4 but no suggested play order or advice on how to build into a single campaign other than one-offs with new characters each chapter. I want a few more volumes and would love to run their Hollow World adventure in one book. Some of their adventures are genre classics. I prefer purple planet to the implied world of MCC. They love the 6-room dungeon format, which to me is a lair. I do like some of the mega dungeons with towns and wilderness.
I have been trying various other fantasy games. Some are fake OSR. They use aesthetics and pretend to be about dungeons or giving players a choice. Firstly, a dungeon isn't just scenery to act in front of like a stage set. Its not just visual aesthetics. It needs to imply risk and use a set of physics where players can use their character to solve problems like managing resources. Dungeons are horror survival. If mechanics skim the very elements that makes genre fun its a bit tame. If you visit a ruined city dont just give people a six room lair, let them explore the city. Let them struggle to get their loot home. A ruin city isnt just a cool stage set for a cool boss fight. I did like
At least one game I thought would be better for simple rpg like Cairn instead skipped all towns and motivation and stuck you in dungeon straight up which was a shame. As the system just does not duplicate oldschool dungeons. Games that claim to simplify narrative and roleplay with mechanics i often find limit it. D&D or BRP I generally know odds of activities my character tries.
A quantum ogre is an encounter where the DM fudges the monster stats so it basicly dies when the characters are almost finished to be dramatic. This makes most character and combat rules a bit of a joke and window dressing. It can such for the big bad to die.If players bring flunkies and have a good plan or good luck mostly i let them as a reward. Games now exist where I would instead roll dice if plan works. Maybe a referee might give me a bonus dice but I could roll a bad result and the difference between a good or bad plan is irrelevant. This destroys agency. I dislike heist games and films, especially where criminal characters are always betrayed. So quantum elements and games based around them are increasing in popularity. There are problems with this and the novelty game mechanics they often use. You can let players influence a story and setting or say what kind of adventures they prefer in a setting. I'd rather seek the secrets of the ancients in a traveller than be a mercenary crooks who just heist lots. Id rather a GM write adventures for us or modify stuff for us than follow a mechanical game mechanic narrative formula that makes our choices irrelevant.
Quantum dungeons where you generate stuff ahead of them and every door or path is generated when seen by adventurers. This could work for a vast complex or ruin sandbox. Now i see mapless adventures which choices dont matter and it always leads to where the GM wants because choices are illusory. Id use randomeness to fill a hex or dungeon as you go, but id try to decorate them a bit. I use random elements because players go off the maps with their choices. Some factions and some world-building, especially involving some personal reasons fpr characters to do stuff is good. But if its just the same encounters no matter which way you choose to go its a railroad pretending to be a sandbox. The point of a good quantum dungeon is to give choices and provide scale while a bad one would generate say a few rooms that would provide some encounters, in order no matter which way they go is the bad kind.
Games where, instead of the tediousness of shopping or carrying specific amounts of resources, you roll a dice bug me too. If I have arrows I want to know how many I have to plan what Im doing. I dont want a random roll to see if I have ammo. Counting is a pretty non-controversial game process. I did in a TSR Marvel game like the resource mechanic, because money rolls and non-specificity of wealth is a good way to take gold hoarding out of a game. Also money can be a sort of power and a few games break down with money. If players could legally buy certain stuff to solve a problem, go for it. Changing reality in a history game is a bit lame to make a dangerous weapon hard to get when it wasn't. Money is a game mechanic we know from reality, we dont always need to gamify it. We just need shopping lists. Even though I like dice games I'm not really into gambling, and i like to be able to play the odds. If too much physics is loosey goosey, I dont feel risk or feel I can plan effectively. I do like longer, grittier campaign games vs one of simple games. Quantum money and supplies as an ability to roll rather than a list is mostly bad. I did like RQ where weapons and sheilds had HP and were important for blocking as HP rarely improves.
Games where players hack the narrative control I find reward some players and hinder the less in-your-face gamers. I did use a card system in my old BRP game, but they were less durable than D&D, so some cards with specific effects they could deploy or stack was a nice mechanic.
Time is another resource in old-school style neglected and irrelevant to modern mini dungeons with as many rooms as a house. Nobody will consider eating monsters or trying cannibalism in a house-sized lair. Time = more encounters with low reward and high risk. Rest is a valuable commodity. How many HP as a % would you quit and go home from a dungeon? Editions matter and have wildly different risks and skills to mitegate them.
So a downside of d&d campaigns is increased complexity and accounting, but a plus is that early dungeon resources like food, light and even encumbrance become reduced problems. I have some skills players use for people who hate recording encumbrance. I like new retroclones giving encumbrance system choices. I think you could have adventures where recording it matters more. I'm fine if players improve foraging and use magic for food and light. Its a reward for reaching higher levels. I think some minigames or a tabletop wargame with tiles on a map might work better than your everyday dungeon mechanics. You may not want to go full Pendragon, but everyone should play this game at least for a few game years (so 2 sessions). A benefit of my high-level game we all look at maps to discuss events and plans, and less likely to go in cursed holes. Absent player characters are assumed to be exploring or on a mission. Now every king on the continent knows their name. They mostly respond to problems that arise over their domains.
Managing oldschool followers is another resource. At low level a few hirelings, a follower even a dog might help. At high level they get numerous and complex enough you shouldn't bring them all with you. Although a large gang of followers could erect a prefab fort on a dungeon rapidlyy as a base. I'm finding there is a point a name and level is all that is needed while some stages of the game some have details like stats and skills and items. At low level they are meat sheilds to up your numbers. At high level they can manage your land, have jobs, go on solo or team missions off camera for the party. Followers are also backup characters and players could play followers instead for a job. Followers help round out a 6-8 member party numbers and get skills the team is short on like a healer and a thief. Or maybe some thugs up front.
HP wildly vary in editions due to more powercreep. This made modern bugbears a nightmare vs those 3d8+1 versions. I do like using some modern statblocks for high level oldschool games. More HP slower fights. Spell damage also has been capped more. Combat is so slow and complex the idea of missing a 15min+ to play round is terrible. Many vids on stun as bad because players miss actions. While in many game you go from doing anything well to unconscious with wounds having no effect then your dead. Unconsciousness is ok in games and people should be able to k.o. or subdue more not less. RQ did this stuff nicer and you never escape fear a duck with a sling kills you with one rock. Even old D&D more heroic than that realism wise. RQ has versimilitude but huge statblocks and prep vs the basic old d&d stat block and won out.
Reading oldschool and newschool games simulation them has inspired me to do a few things in my homebrew.
Upcoming
I have a thing on cleric class
A mystic class im using in 26 but i need more polish like lots of other ideas
Orc backgrounds for some reason
A slight problem of my sandbox systems is I write them as required so players doing own thing might not be what i planned to write or finish.
Ive kinda wanted my basic rulebook done and then finish other splatbooks based on it. Im increasingly thinking a cut back version might be better and more achievable. Im a crazy completist on some things.
Id like to try some new media next year and have finally played online now with a minimal approach. So i might try and see if ppl want to playtest some stuff on discord or some video.
Thanks for reading.
Have a good holiday and please make it to next year.
In my 12th Lv game players are more like a game of Diplomacy now, where they deploy troops, teams of followers and personally do some raids on specific enemies. Its quite good really. Players trying to recover a golem-powered industrial potion factory. Finally got a deal for 12 ton of pine resin they needed.
Revising my classes currently and rethinking stuff in light of new ideas in gaming. Ive been trying new modern games and reading OSE and DCC retroclone stuff and Dolmenwood. The latest D&D5 books have not interested be much, but i might get the Artificer book so i can use with my Theros game a setting full of mechanical monsters. I played D&D5 about 6 years and mostly didnt get it and found it overly complex. Then I started getting rules in last year and playing better and the new books i found easier to read and use with a superior index (2024 is unreadable index-wise wise even with glasses). More and more I think D&D needs multiple versions like a hardcore adult metal version, a tactical battlegame and solo game and simpler one for furries and social interactions and combat simpler than Fighting Fantasy. Cairn would be fine for Ravenloft and Witchlight. These adventures only suffer with over complex combat characters, necessary for boring and tedious combat event chores.
I would like to run Midderlands and Midderlands in 2026. Ive got my last games for year this week and will only run one shots till early february. I was playing OSE online but over now but I finally got the two box sets and advanced players book. I never got my advanced DM book from USA. My first postal fail drama in years. Now very hard to find here. Lots of games barley available in Australia. Shadowdark won't sell to dealers who supply shops here only shops which are small and only want a few copies so the line here is 130 a book and hard to find. Quite a few game companies I can't touch over the postal price. Amazon. Drivethrough and NobleKnight, but I mostly use the latter for bulk items. So I finally chose Oldschool Essentials (and possibly Dolmenwood later - the best KS I ever got).
I had a few licensed adventures I liked already, and their information design is superior. I got some DCC adventure comps and they are a bit all over the place. Ive been told best way to run is print copy and highlighter basics. The "Hole and the Oak" and "The Incandescant Grottoes" are some of the fist adventures. They do look good, they are a bit weird despite the walking cliche classes and are settingless. They possibly could with some extra flavour fit in dolmenwood or midderlands. Those settings have great easy to use villages for a basecamp. I think next time I write an adventure it should be about my design and my game as examples of the tone I want. I think every dungeon needs some wilderness and a home base with npcs. I did like old adventures with new monsters, magic, etc at the back. So I might try something. I like these 2 OSE adventures named above but to me lack good hooks. Despite no explicit setting it has implied weird stuff like an empire that might come up again later. I like it if everyone has a personal sidequest in a dungeon and a personal rumour. Despite the bullet point dungeons sometimes the format a bit cold.
The DCC stuff is fun, large print and imaginative and i will nab the tomes of adventure. The art is great but information design is a bit of a mess. Purple Planet is fascinating vol 4 but no suggested play order or advice on how to build into a single campaign other than one-offs with new characters each chapter. I want a few more volumes and would love to run their Hollow World adventure in one book. Some of their adventures are genre classics. I prefer purple planet to the implied world of MCC. They love the 6-room dungeon format, which to me is a lair. I do like some of the mega dungeons with towns and wilderness.
I have been trying various other fantasy games. Some are fake OSR. They use aesthetics and pretend to be about dungeons or giving players a choice. Firstly, a dungeon isn't just scenery to act in front of like a stage set. Its not just visual aesthetics. It needs to imply risk and use a set of physics where players can use their character to solve problems like managing resources. Dungeons are horror survival. If mechanics skim the very elements that makes genre fun its a bit tame. If you visit a ruined city dont just give people a six room lair, let them explore the city. Let them struggle to get their loot home. A ruin city isnt just a cool stage set for a cool boss fight. I did like
At least one game I thought would be better for simple rpg like Cairn instead skipped all towns and motivation and stuck you in dungeon straight up which was a shame. As the system just does not duplicate oldschool dungeons. Games that claim to simplify narrative and roleplay with mechanics i often find limit it. D&D or BRP I generally know odds of activities my character tries.
A quantum ogre is an encounter where the DM fudges the monster stats so it basicly dies when the characters are almost finished to be dramatic. This makes most character and combat rules a bit of a joke and window dressing. It can such for the big bad to die.If players bring flunkies and have a good plan or good luck mostly i let them as a reward. Games now exist where I would instead roll dice if plan works. Maybe a referee might give me a bonus dice but I could roll a bad result and the difference between a good or bad plan is irrelevant. This destroys agency. I dislike heist games and films, especially where criminal characters are always betrayed. So quantum elements and games based around them are increasing in popularity. There are problems with this and the novelty game mechanics they often use. You can let players influence a story and setting or say what kind of adventures they prefer in a setting. I'd rather seek the secrets of the ancients in a traveller than be a mercenary crooks who just heist lots. Id rather a GM write adventures for us or modify stuff for us than follow a mechanical game mechanic narrative formula that makes our choices irrelevant.
Quantum dungeons where you generate stuff ahead of them and every door or path is generated when seen by adventurers. This could work for a vast complex or ruin sandbox. Now i see mapless adventures which choices dont matter and it always leads to where the GM wants because choices are illusory. Id use randomeness to fill a hex or dungeon as you go, but id try to decorate them a bit. I use random elements because players go off the maps with their choices. Some factions and some world-building, especially involving some personal reasons fpr characters to do stuff is good. But if its just the same encounters no matter which way you choose to go its a railroad pretending to be a sandbox. The point of a good quantum dungeon is to give choices and provide scale while a bad one would generate say a few rooms that would provide some encounters, in order no matter which way they go is the bad kind.
Games where, instead of the tediousness of shopping or carrying specific amounts of resources, you roll a dice bug me too. If I have arrows I want to know how many I have to plan what Im doing. I dont want a random roll to see if I have ammo. Counting is a pretty non-controversial game process. I did in a TSR Marvel game like the resource mechanic, because money rolls and non-specificity of wealth is a good way to take gold hoarding out of a game. Also money can be a sort of power and a few games break down with money. If players could legally buy certain stuff to solve a problem, go for it. Changing reality in a history game is a bit lame to make a dangerous weapon hard to get when it wasn't. Money is a game mechanic we know from reality, we dont always need to gamify it. We just need shopping lists. Even though I like dice games I'm not really into gambling, and i like to be able to play the odds. If too much physics is loosey goosey, I dont feel risk or feel I can plan effectively. I do like longer, grittier campaign games vs one of simple games. Quantum money and supplies as an ability to roll rather than a list is mostly bad. I did like RQ where weapons and sheilds had HP and were important for blocking as HP rarely improves.
Games where players hack the narrative control I find reward some players and hinder the less in-your-face gamers. I did use a card system in my old BRP game, but they were less durable than D&D, so some cards with specific effects they could deploy or stack was a nice mechanic.
Time is another resource in old-school style neglected and irrelevant to modern mini dungeons with as many rooms as a house. Nobody will consider eating monsters or trying cannibalism in a house-sized lair. Time = more encounters with low reward and high risk. Rest is a valuable commodity. How many HP as a % would you quit and go home from a dungeon? Editions matter and have wildly different risks and skills to mitegate them.
So a downside of d&d campaigns is increased complexity and accounting, but a plus is that early dungeon resources like food, light and even encumbrance become reduced problems. I have some skills players use for people who hate recording encumbrance. I like new retroclones giving encumbrance system choices. I think you could have adventures where recording it matters more. I'm fine if players improve foraging and use magic for food and light. Its a reward for reaching higher levels. I think some minigames or a tabletop wargame with tiles on a map might work better than your everyday dungeon mechanics. You may not want to go full Pendragon, but everyone should play this game at least for a few game years (so 2 sessions). A benefit of my high-level game we all look at maps to discuss events and plans, and less likely to go in cursed holes. Absent player characters are assumed to be exploring or on a mission. Now every king on the continent knows their name. They mostly respond to problems that arise over their domains.
Managing oldschool followers is another resource. At low level a few hirelings, a follower even a dog might help. At high level they get numerous and complex enough you shouldn't bring them all with you. Although a large gang of followers could erect a prefab fort on a dungeon rapidlyy as a base. I'm finding there is a point a name and level is all that is needed while some stages of the game some have details like stats and skills and items. At low level they are meat sheilds to up your numbers. At high level they can manage your land, have jobs, go on solo or team missions off camera for the party. Followers are also backup characters and players could play followers instead for a job. Followers help round out a 6-8 member party numbers and get skills the team is short on like a healer and a thief. Or maybe some thugs up front.
HP wildly vary in editions due to more powercreep. This made modern bugbears a nightmare vs those 3d8+1 versions. I do like using some modern statblocks for high level oldschool games. More HP slower fights. Spell damage also has been capped more. Combat is so slow and complex the idea of missing a 15min+ to play round is terrible. Many vids on stun as bad because players miss actions. While in many game you go from doing anything well to unconscious with wounds having no effect then your dead. Unconsciousness is ok in games and people should be able to k.o. or subdue more not less. RQ did this stuff nicer and you never escape fear a duck with a sling kills you with one rock. Even old D&D more heroic than that realism wise. RQ has versimilitude but huge statblocks and prep vs the basic old d&d stat block and won out.
Reading oldschool and newschool games simulation them has inspired me to do a few things in my homebrew.
Upcoming
I have a thing on cleric class
A mystic class im using in 26 but i need more polish like lots of other ideas
Orc backgrounds for some reason
A slight problem of my sandbox systems is I write them as required so players doing own thing might not be what i planned to write or finish.
Ive kinda wanted my basic rulebook done and then finish other splatbooks based on it. Im increasingly thinking a cut back version might be better and more achievable. Im a crazy completist on some things.
Id like to try some new media next year and have finally played online now with a minimal approach. So i might try and see if ppl want to playtest some stuff on discord or some video.
Thanks for reading.
Have a good holiday and please make it to next year.