Thursday, 16 October 2025

The Last Temptation of the DM: Why a Living Breathing World Needs Systematising

›
Is it possible to create a sandbox that is a 'living, breathing world'? No. It is possible to create one that to all intents and pur...
38 comments:
Tuesday, 14 October 2025

Teaching Tricks to Lego Cars: Being an NPC talking to an NPC

›
At the pub the other night a friend of mine was recounting an episode from the Tired Parent Wars. Apparently, his young son has got into a r...
8 comments:
Thursday, 9 October 2025

But Why Must Evil Barons and Vampire Counts Intervene?

›
In my most recent post and various others over the years , I made the case that the default OSR-style fantasy sandbox (and I suppose any ot...
27 comments:
Tuesday, 7 October 2025

Must the World Be Saved?

›
It is hard to reflect objectively on the nature of a book that is so well-known and which has been so influential as The Lord of the Rings ....
31 comments:
Thursday, 2 October 2025

The Quadrants of Modern Fantasy

›
An entertaining recent episode of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy brought up the question of how to distinguish the genre of sword & sor...
21 comments:
Tuesday, 30 September 2025

All Work and No Play Makes Noisms a [Insert Insult of Choice Here]

›
For the past six weeks, this blog has lain in quiscence. There is a simple reason for this: I had too much going on. What I learned this sum...
9 comments:
Tuesday, 12 August 2025

The 'I Want' PC

›
Readers who do not live in the dank earth beneath rocks with only woodlice and earthworms for company will no doubt have heard of something ...
8 comments:
Friday, 8 August 2025

The Roundabout Animal Fantasy World

›
This is a picture of ' the most dangerous roundabout ' in the North East of England, not far from where I work. The persistent local...
3 comments:
Tuesday, 5 August 2025

Monster Manual Deadly 60

›
Do Americans know about  Deadly 60 ? This is a kids' wildlife programme that has been aired on the BBC since 2009; the conceit is that t...
3 comments:
Friday, 25 July 2025

Lie Back and Think of Rivendell

›
In Leviathan , Thomas Hobbes raises the important question of elf reproduction  avant la lettre when he opines that Adam and Eve could not h...
43 comments: