It’s Marvelous!

A while back I wrote a web page to help play Marvel Super Heroes, by automating the roll on the “Universal Power Chart” to show you exactly what cell and color your percentile roll lands in based on the Power Level Column (the old Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, etc. rating that MSH […]

Conan Role-Playing Game Unboxing

Here’s some photos of the old TSR Conan RPG that I just won on eBay. This is actually the first time I’ve bid on something like this, so I’m pretty excited. The game is by Dave “Zeb” Cook, and uses a universal chart resolution system based on the TSR Marvel Super Heroes system. You can […]

Quick Thoughts on Risus

We tried Risus for the first time last Sunday, for another round of the episodic space horror game I run when the mood hits me. Even though Risus is officially a humorous game (Risus being Latin for laughter), it’s still a reasonably good fit. Humor and horror have a good deal in common as far […]

Names and Language in Nonesuch

Anything the players want. That’s what they do anyway, and I know from bitter experience that once I start in on listing appropriate names for cultures and races it’s just a short step to a naming language and then a full-blown death spiral into conlangs. So Umbry, Auxi-lock, Revenge, Expendable 1401, Tomato, Hermia/Horatia, Caboose, Hurlon, […]

Thinking of the Children

I’m going to be running a game for my friend Mac and her three children (ages 7 through 12) in the near future. She’s been playing D&D with them for a few months now, and I’ve been a player for some of the sessions. When I mentioned that even though I sometimes had a hankering […]

Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 vs 7.5

An overview of the changes that I’ve noticed between T&T v5.5 and v7.5 All the comparisons phrased in terms of what 5.5 has/lacks vs. 7.5, since I read 7.5 first and went over it extensively. Also, some of the changes in 7.5 appeared in 5.5 in a couple-page appendix of Ken St. Andre’s house rules: […]

Huzzah! It Must Be Is Mine!

Tunnels & Trolls Version 5.5 just arrived in the mail. What, you thought just because I had 7.5, I’d stop there? You don’t know me very well, do you?

4e For Grognards?

The Core Mechanics offers up 10 House Rules to Make Grognards Like 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, most of the house rules are of the Racing Stripes on a Yugo variety. (Or, if you’re a 4e fan, putting Fuzzy Dice and lowrider hydraulics on a Formula 1.) Except for Rule 7 (Don’t scale the […]

Obligatory St. Patrick’s Day Post

Just want to point out that Leprechauns are one of the five “common” Kindred in Tunnels & Trolls. Their modifiers are: STR 0.5 CON 1 DEX 1.5 INT 1.5 LK 1.5 CHR 1 WIZ 1 HT 0.25 WT 0.33 Leprechauns are automatically Wizards, and they have a natural Wink-Wing (teleportation) spell that they can do […]

Multi-Classing

The Valley of the Blue Snails, a really interesting blog mostly about an unusual setting that Canecorpus has created, has a post about Multi-Classing in his D&D setting: Valley of Blue Snails: Multi-Classes Revisited I will be changing a few of the multi-class titles though I’m a bit mixed on what direction to take it. […]