Design

  • Eight Intangible Tips for Editing Your TTRPG Manuscript

    So much editing “advice” given in TTRPGs is basic copyediting advice. An example is Sams’ recent post, but it’s just one example among many. Why? RPGs aren’t journalism, so the AP Stylebook (or New Yorker House Style, or Elements of Style, or etc. etc.) doesn’t apply, and even if we did have a unified style… Continue reading

  • Actionable Insights in the Town

    Let’s be frank, you don’t navigate a town — or a city — like you navigate a dungeon. It’s silly to do design your town that way. How do we facilitate interesting navigation in a town or city setting? “…the reason we see tentative play in things like the OSR — where people are tapping… Continue reading

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  • Crowdfunding Debrief: Curse of Mizzling Grove

    So, for Zinequest in February 2024, I ran a crowdfunding campaign for a module in zine format called Curse of Mizzling Grove. My previous zines, Ludicrous Compendium and Tattoopunk Antebible, were both stocked by US distributors, but I wanted to avoid the complications involved commissions and stocking this time around, and so I’d resigned myself… Continue reading

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  • An Overloaded Restocking Procedure

    I like Chris’s procedure for its simplicity. I also like John’s procedure, but it’s too complex. Chris loses something for its lack of complexity — it requires a little too much of my input, and I want to be able to restock on the way home when I have a migraine. John’s is the opposite:… Continue reading

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  • 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

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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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