dungeon doll

I guess this is a thing I do now! I played through Shadow of the Colossus over the winter break. I used to play it as a kid, but I could never get past the 7th colossus. I find it much easier now. It kind of felt like a victory lap. It’s such a beautiful game, and maybe everything I want out of fantasy. The blog has been nice! My attention jumps around a lot, and sometimes I take breaks from rpgs, but I think this year I proved to myself that I will keep coming back to the blog. I also like the continuity maintaining the blog gives my projects. I often start things and don’t finish them, and so having a place to put mostly-polished ideas where they aren’t just rotting in a text document has been helpful. I might end up migrating, which would probably suck, but may be for the best. I find Blogger kind of frustrating, but I’m not totally sold on other options. My RSS feed also might be kinda bricked, since my posts don’t seem to show up in people’s blogrolls for a couple hours, which is...

unified resolution systems are a big thing in modern rpg design. generally, the question i see a lot comes down to this: "why have multiple different [dice] tools for different things when you could have one system that handles everything." i used to feel this way, but since od&d has become my preferred system to a pretty strong degree, i've kind of changed my mind on it. why use multiple tools when you could just have one system? because sometimes different tools are better suited to different jobs. as i see it, od&d has three basic tools: binary checks: roll 1d6 and compare to an x-in-6 chance to check if shit happens, otherwise shit doesn't happen. usually, the chance of shit happening is a 2-in-6. use this for things you check constantly, and only want to "work" sometimes (forcing doors, listening at doors, finding secret doors, wandering monsters). your stats don't really effect how good you are at putting your ear against a door. spe...

Got to run more Palace of the Vampire Queen, with a slightly shorter session this weekend. I've been loving playing one-on-one, its been a really great change of pace! While Vampire Queen  (1976) was written post Greyhawk (1975), and expects its use, we have been playing with flat od&d, only converting stats backwards as needed. This also means we are using od&d's XP for monsters slain, which is far more generous then in Greyhawk. I think this has been working well, since treasures on the first floor are rather sparse. 

Last night I dreamt there were wolves about my city in the night. I asked someone why, and they told me where werewolves come from. Not from a bite, before that. *** They choose you. The wolves, they speak to you in dreams, from beyond the threshold of haven's home: We are the princes of the night-forest. Run with us, dance with us. Kill what you eat with your own teeth. Down the road, the farmer, you know him, but not well. Unlatch the fence. Open the door to the chicken coop. In the deepest hour, a butchering. A flock reduced to ruby feathers. The wolves, of course, keep their word. You dance with them in the night. You learn to take their shape. From here, it spreads with violence, it spreads with blood and it spreads with teeth. But where it starts, at patient zero, it is born of an act of love. wolf -- by alice

I got to run  Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976) for a dear friend today! I think it went extremely well overall, and its fun to hopefully have a game going which requires significantly less scheduling to make happen. She played multiple characters, mostly a mechanical conceit to make the dungeon work, but I loved to see the life she gave these characters (each written on a space the size of a cue card).