Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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about

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

Category: DMing

  • Torture in RPGs

    Last night my players got to do some, ah, enhanced interrogation while wearing smug smiles, and I found myself pondering how far we can come from our real-life moralities when we play. The Warhammer world is constructed so that you really have nothing to lose from torture. The only possible question that can arise when…

  • 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…