Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XIV

Extracted images from 1688 maps (itch.io)

D20 Things that can go wrong with too many Hirelings (Archons March On)

OSR Psychic Powers (Remixes and Revelations)

About those girls and guy playing DnD (Sarah Darkmagic)

…and again (Grognardia)

The Quieter Moments (Bastionland)

Dungeon Doors on 3d8 (Clerics Wearing Ringmail)

Neo-khuzdul (The Dwarrow Scholar)

Ringmail Medieval Battles (Clerics Wearing Ringmail)

D100 City Streets (d4 Caltrops)

D100 Anywhere but the tavern session starters (d4 Caltrops)

Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your Microcomputer

I was searching through some old files on one of my storage disks when I came across this book again: Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your Microcomputer by Les Howarth and Cheryl Evans, with a program credited to Chris Oxlade, and illustrations by various people including Chris Riddell.

It was part of the series of Usborne Gamewriters’ Guides back in the 80s, which consisted of multiple books like this, Write Your own Adventure Programsm, Computer Spy Games, etc.

If you aren’t aware about this kind of book, the actual main part of it was the program listing in the later half of the book. This kind of book was supposed to teach you programming by… literally having you type in a program command by command. Which was a way to get software out to other people when storage media for it were too expensive to include. These listings were in computer magazines all the time, I even saw a few for character generators and similar stuff in normal TTRPG magazines.

But it also gives you an explanation what those particular bits are supposed to do, and how to deal with the bugs you are certain to encounter when copying the listing into your own machine.

But before that it had to teach you what they mean with Fantasy Game (roleplaying games), what Dungeon and Dragons (TM) is, and how such a game is played, before then venturing into how they intend to translate this into a game where you are both Dungeon Master and player.

In the end this creates a sort of rogue-like.

But I find some of the implications of the text fascinating. For one it was so early in the development of CRPGs that they don’t talk about this being a game or role-playing game (in fact that term is never used), you are creating a fantasy game like DnD instead, and you are using the computer to run it. I know it’s just a small difference, but this doesn’t come from a position of consuming the game, you are CREATING it instead. It starts from the assumption that you are using this as a framework to do your own adventuring environment that is basically an extension of a tabletop game into computer space. A later chapter goes into explaining how to extend this program with your own creations. In other words, you are not supposed to be a programmer with this, you are a Dungeon Master who just happens to use the computer as a medium. Which I find a fascinating approach.

I also found this bit interesting:

You should name the document of your game rules and conditions your Book of Lore as this is the common name fantasy gamers use to describe this.

Book of Lore.

Now I can’t say I never encountered the name before, but I find the idea that this is a specific term that fantasy roleplayers use to describe… well, what exactly? A campaign Bible I guess. Maybe I should indeed call mine Books of Lore from now on.

Yes I know that lore has come to mean something else by now, but this was written in 1981, maybe this was actually a term a specific subset of gamers used.

By the way, according to the back of the book this book cost £2.25 (in 2024 money: £8.30) when it was published, but according to the inside cover you could also have them send the program on cassette and save yourself the typing… for £5.99 (2024: £22.11)

Which would make the whole book pointless I guess. But computer stuff was expensive back then.

If you are interested in this, the book has been out of print for decades now, but Usborne made this and others available for free on their website a few years ago.

Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XIII

A bit late with this one, holiday season was way too busy for my taste, and I got distracted by some retro-computing projects (like my irrational fondness for Usenet and setting up a TTRPG-focused Synchronet BBS on my Raspberry).

Free Stuff

Troika for free (including an adventure). Well, nearly free, for signing up to their newsletter

Into the Dungeon: Revived is an old school ruleset closer to Into the Odd, but with more classic theme

5E RPG Stock Art Illustrations Sample (drivethrurpg)

GM Aid

Some houserules from 1985, from the pages of L’avant garde #74 (August 1985). I think I have to think about caltrops, and of course salt against zombies (which is part of the original Haitian zombie legends and which was excised out of the Holmes edition of DnD)

Schools of Swordplay (Dice Goblin) which is an extension of Block, Dodge, Parry for Cairn, but I think the rules should be adaptable as well

Standoffs and Surprises (The Alexandrian)

The 14 challenges in TTRPGs – All the tools in your toolbox (Dawnfist Games)

Thought

On Discourse – or, how to talk about TTRPGs online (Burn after Running)

What Makes A Good Player-Facing Pointcrawl? (Widdershins Wanderings)

Why are Giants “bad” (Of Slugs and Silver)

A New Genre Itself (Grognardia)

TTRPG History

When in Rome (Grognardia)

Interview with the late Jennell Jayquays about her thoughts in creating Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia (Vintage RPG)

Random Tables

100 Dungeon Graffiti (OSR Vault)

100 Good/Evil Faction Motivations (OSR Vault)

d100 – Infernal Features & Tiefling Traits (d4 Caltrops)

d100 – Magical Rings (d4 Caltrops)

d50 more memorabila to loot (Seed of Worlds) – how do you even use a d50 table? I think there’s a second half to this I haven’t found yet

Podcasts

Podcast find: Radio Free Muncie goes through all the issues of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic book. I conclude: I have to reread the Bag Wars saga, again.

The Oldest TTRPG Forum on the Net

Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the early 80s, and which still is active and operating?

Admittedly in a much diminished state than at it’s heyday.

I don’t know if you ever heard the term Usenet before, and even if you did, if you don’t just connect it with data piracy. Because that’s what it is mostly used for nowadays.

What it started out as were discussion forums.

Back in the late 70s, after ARPANET had been created and email had been invented, a few programmers came up with an idea for an electronic bulletin board that could be read asynchronously. This was the time when computers still were only in big institutions like universities, big companies, and the military, and the whole idea was to create “a poor man’s ARPANET”. Connections between computers were rare and expensive , but possible. So these “news” started as a way to propagate articles and messages along servers that were not constantly connected to the internet. Some of the servers involved would only connect once a day to the network to transfer messages in and out (often at night because charges were lower then). A message might travel for multiple days before it reached all nodes in the network, and some of the earliest were messages about a nascent hobby popular among the people using this network: fantasy role-playing.

From what I can see the first two messages on the brand new group net.games.frp were sent out on the 12th of January 1982.

To give you an idea just how early this was: it was before the abbreviation RPG became common, people were still talking about Fantasy RolePlaying instead, so even today the group-names use the abbreviation FRP.

It’s quite a fascinating system that over time has become ever more complex and popular, before the ascent of html, hyperlinks, and the world wide web pushed it into the seedy corners of the ‘net.

Instead of having websites, Usenet is organized in newsgroups, and those groups are organized in hierarchies. There are the so called Big Eight that have a certain standard for group creation and posting (e.g. rec. for recreational topics, and comp. for topics concerning computers), and there are others, organized in one way or another (famously alt. which had lower standards for the creation of new groups).

Messages are sent to one or more groups (crossposted), distributed around the network, and people respond to these posts. Interesting discussions and arguments ensue, people get angry, flame wars ensue, other people learn something new, weird in-jokes develop, stuff happens.

All that can be read via archives, the biggest of which is Google Groups, which both is a boon and downfall of the service: Google purchased the old newsgroup archives of DejaNews back in the 90s, and integrated it in it’s Google Groups service. In a picture-perfect example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish the users of Groups had a web interface that allowed them access to their old newsgroups, access to new groups that only existed on Google, but also allowed spammers to flood the connected newsgroups with loads of unmoderated spam. Spam that recently was quoted by them as a reason to cut the connection with Usenet, bringing this phase of the network to an end.

But Usenet still is running, and most likely will be running as long as there are people willing to run servers for it. But the biggest Usenet servers nowadays are piracy servers that keep the text-part of the Usenet as more of an afterthought. At one point someone came up with a way to use the text-only format of Usenet in a way to distribute data that was binary, i.e. not purely text. And this took over most of the system.

But I am not really interested in that and never was. What I am interested in are the fantasy roleplaying parts of that network.

rec.games.frp.*

I said that the forum has been running since the late 70s, but that’s not quite correct. The original structure of Usenet grew organically from the beginning. People were creating new groups when it suited them and it seemed logical. Which soon caused some hierarchies (specifically the net. hierarchy) to swell with groups that could barely be maintained. In a great upheaval in 1987 all the groups were renamed and restructured.

Some old hands are still angry about it and will bitch about it for days. That also is Usenet.

One can argue that the fantasy roleplaying group has existed since before that time. One also could argue that it only exists since 1987. Which still is older than the World Wide Web.

Usenet is divided into hierarchies, and the frp-hierarchy is part of the rec. (recreation-hierarchy) and .games. sub-hierarchy.

There are currently 11 .frp. groups in that hierarchy:

rec.games.frp.dnd	of course… it’s the hierarchy for Dungeons and Dragons. Always one of the biggest topics of the whole FRP forums this one got it’s own group.
rec.games.frp.misc	for basically all other kinds of discussions about roleplaying games
rec.games.frp.cyber	for cyberpunk systems (e.g. Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun).
rec.games.frp.super-heroes	for superhero games
rec.games.frp.live-action	anything LARP goes here.
rec.games.frp.announce	announcements and news about products go here
rec.games.frp.industry	for all kinds of discussions about the rpg industry
rec.games.frp.storyteller	yes, this was created when the World of Darkness was big enough to demand it’s own forum
rec.games.frp.gurps	For GURPS, this part was created because while never the most popular game, it’s fans flooded the main group with so many messages about builds that it was decided to give them their own place.
rec.games.frp.advocacy	all kinds of discussions about roleplaying games as such and how they work. This is where the Forge came from back in the day
rec.games.frp.market	I guess this is for selling stuff. I have literally never seen a message in there.

Most of these lay fallow right now, with me and a few others being the only ones posting there every once in a while. I do have to admit part of it is because I don’t want to lose the that part of ttrpg history to a random deletion request for non-use.

Other TTRPG groups

The main hierarchies are not the only ones. Most normal Usenet servers carry at least the Big Eight, but most also carry others. The big other hierarchy is alt. (…definitely not named for Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists, all evidence to the contrary…), which makes it easier to create groups. This means there are a few other groups here that might be of interest, if they ever would get someone to post in them. Their structure though is not as organized as the ones in the Big 8.

alt.games.frp.adnd-util	about utilities for playing ADnD. I would say, a general groups for RPG utilities.
alt.games.adnd	for ADnD. I am not sure why this exists, maybe because the main one was too stodgy, or it was created because someone thought ADnD was sufficiently different than DnD to warrant it’s own group
alt.games.earthdawn	for Earthdawn. Remember Earthdawn?
alt.games.x-files.rpg	For the X-Files RPG. Remember that?
alt.games.whitewolf	I guess a group for White Wolf games, which is also already covered in rec.games.frp.storyteller
alt.games.tolkien.rpg	a group about playing in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

There are also local and language dependent groups around. Many languages and regions have their own hierarchies for exchanges between locals and/or in other languages.

uk.games.roleplay	group for roleplaying in the UK
de.rec.spiele.rpg.misc	general group for discussions of RPGs in German
z-netz.freizeit.rollenspiele.dsa	originally this was an Echo in a mailbox network, by now z-netz. is a small alternative German Usenet hierarchy. This particular one about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye
pl.rec.gry.rpg	Polish-language group
es.rec.juegos.rol	Spanish-language group
se.spel.rollspel	Swedish-language group
dk.fritid.rollespil	Danish-language group
fr.rec.jeux.jdf	French-language group
it.hobby.giochi.gdr	Italian-language group
hr.rec.igre.rpg	Hungarian-language group
aus.games.roleplay	Australian group

There are more, some of which I might not even find that easy because they are not on the servers I frequent (not all servers carry all groups) or are so specialized they might not be of interest to anyone but locals (e.g. saar.rec.rollenspiele exists, but I doubt many people in Saarland (the smallest of Germany’s federal states) still know Usenet exists)

Ok, ok, but how do you actually ACCESS this Usenet thingy?

That’s a bit more difficult, but not much. It used to be ISPs were all running their own news servers, this was actually the REASON you might want internet access as a private person, but that isn’t the case anymore. Google Groups is also going away, so that’s not a real option.

An easy way to check out what is being talked about on the FRP-hierarchy is campaignwiki.org/news. This server makes it possible to read and post on his own small server via a web-interface. The server is only running roleplaying-related groups, including the global FRP-hierarchy, and a few local ones that do not get carried in many other places.

Another way to access it via web browser is via web gateways. There are a few around, e.g. NovaBBS. There are a few of those around, but they might not carry all the groups (NovaBBS e.g. only rec.games.frp.dnd and .misc, because those are the ones with most activity).

The proper way to use it is of course by getting an account on a news server and adding it to your feed reader of choice. True hardcore users use terminal-based readers like tin or Gnus, but many Email programs like Mozilla Thunderbird allow you to subscribe to newsgroups.

But where do you get a news server?

Well, there are multiple free options (these are all technically text-only, although a few have some basic binary groups that allow pictures):

campaignwiki.org/news	(Switzerland) very small server, focused on ttrpg groups, also has simple web-portal
Eternal September	(Germany) popular free access server with wide range of groups
I2PN2	simple text server
NovaBBS	text server, as mentioned above also has web-portal
Solani	(Germany) server
dotsrc	(Denmark) focused on Danish users
Agency News	(New Zealand) server
Chmurka	(Poland) basic server focused on Polish users
CSIPH	basic server
Open News Network	(Germany) focused on German users
Gegeweb	(France) focused on French users
Hispagatos	(Spain) focused on Spanish users
Pasdenom	(France) focused on French users
NNTP4	(Germany) basic server

Most of these have instructions on how to connect on their websites.

Note: This is a redo of an article I wrote 13 years ago. Originally I thought I could just let that one stand like that, but just briefly reading through it I noticed things had changed dramatically in some areas. So I rewrote the whole thing from scratch.

[Video Game] Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

The last few weeks I have been unduly fascinated by Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, a 2019 game that was supposed to make the whole of human evolution playable in a breathtaking journey.

You might think that’s promising a bit much, and it is. The game released to rather critical reviews and never made the impact it was supposed to.

And I see why. The game is intentionally impenetrable. It seems in the beginning it didn’t even have the visual cues for the actions I came to rely on, and even with those barely anything is explained. The tutorial is brief and drops you directly into an intensely dangerous world, and the game delights in telling you it won’t give you further hints.

You start as a tribe of hominids about 10 million years ago (the missing link) and have to make your way to about 2.5 million years ago.

In between you have to steer your hominids, start figuring out the world (horsetail good, mushrooms uuugh but filling), invent the first tools like “stick” and “mud” (a truly versatile tool!), and, well, die a lot.

Everything seems made to kill you. Go too high up the tree and an eagle gets you, go through grass a python gets you, walk through water a crocodile eats you. And then there’s the stalker cat which often comes unannounced and pounces you. And unlike the others the cats will stalk you until they can kill you. I had one follow me from one side of one biome to the other.

In between you carry kids with you, because it’s not important what you do with your current character, unless kids see you do it and learn from it. If you do enough of a particular action neural energy will grow and new neurons will activate. In the end its a skill tree system, even if developing it needs generations, or hundreds of thousands of years and a single character will never survive it. From one generation to the next a limited amount of newly learned skills can be kept, but what you really need to get is mutations. These come randomly with new kids, but they won’t become apparent until you do an evolutionary leap. But you need them because some skills are gated by them, and you won’t be able to progress unless you have them.

It’s all very complicated and worse, barely explained.

Unlike many other games this game has nearly no fantastic elements at all. Everything is based on scientific research, there is no story at all, outside of the story of how humans start becoming bipedal and omnivorous… and start killing everything else I guess. The only element I would term fantastical are the meteors.

Danger, here be spoilers: Every once in a while you discover a new landmark and it triggers a cut scene where meteors rain down on the landscape. These will smoke for a while (multiple generations and even generational leaps), but in the end they stop. If your hominid finds them they will gain further unity with the universe, and they will get a free skill, and all kids present get a mutation. It becomes a convenient shortcut to organize an expedition to a meteor site with as many kids as possible to lock down as many mutations as possible over one or two generations. Of course it turns out all these meteor sites have some rather dangerous wildlife nearby, or are in rather inconvenient sites.

Even the actual goal of the game is barely communicated: you have to reach the last evolutionary step in the game, reaching the genus homo ergaster, and then the closing animation plays. I guess it was planned that the next part of the series show the further development, alas I don’t think the game was successful enough. It is rather niche, and the only reason I even got it was because it was part of my Humble subscription at one point. Still. It is an interesting game, and one that I spent a lot of time on. It gives you an appreciation of how far we’ve come, and how dangerous cats used to be. Or still are.

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XII

This time a few more links than last week. Maybe even too many this time.

News

Reprint of Shadowrun 1st edition in the works (enworld)

Random Tables

d100 – Weird and Whimsical Wants for Fickle Fey (d4 Caltrops)

100 Interesting Rumors (Or Potential Plot Hooks!) (OSRVault)

Cult generator – D66 Cult names, heraldry and goals! (Dawnfist Games)

Thought

“Played by friends, not strangers” (Grognardia)

I Love Underused Monsters (Tales of the Lunar Lands)

The Ten Commandments of D&D (Grognardia)

My original fantasy sandbox: ICE’s Middle-earth (Akratic Wizardry)

What Choose-Your-Adventure Books Can Teach Game Masters About Pacing and Decisions (DMDavid)

GMing with Joy: GM Tools That Can Last a Lifetime (enworld)

On Hobby Best Practices – Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 (Gorgon Bones)

Rereading OD&D: Back to the Start (Coins & Scrolls)

Mystifying and Dangerous (Grognardia)

GM Aid

The Quantum Goodbye Letter (Dice Goblin)

Writing Dungeons Without Dice (Playful Void)

Dolmenwood Dozen (d4 Caltrops)

The BECMI reaction table (Methods & Madness)

Scribes (Dice Goblin)

Magic

Yet another magic system: Chaotic Spells and Strange Charms (Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet)

Encounters

D66 Astral plane encounters (Dawnfist Games)

Friday Encounter: Peryton Party (Tales of the Lunar Lands)

Friday Encounter: Mistaken Identity (Tales from the Lunar Lands)

Terrain

Dungeon Stackers and Triangular Dungeon Stackers (The Might Be Gazebos!)

Monsters

CYTHRONS (from 2000AD’s Slaine) – Monster for Old School Fantasy & Horror (Shuttered Room)

Traveller

Right On Commander! (Elite ships for Traveller)

Papercraft

Niederkassel Dice Tower (papermau)

Sericulture Farmhouse At The Foot Of Mount Gassan (papermau)

Other Stuff

Dungeon Running Sheets (The Alexandrian)

Conan the Barbarian (Newspaper Comic Strips Blog)

Some Observations on Science Fiction Names (From the Sorceror’s Skull)

Notes from Reading “The Prairie Traveler: A Handbook for Overland Expeditions” (Whose Measure God Could Not Take)

[HârnWorld] Tool: Campaign Tracker (for DnD B/X derivatives)

I am currently going through a lot of trainings, and specifically I am doing something to work on my SQL knowledge. I only have hovered around the edges of the topic before. Some of my previous jobs involved making some basic database queries, but I never really looked further than basic database structures and simple queries.

But that got me thinking about doing a campaign database in SQL, with a better way to track all those elements that might be interesting to know for a campaign.

Now to be fair, I am not thinking about the usual wham bam 20 levels in a campaign thing 5e seems to have going on, I am talking about a multiplayer campaign in the OSR/West Marches vein where every single session might be played by different players. I think I should actually write about this ideal of a campaign I have.

“YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT” (Gygax DMG p37) and all that stuff.

But anyway… when thinking about it I remembered that years ago for my idea of a Harnworld campaign in my own Harnworld B/X derivative that got derailed quickly by parenthood and everything involved in that I made a campaign tracker spreadsheet in Google Sheets that was supposed to do a lot of this already. This was inspired by multiple other sheets I found, e.g. the old ADnD ones or the Hackmaster one. I found it a bit cumbersome to use, but mostly I was waiting for the campaign to continue which it never did, and forgot about the existence of the spreadsheet. I fully intended to improve on it, but haven’t gotten around to it for years now. It mostly is a layout without any formulas.

I did put some thought into it though, it has some Harn specific things (e.g. a tab about Godstones, which are dimensional gates in the setting), so if someone else might find it useful have a look. Maybe give me some feedback while you’re at it.

GDrive: Campaign Tracker (Harnworld) v0.1

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XI

Thought

In Defense of the Murderhobo (Grognardia)

GM Aid

Fairy Circles (Tales of the Lunar Lands)

Paper Models

The Village House (papermau)

Sasayama Castle Paper Model (papermau)

Some German Stuff

Neues vom Riesland: Eine eigene Homepage und das Tal der Klagen

Music

Dungeons and Dragons TV Channel

So I read a few articles the last few weeks about a new Dungeons and Dragons TV channel created by Hasbro which was supposed to launch soon. I didn’t look too deep into it. The modern version of Dungeons and Dragons is not really my jam. And there’s the whole mess that Wizards of the Coast tried earlier this year. But I still would have liked it to take off into the mainstream, you know, to get a larger player pool, but I doubt I would have watched it myself.

It turns out I misread. The channel is supposed to be live already. It is supposed to be live and on an actual schedule for two weeks already. So how is it? I mean, I had doubts I could even watch it without VPN or anything because I’m in Europe, but it turns out it’s worse: nobody seems to be able to watch it.

See this little video from DnD Shorts:

So, yes, there is no promotion for the channel, and the links leading to it are broken. It cannot even be found via Google or Duckduckgo as I checked. It’s supposedly available via freevee (Amazon) and Plex, but neither know what I am looking for.

It seems Dungeons and Dragons TV Channel is… dead. Already. So sudden in fact that not even the creators were informed it basically died on the vine.

There might have been some shenanigans with Hasbro selling the division that created it off to Lionsgate. That would explain how loveless the whole thing seems to be treated by the company.

Maybe it’s running somewhere, maybe those shows are in a stream somewhere. It’s just, if they are, nobody is watching them. I’d have assumed they would maybe have a Youtube channel for them, but that doesn’t seem the case either. At most you get the trailers for the shows.

One of my contacts on Mastodon mentioned he actually found it. It was hidden behind a lot of other stuff on freevee, and only had the old Animated DnD show on repeat. That doesn’t seem all that enticing.

But the whole idea made me think: wouldn’t it actually be easy to make a channel like that? Get a few Actual Play shows on board, get some other content producers to make DnD or TTRPG content, in between stream old TV shows and movies the RPG crowd is likely to like.

The only problem would be: who of the people who’d be interested in roleplaying games still watches normal TV?

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. X

I actually have not had much time this week for blogging, even reading my feeds was an issue. Which is sad because there was a rather juicy amount of stuff to be found in them. Here are the most interesting:

Random Tables

100 Fairy Peon Quests (Whose Measure God Could Not Take)

d100 Things I Had To Do Growing up a Dwarf (Elfmaids & Octopi)

d100 Halfling Hangups Growing Up (Elfmaids & Octopi)

100 Wonderous Trinkets (OSRVault)

100 Curses (OSRVault)

PAINT THE (VILLAGE) RED: A General Purpose Carousing Table (I cast light!)

Roll Your Own Kobold Tribe (Points of Inspiration)

Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities (Eldritch Fields)

Game Aids

Mist Rapier (Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity)

What to do at High Level (What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse)

10 Fantasy curses and the ritual to break them (Dawnfist Games)

Branching Factions (Space Aces)

Advanced LaTeX features and LaTeX Images for TTRPGs (Vladar’s Blog)

A take on the Monastery of the Fire Opal, including the upper levels (Dyson’s Dodehecadron)

Thought

Gods are High Level PCs (Rise up Comus!)

Monsters

You’re Sleeping on Perytons (Tales of the Lunar Lands)

OSR: Oni (Remixes and Revelations)

RPG History

Game 497: Dragons (1978) (CRPG Addict)

No Longer a Challenge (Grognardia)

Other

Desecrated Tomb paper model (papermau)