Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: DMing

  • Tyranny and Structure in Role-playing

    Noisms at Monsters and Manuals has written a comparison of gaming systems with political theories, dichotomized into “top-down” games (D&D 3rd Edition) and thinkers (Marx) and “bottom-up” games (OD&D) and thinkers (Hayek). Noisms makes it clear what side he falls on (he’s a “bottom-upper,” oo-er), which he characterizes as “the right” (vs. “the wrong”), but…

  • Converting Warhammer 1st Edition to 3rd Edition

    Another of my (several) complaints about Warhammer 3rd Edition is that it doesn’t seem to contain a great deal of flavour about the world, compared to the 1st and 2nd editions. I think this is largely because it is new[1], though I think Fantasy Flight Games are doing the rather nasty trick of assuming that…

  • Setting Traps in Warhammer 3

    One of my (several) problems with Warhammer 3 is that it doesn’t contain rules for some basic aspects of adventuring that we all take for granted, including (rather annoyingly) traps. I don’t often use traps in adventures, since I’m not a great fan of dungeon adventures, and I understand that dungeoneering isn’t a big part…

  • New Year Plans

    I crawled out into the freezing cold with a hangover today to visit the Asami Shrine in Beppu, to burn my 2010 demon-breaking arrow and purchase a new arrow for 2011. Burning the arrow that symbolizes the year before gives one time to pause and think about what one did in that 365 days, and…

  • Fashioning Random Encounters in Warhammer 3

    During their recent dungeon-delving, our heroes ran into some scary zombie children, and after a surprisingly challenging battle they had to retreat from the dungeon to recover from wounds, fatigue and stress. One character was carrying such a high load of fatigue and stress that he was essentially in a state of high panic, and…

  • Agricultural Heritage Systems

    This is a completely off-topic post, but I thought it covers an interesting topic in one of those areas that it benefits everyone to know something about. Last night I found myself accidentally at diner with the director of the Land and Water Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  His particular interest at…

  • Jumping Someone Else’s Train

    Over at “Discourse” and Dragons there is a “rant” about the new edition of D&D, which being inside the OSR echo-chamber is largely agreed to by its respondents, until a chap called Shazbot (from Points of Light) turns up and delivers, in comments, his own handy little rant about old school logic. I believe a…

  • Running a Warhammer urban semi-sandbox

    Last night my Warhammer 3 campaign entered new territory. We finished the published starter module a month ago, and so now we’re moving into my traditional turf of me making the whole campaign up (not using published modules). I used the starter module to get used to the rules and to introduce people to the…

  • Old Campaigns: Innsfelle

    This is one of a series I aim to run describing the old, successful campaigns I have run in the past. I think this was the second campaign I ever ran with a determined plot, to fruition, over a year or so in about 1998. My players were all friends rather than devoted nerds, though…

  • Perfidious accusations of sandboxery

    In a recent skype conversation, one of my players from London accused my GMing style of being “very sandbox,” and even went so far as to imply that there is little difference between me and the OSR. This has me a little confused as to what sandboxing is, since I don’t do any of the…