writing

  • Multitudes, not mechanics

    TTRPG design consists of a bunch of different things, and the relationships and interactions between them lead to something hopefully greater than the sum of its parts.  What are the things we’re concerned with when we design a TTRPG? Well, a lot of people would say “mechanics”. You might define mechanics as the rules and Continue reading

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  • Thoughts on module writing

    I reread Curse of Mizzling Grove today (available digitally, and in print soon), and I was surprised by how good it was. I don’t know about you, but often forget how to repeat my successes, so I thought I might make some notes of my learnings from the project. Big picture: I realised reading through Continue reading

  • Compression and decompression

    Tom commented on my post Only two or three things that they felt that this approach (or at least my examples) were over-compressed, and it got me thinking. Like, obviously I disagree, but I think there’s a little more nuance to it. Firstly, yes, you can write one paragraph per thing. But, in my opinion, Continue reading

  • Only two or three things

    Just today, Luke wrote about NPCs: When writing NPCs, you can communicate 2 or 3 things, or 4 related things. Anything more than that, and you’re either going to be ignored by the person running the game, they’re going to change it, as is the nature of translation, or they’ll be checking your notes so 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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