Design

  • Spacegod Pirates

    A few months ago, I started writing about Rogue Trader, then didn’t finish the project. So I decided to just post my unfinished thoughts and writing, because I’ve moved onto other things. Consider this a design exorcism. Part 1 A few years ago, I decided to work on Advanced Fantasy Dungeons live here on Playful Continue reading

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  • SLIMDNGN 0.7

    I just release a HUGE SLIMDNGN update this morning! In terms of rules revisions, it’s pretty minor except that I’ve excised the character rules entirely from what I’m now called SLIMDNGN CORE and have written 36 classes all with their own unique class sheets and rules specific to them, as well as spells lists and Continue reading

  • Double-overloading the Random Encounter Table

    Over on Prismatic Wasteland, we have a very cool way to roll just 3d6 to tell you what monster, how many monsters, the distance they’re at, their reaction, and whether the players are surprised by this all. It’s elegant as heck at the front end, and takes advantage of the power of 3d6, but because Continue reading

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  • SLMDNGN Update

    SLMDNGN, my slim dungeon-crawler, has just received an update. I’m really enjoying playing this hyper-light B/X /GLOG fork, so I’m finding little tweaks. The new version separates the core rules and character creation, so that players can create their characters using the character sheet. Gran has also generously provided a Portuguese translation for any Portuguese-speaking Continue reading

  • SLMDNGN Design Notes

    Advanced Fantasy Dungeons was a whole lotta maximalist design. You might be surprised to find that’s not what I usually play, and I’m craving simplicity. So I wrote SLMDNGN. Today. You can download it here for free. The design principles: I drew from Skerples’ GLOG hack Many Rats on Sticks and Blades in the Dark Continue reading

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  • Chekhov’s Toolbox: Complexity and intratextuality

    The projects I write tend to spiral out of control. Whenever I find a glimmer that gets me excited, I add in a note that says something to the effect of: Who else in the world cares about this? It looks like this. I’m writing about a small frontier city, and there’s a town square. Continue reading

  • Problem Stacking

    I saw a TikTok (which thereafter disappeared into the algorithm) that talked about problem stacking in story writing and I was like This Needs To Be Said about module writing and home brewing adventure scenarios: Don’t give the player characters one problem. Give them many possible problems. We do this in a bunch of ways: Continue reading

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  • Red Button Monsters

    In a recent Dungeon Regular episode, the Kappa of Pachee Bridge, I drew a connection between a particular monster in that module, and the boss battles in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and The Legend of Zelda: Not The Most Recent Two. It reminds me of a 16 HP Dragon, in some senses, but leaning more Continue reading

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  • Boring swords and interesting swords

    Dan Phipps was talking about interesting swords on some discord or other, and I was talking about it in the AFD discord, and I thought the boring and interesting swords problem is worth posting about. Trick choices If you give me a choice is between a cheap, weak sword, and an expensive, good sword, in Continue reading

  • Sphereclipping Brainstorm

    I decided to read through all of the supplements and write down the compelling stuff that I’ll riff on for the zine: Random thoughts System generation Spelljammer really wants to be Traveller, or at least lacks the imagination to be something else; it’s super concerned with creating a realistic solar system, but does this less Continue reading

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Recent Posts

Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

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