Marcia B. 🍹
@traversefantasy
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gone girlblogger | #CincoRPG | wasting away again at margaritaville
24/f/tx
Joined September 2019
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cat's out of the bag! introducing
#CINCORPG
, my play packet for my personal home campaign! 🏴☠️ pirates and revolutionaries and aliens oh my
gorgeous art is by
@norn_corporeal
😊💖
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🚨 blog post! 🚨
unconquered (2022) plagiarized swaths of ideas and passages from ultraviolet grass lands & the black city (2020) and vaults of vaarn (2021)
more below 1/2
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It’s here!!
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
is finally here!!
A new version of the original 1974 miniature wargaming rules, with modern layout and graphics to help you navigate and play the first fantasy role-playing game ever made.
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disco elysium sequel concept: harry dubois investigates an intellectual property dispute between a financial firm and a communist auteur / video game writer who overworked and abused his employees
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⚔️ FANTASTIC MEDIEVAL CAMPAIGNS 🏔️
The complete version of my LBB + chainmail retroclone is finally available digitally for free and in print at-cost!
It's been over two years since I've started this project, so I'm very relieved to have seen it through! 😊 More below!
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was really hoping this page would print right and am really satisfied that it did
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🚨 BIG BLOG 🚨
so i’ve been messing around for a couple weeks with a datasheet of like 38 OSR or OSR-adjacent rulesets, to see how similar (or different) they are to each other
this is the final result! 🤩
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⚔️ FMC Basic 🐉
posted my personal house rules pamphlet for 1974 D&D on itch! no abilities, level-less spells, simplified money, slot encumbrance, 6 room dungeons, and abstract monster categories
this will be a living document, so enjoy this version while it lasts! ⬇️
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new blog post!! 📝
inspired by an “average” 18-room dungeon according to B/X rules, i looked to see what an average dungeon in OD&D would look like
using the math, i figured out a 6-room dungeon plan which you can use to construct dungeons out of smaller chunks!
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gEnDeR blog! 👯♀️
there’s a popular understanding that gygax uses the word “men” in an older, gender-neutral sense in a way that e.g. tolkien did
however, this does not agree with either author’s actual use of the word, whether intentional or not (1/3)
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new blog post, officially announcing
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
and explaining what the deal is!
an upcoming free retroclone of the original 1974 edition of dungeons & dragons, with more modern design sensibilities and a clean layout! ⬇️
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“The OSR Should Die: Basic Edition”
shortened by 58% to 3.3k words, this is a laser-focused revision of my blog: exploring the history of the term ‘OSR’ and to what it has been applied, and criticizing the myth of the OSR as a desire to return to a past that never existed ⬇️
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published my printable workbook for bite-sized, 6-room dungeons on itch! features 13 different map layouts with space for keys, random encounters, and flavor
based on my original blog post simplifying the original D&D dungeon stocking rules 😊 see below!
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from /r/onepagerpgs: someone said this would make a great one pager and i’m here for it
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you see, there's OSR, post-OSR, OSRcore, post-OSRcore, power OSR, OSR revival, post-OSR revival, hard OSR, indie OSR, and sword dream
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Version Beta of my free, faithful 1974 retroclone
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
is out now!!!
▪️ Optional ascending AC
▪️ Stats for the “Balor”
▪️ Optional weapons vs AC tables
▪️ Complete medieval wargaming rules
▪️ New art, new character sheet, and more!
See more below! ⬇️
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someone needs to tell d&d nerds that you can play sports without keeping score and that it’s kind of the opposite of uncommon
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i read a blogpost by an OSR person complaining about how ryuutama isn't fun because they kept trying to run dungeons (in ryuutama) and the game just kept getting in the way of dungeon crawling, but they assumed that you had to run dungeons bc they didn't know what else to do
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cool! check out this archived blog post from 2016 where you said you wouldn't update her name because you think it's neither "practical or necessary for us to revise extant works in order to match people’s changing identities" ⬇️
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blog post! 📝
so… 5e actually has a really intuitive procedure for handling dialogue with NPCs, as well as tables for NPC social traits (ideals, bonds, flaws)
here i summarize how it works, and transcribe those tables! ⬇️ i like that it’s unlike OS rulesets, in a good way
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new blog series! 😊
i’ve gotten access to playtest packets for D&D 5e (“DnDNext”) from 2012-3, so i’m going to close read them to better understand what influences went into the final product and what was dropped over time ⬇️
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wrote about how later "old-school" play often collapses classic D&D's campaign progression (underworld, wilderness, dominion) into modes of play that occur throughout a campaign!
thanks to
@EmielBoven
and
@yungdumbitch
for letting me borrow the WIP ref screen for errant! 😊 ...
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it’s not OSR unless it’s from the grognard region of wisconsin
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wrote an article about wanderhome and how it offers a wealth of playable material without the usual boilerplate of universal resolution systems!
this is addressed to writers who feel compelled to start a book with explaining when and why to roll dice :) hope y’all like it! ⬇️
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dnd 5e?! if it’s good enough for jesus christ, it’s good enough for me!
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big blog post about d&d economy! 💸
the gold piece is the lynchpin of three d&d subsystems:
💰exchange
🏋️♀️ encumbrance
👩🎓 experience
it’s a currency, a unit of weight, and a measure of character development! this makes it very easy to move between difficult play contexts
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DELETE
Margot Robbie could play Oppenheimer but Cillian Murphy couldn’t play Barbie
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i was hanging w my friend enzi and he was talking about how he needed to bite the bullet and write about the pathfinder 2E mwangi expanse setting
two days later, he did it!! a critique of the mwangi expanse, from the standpoint of black diaspora and bourgeois postcolonialism ...
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NEW POST JUST DROPPED 📝
this is my first work of critique in about a month! this time i criticize the conversation surrounding lyric games as literature and as products
and i also talk about what it means to critique ttrpg works ⬇️
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wizards HATE her!!1! how to play dnd for FREE!!!!
this is a series where i discuss how to improvise playing dnd based on common knowledge and even pop cultural depictions 😊 this first part is about figuring out a premise for play, and how to structure activity
check it out! ⬇️
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wrote a “bible” of all my fivey house rules so far, including d20 origin titles (with skills and feats) inspired by the most popular D&D 5e backgrounds and races!
each row will be expanded upon later to make them more interesting, but the doc includes rules for everything… ⬇️
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on behalf of
@emmyverte
, this is a blog post they wrote about how to design or organize dungeons!
think of it in terms of blocks of 3-4 rooms—what sort of challenge awaits the player in each block? how do you organize those blocks into one place?
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I’ve spent about 15 months working on this thing, extensively studying the original material to understand what made it different. Meanwhile, six artists graciously contributed their work to make the book look beautiful.
Please enjoy!!! 😄
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it took three brain cells (
@idlecartulary
@sandromaycry
) to come up with the best tabletop fishing minigame ever dreamt of
(originally you rolled a pencil, but using dice feels more fun)
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this thing is out now!! :)
'TURN' is a free trifold pamphlet for how to use a single die to simplify the book-keeping and note-taking often required of a dungeon crawl game
it contains procedures for exploration and encounters, and an encounter table template
link is below! ⬇
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my friend jenx from gorgon bones just posted a great blog about reading alignment as nationalism!
not any specific form of alignment, whether it’s “cosmic stance” or “individual ethics”, but the function of alignment to abstract others and justify violence ⬇️
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twitter please stop showing me the critical role topic please i am just not interested
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i wrote an in-depth comparison of these texts, not only to see how unconquered lifted from its predecessors, but also how it was revised between its pre-release and final versions to obscure its actual source material
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wrote a blog post that compares the following methods of handling combat in tabletop role-playing games:
1. roll to-hit and damage
2. roll damage only
3. roll to-hit only
hope it's interesting! ⬇
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racing the clock between this website going under and my laptop breaking for good so uhhhhhhhhh
this friday (11/11), releasing a retroclone of the original 1974 campaign manual!!
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
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Version Beta of
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
is coming out on 2/22!!!
▪️ Optional ascending AC
▪️ Stats for the “Balor”
▪️ Optional weapons vs AC tables
▪️ Complete medieval wargaming rules
▪️ New art, new character sheet, and more!
Check out my blog for more info! ⬇️
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so happy that i rearranged the pages with
@RatkingRpgs
’ art so they would take the full page! 😊
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my friend jenx wrote a blog about allowing only fighters to participate in combat! this protects the class's niche, he says, but it also has the side effect of deemphasizing combat for other characters
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@NickSpence1
i did come to luka, and was not aware of it when the book came out
i published it today because it’s a monday, wasn’t planning on hbomberguy doing something on plagiarism (and couldn’t have anticipated it either?)
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the progressive indie scene has a straight up misogyny problem besides also being a self-promotional cesspool of wannabe artist-capitalists
We're cancelling each other over TTRPG takes today. Post your cancellable TTRPG take.
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tolkien plays with both definitions of the word, using it to bait-and-switch the witch king (as well as the reader) to a prophecy that said villain could be killed by no “man”—such that his fate was being killed by a woman (2/3)
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you’re telling me this blank page that i make every possible effort to share online has a message i’m trying to hide? idk what you mean, it’s a blank page!
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“The OSR Should Die”
on one hand, a short history of the term ‘OSR’ and the different communities to which it was attached
on the other hand, a criticism of the term, the play style, and the communities that propagated them for relying upon an imagined past
⬇️
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if this makes sense: i feel like classic play still has untapped potential insofar as it is non-determinative, so we can actually role-play from the vantage of a certain desire and not just play a character in a story whose course has already been laid out
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consider this a critique of the indie TTRPG 'industry'!
here i give some possible steps to exit the commercial side of the hobby on an individual and a collective basis, including critiques of attitudes of necessary monetization and anti-piracy measures
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i've hidden most everything on my itch page and i'm not going to be selling products on here anymore because i want to contribute to making the hobby a more pleasant space, and because i'm a dirty freudomarxist communist who would rather not commodify my enjoyment.
A THREAD 👻
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color screenshots 😎😎😎
coming out tomorrow!! :D
racing the clock between this website going under and my laptop breaking for good so uhhhhhhhhh
this friday (11/11), releasing a retroclone of the original 1974 campaign manual!!
#FantasticMedievalCampaigns
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new blog post ❗️
having used to play 5e in high school but not by the book, i’ve been imagining what a better form of that game might’ve looked like
remove classes, make all abilities accessible, countless of them to choose from…
oops, it’s all feats! 100 of them! 🍓🍏🍇🍑🍊
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the product is a text that, even if you did not know that it was plagiarized, is conceptually confused and overall messy to read and navigate
the locations and encounters, often lifted from UVG, become—conspicuously—non-specific and absurd
check the post above for more!
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i wrote about the difference between plagiarism, copyright infringement, and general uncreativity; and how this does or doesn’t relate to intellectual property, which is something i’ve been flagrant about working against
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@rosesonhergrave
i read one book where the guy credited himself as an editor and like 🤨 okay come on either someone edited your manuscript or no one did
he was not a good writer or a good editor
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⚔️ blog post 🤺
it’s well-known that d&d was based off of the supplemental fantasy rules for gygax’s wargame ‘chainmail’, but what changed in terms of rules and procedures between the two games?
even weirder, how did gygax undo these changes in the d&d supplement ‘greyhawk’? 🧵
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i think it’s kind of interesting how the itch/twitter ttrpg ecosystem is so isolated from larger discussions on other platforms
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history blog! 👩🏫
there are a lot of misconceptions around the relationship between avalon hill’s Outdoor Survival and the original D&D—does D&D just borrow its map, or does it ask you to borrow its rules?
even if the latter is false, is there a grain of truth? let’s see!
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if i’m understanding AW right, a big difference is that moves are simply triggered when it makes sense for them to be—in other words, not everything is supposed to be pigeonholed into a move
i don’t think i see this often reapplied?
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won 1/30 of an award 😊 congrats to everyone who worked on barkeep on the borderlands!
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wrote a short blog post about trying to differentiate between good principles of DIY play versus conventions that are specific to the OSR! 📝
i feel like people often conflate these things, and feel like they have to play fantasy dungeon crawls to enjoy a certain play style
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how is demonstrating plagiarism cop behavior when the publisher raised $17k, and made more from sales, on something full of other people’s work?
cops are violent racist pigs that protect capital’s interests—i’m criticizing a publisher with more stake than i ever want to have
@lewdtwine
@traversefantasy
lol you're right. what she did was bad and she should be punished!!!! ffs cop behavior
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ttrpg discourse is the only games discourse where people try to argue about the superiority of mechanics in themselves and not like, their application and players’ experience w them as fiction conduits
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hey y’all! i wrote a blog post about movement rates of exploration between the 1974 (od&d) and 1981 (b/x) editions of DND, and about how the original game handles actions by the player party during one turn of exploration
come check it out! ⬇️
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🎲 usage dice vs hazard dice! 🎲
today i’m exploring the two solutions to reduce bookkeeping via random probability—and also seeing how they differ!
also give a short history of each, e.g. books in which they’ve been published or blog posts which have analyzed them at depth ⬇️
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i think the hustle culture around tabletop rpgs is mainly a product of the desire to produce things for an audience, and only by extension the short news cycle of social media for advertisement—which is to say there’s no reason not to take your time
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the nice thing about six rooms is that there is enough going on to have a very “complete” dungeon, while also being very simple to group together to make something bigger
below is a d10 table of different 6-room layouts, each with 6 flux space corridors!
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i’ve also critiqued old school and trad games with some decent rigor, btw—which i say because i’m not coming for lyric games in particular, but just trying to look at the hobby in general with a critical eye
basically for fun! ⬇️ thread of posts and commentary
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the good news is that the booklets are mariah skinny
the bad news is
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small blog post!
i realized you can deconstruct the outcomes of a 2d6 into d66 by treating the dice as both (1) parts of a sum and (2) digits of a number
this means, for example, you can read a sum of 7 as a d6 table!
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don’t be shy, you forgot my reply!
To whom it may concern:
@traversefantasy
is a fraud, and is incapable of defending rewriting history. They deserve neither success nor fame, and we would all better having forgotten their existence
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expanded the list of blog posts from my post last week to cover 97 posts from 2006 to 2021!! this is useful to look at the history of the OSR play style at a glance, but i hope it also serves as a nice reference to learn new ways to play at your table 😄
hope this is useful!! ⬇️
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HP’s world building is basically “what if every real world event had an analogous and concurrent magic world event” which, besides betraying the author’s view of things, is also deeply stupid and unimaginative
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wrote a blog post about introducing mouse lifespans in mausritter, and expanding my friend
@emmyverte
’s township system into a hex-based game inspired by civ 6’s city district system!
both use a six-season calendar based on characters’ star signs ☀️
hope y’all enjoy! 🐭
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i forget who all said what but the importance of authorial intent is not decided by the author
the point of the death of the author or w/e is that you don’t have to interpret works based on the author’s stated intent; the work speaks for itself and can be read on its own terms
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in the blog post, i walk you through the algorithm to discuss how each new split in the graph represents a difference between those rulesets, as well as a historical development in them!
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sorry to poll the public! which set of covers do y'all prefer?
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posted a play review of kelsey dionne’s Shadowdark, a classic d&d system but with a player interface more similar to 5e than B/X!
my verdict: it has some really interesting solutions which modernize the game, but is held back by d&d conventions
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Four chapters and 224 pages!
• Mortals & Magic: character creation, spells, and combat
• Monsters & Treasure: what it sounds like
• Fantasy Adventures: guidelines and play procedures for fantasy campaigns
• Chain of Command: Miniature combat rules
All that, and it’s free!
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if you care about trying to weaken WOTC's hold on the hobby without looking like a snake oil salesperson your better chance is to spread the message that they cannot own your play or your experiences, nor can anyone else! this is something we should worked past ages ago.
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i’ve seen two ghibli movies and i feel like describing them as uwu cozy movies is missing the point? but again, not an expert, only seen two
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new blog post!! 📝
you can turn a d66 table (or d88, or d22, or d00) into three tables in one by changing how you roll on it: either pick the highest or the lowest die to be the tens digit
calling this a “switch table”, bc you can switch between different rolls! :)
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My blog has links to the digital version on Itch and all four of the versions available to print on Lulu! Also explains what to expect from FMC, what it contains, and how it differs from other 1974 retroclones.
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WHO WOULD WIN:
🅰️ reactionary power fantasy
🅱️ liberal bourgeois appropriation
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