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I was rewatching some old Mr Beast videos and I noticed a segment where he got a couple contestants to a room. The floor was covered in the stickiest glue in the world and the only thing the contestants were told was "This is the stickiest floor in the world! Now get across it.". This really got me thinking about traps in my game and making them more puzzle like. The glue floor has a number of traits that make it a good puzzle. First off it has multiple approaches to interact with it. What you see in the video is contestants throwing their shoes and socks onto the floor as platforms and jumping the remaining distance. You could power through it, push someone onto it or wash the glue away. That is a lot of different approaches to this trap and that's before magic enters the situation.   Before I continue, I understand that Mr Beast is a controversial figure. I am not sure what the controversy is about and I don't follow the slop. I don't interact with any Beast med...

Recently I have been enjoying rogue-likes and rogue-lites like Nubby's Number Factory, Dungeon Clawer and Enter the Gungeon. These games are randomly generated so that each run is different from the next. They also have permadeath. Once your little creature dies, you have to start from the beginning in a new maze. There are many disagreements on what a rogue-like is, almost as many disagreements as the question "What is the OSR?".   My white whale campaign is a rogue-lite campaign. I thought it would be easy as Rogue, the first rogue-like, the start of the genre, was inspired by the high fantasy setting of dungeons and dragons. Unfortunately I have done nothing but get closer and closer not quite getting close enough. Traditional games like 5e or Pathfinder want the GM to make balanced combats which doesn't find the randomized nature of rogue-likes so they won't do. OSR games are my best bet as they have dungeon-centric gameplay and due to the simpler character co...

For the longest time, I ran 1.5 hour campaigns. I would run them for my local youth club. There were rules set by the organizers that helped mold my prep. First, I had an 1.5 hour time slot total. That includes set-up, cleaning up after wards and gaming, so my sessions happened fast. Secondly, I only have around 4-5 sessions. I did largely oneshots for the first 2 years and the last one I did an actual campaign. My prep was guided by these rules and still help me today. Here is my prep process for that last 4 session campaign.  First off, rule system. 5e isn't big in my area. Gamestop ceased all operations in Ireland and they had the most tabletop stuff (dice and 5e mainly). I ended up creating a rough 2d6 system loosely based off of Kal Arath. At this point I would assemble all the random tables and spark tables I need. Secondly, I would prep the starting 3 missions. I like sandboxes and I found them easy to run as my players were part of a community. I prepped the mission by gett...

There is a game design phrase I heard a while ago called "The Myth of the Gun and the Myth of the Sword can't coexist". The Myth of the Sword is your power comes from you. The power you have is intrinsic to you. For example, Hulk from the MCU. I want to focus on the Myth of the Gun, where the items you carry is where you get your strength. An example would be Iron Man from the MCU. If the item breaks, you lose the power. Oftentimes monster hit all parts of the character sheet, from rust monsters attacking your equipment to ghouls taking your levels. Here is where the Myth of the gun shines as your players have to come up with creative solutions to be able to use their Guns.   This ties nicely into a old OSR tenet, "The answer is not on your character sheet". This isn't perfect as there is one part of the character sheet that you should look at and that's equipment. When I play dungeon crawlers and the situation starts to become more and more dire, the...

I really don't like the cleric class. I feel that is assumes so much out of your world. That you have gods that you can worship and dedicate your life to and that you have undead that can't be reasoned with. I find these weirdly specific and Runequest kind of helped me visualize what a different way to approach gods can look like. I like how different cultures have different (and sometimes contradictory) myths and legends. I find it harder to achieve in Dungeons and Dragons as I couldn't focus on all the gods of a setting as the cleric's god had to have an increased importance than the rest of the pantheon because the cleric's god was the only god that mattered mechanically.  Furthermore, undead are boring to me and would like to add more unusual creatures. The undead I include often talk or are smarter than the average skeleton. I am not a fan of prescriptive 100% spelled out character abilities. I like that there are multiple applications for a lot of spells and m...

I was thinking recently about how games struggle with "Why are we Dungeoning? Are we even Dragoning?". Often times the reason to go down there is there's treasure or someone needs "Heroic warriors to clear out the savage barbarians". These aren't great as one is very colonialist which isn't morally good. Gold is fine but at higher level gold starts to have less meaning as you need thousands of gp to level up. Furthermore, I find that player want to pursue their own goals once they are higher level once they better slot into the setting.  The Goal with a Dungeon job is to find a way to integrate the players into the setting faster and gives better for motivation. Below are 2 examples of a Job. What makes a Job is this: The Job must have a goal that is relevant to the setting and it has to take multiple sessions.  The job results in a level up or foreground growth if you don't use levels.  People react to your Job. Some despise you, Some love you and m...