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Hmm...I wonder whether I should self-nominate for my suggestions how to rework the basic Kuro RPG campaign:smile:.

Either way, I want to nominate a series of posts by Chris Kubasik,
 
The city of infinite ruin. A city whose outskirts are slowly being dragged into the middle, which paradoxically gets larger and more complex as you get deeper. Go looking for your great-grandfather's shack and you might find it's transformed into a Gormenghast-style castle in which a dozen dynasties of your family rose and fell, surrounded by miles of farmland.
 
Apologies for the shameless self-promotion...

This is a decade old now but they still work: my 11 house rules to help make your old school D&D-ish game have more of a 'sword and sorcery' flavour. (They were designed for S&W, but most will work with 0D&D, B/X D&D, AD&D, etc.)

Many of these house rules eventually were integrated in Crypts & Things...
 
The Indefinite Train. Each carriage is a separate community-sourced mini-dungeon.

(I'm posting this partly because I'd like more people to contribute. I've submitted a couple of cars and want to submit a couple more, but don't want to be that single contributor who overwhelms everyone else's colour through sheer volume.)
 
The Indefinite Train. Each carriage is a separate community-sourced mini-dungeon.

(I'm posting this partly because I'd like more people to contribute. I've submitted a couple of cars and want to submit a couple more, but don't want to be that single contributor who overwhelms everyone else's colour through sheer volume.)

That’s cool. Maybe I should take a shot at a one page dungeon. It’s been a while since I homebrewed anything. I’m a bit mystified by the OSR term Gygaxian Democracy as I’ve never seen Gygax advocate for anything like that in his writing unless they just mean his early statements to make the game your own?
 
I've been throughly enjoying the Gygaxian Democracy series over at Playing DnD with Porn Stars. Basically, Zak posts some kind of prompt - a table to fill in, a keyed dungeon to stock, a list of villians - and the rest of us provide the rest. Crowdsourced DM material, in other words.
From some blog post that I found with Google.
 
That’s cool. Maybe I should take a shot at a one page dungeon. It’s been a while since I homebrewed anything. I’m a bit mystified by the OSR term Gygaxian Democracy as I’ve never seen Gygax advocate for anything like that in his writing unless they just mean his early statements to make the game your own?
People just like slapping the word Gygaxian onto gaming ideas. It's like the term Gygaxian naturalism for D&D worlds where all the ecology and interactions between creatures are carefully worked out. Yet, in looking at Gygax's work, he leans a lot closer to the funhouse school of design. If there is a person that I associate with a naturalist approach, it is Ed Greenwood, who wrote all those "Ecology of.." articles in the early days of Dragon.
 
People just like slapping the word Gygaxian onto gaming ideas. It's like the term Gygaxian naturalism for D&D worlds where all the ecology and interactions between creatures are carefully worked out. Yet, in looking at Gygax's work, he leans a lot closer to the funhouse school of design. If there is a person that I associate with a naturalist approach, it is Ed Greenwood, who wrote all those "Ecology of.." articles in the early days of Dragon.

James Malizewski coined the term in reference to the AD&D1 Monster Manual proclivity to dwell on “naturalistic” detail that added depth to monsters, making them more than foils to the PCs’ ambitions.

(Incidentally that blog post is worth reading for the dissent in the comments — someone brings up early criticism of D&D as “unrealistic” and props up the contrast with more “naturalistic” games like C&S and Harn.)

But Ed really elevated it to an art form, I guess. Reading up on Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster’s Forgotten Realms, I suppose it becomes apparent that Ed was an early adherent of (if you’ll pardon another Malizewski-ism) the “Silver Age D&D” school of thought and setting design.
 
James Malizewski coined the term in reference to the AD&D1 Monster Manual proclivity to dwell on “naturalistic” detail that added depth to monsters, making them more than foils to the PCs’ ambitions.

(Incidentally that blog post is worth reading for the dissent in the comments — someone brings up early criticism of D&D as “unrealistic” and props up the contrast with more “naturalistic” games like C&S and Harn.)

But Ed really elevated it to an art form, I guess. Reading up on Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster’s Forgotten Realms, I suppose it becomes apparent that Ed was an early adherent of (if you’ll pardon another Malizewski-ism) the “Silver Age D&D” school of thought and setting design.
That's true, but AD&D is a flawed example of Gygaxian play. He generally stayed closer to the loose OD&D/Basic style, and AD&D was an attempt to make an edition for the people that were constantly sending letters into TSR, wanting an answer to every possible question. He's trying to give people what they want.
 
That's true, but AD&D is a flawed example of Gygaxian play. He generally stayed closer to the loose OD&D/Basic style, and AD&D was an attempt to make an edition for the people that were constantly sending letters into TSR, wanting an answer to every possible question. He's trying to give people what they want.

True, and also to standardize a ruleset for tournament play.

But I suspect Gygax’ insistent defense of AD&D1 RAW on Dragon magazine may have muddied the waters regarding his play preferences.
 
True, and also to standardize a ruleset for tournament play.

But I suspect Gygax’ insistent defense of AD&D1 RAW on Dragon magazine may have muddied the waters regarding his play preferences.
Most definitely. It's a lot like when people into get into arguing about gaming on a forum, and they paint themselves into an opinion that really doesn't line up with what they actually enjoy at the table. And with Gygax, it was further complicated by being part of a booming business. He was juggling several hats at once.

It's why I prefer to rely on stories about Gygax's actual gaming over things he said about gaming.
 
James Malizewski coined the term in reference to the AD&D1 Monster Manual proclivity to dwell on “naturalistic” detail that added depth to monsters, making them more than foils to the PCs’ ambitions.

(Incidentally that blog post is worth reading for the dissent in the comments — someone brings up early criticism of D&D as “unrealistic” and props up the contrast with more “naturalistic” games like C&S and Harn.)

But Ed really elevated it to an art form, I guess. Reading up on Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster’s Forgotten Realms, I suppose it becomes apparent that Ed was an early adherent of (if you’ll pardon another Malizewski-ism) the “Silver Age D&D” school of thought and setting design.

I went back and looked at the MM after re-reading that blog and the comments.

I continue to be unconvinced that there is any strong sense of naturalism worthy of the name in the MM or in much of the work of Gygax. Just look at Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, which to me is the ultimate example of a 'zoo dungeon' (and a damn fun one btw with a great end fight).

The vast majority of the write-ups in MM have to do with combat and defining a pixie with know alignment or a percentage chance that monster X will be found with monster Z as 'naturalism' of some particularly Gygaxian bent really seems to be begging the question.
 
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I went back and looked at the MM after re-reading that blog and the comments.

I continue to be unconvinced that there is any strong sense of naturalism worthy of the name in the MM or in much of the work of Gygax. Just look at Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, which to me is the ultimate example of a 'zoo dungeon' (and a damn fun one btw with a great end fight).

The vast majority of the write-ups in MM have to do with combat and defining a pixie with know alignment or a percentage chance that monster X with be found with monster Z as 'naturalism' of some particularly Gygaxian bent really seems to be begging the question.
I kind of suspected that, but it's been many years since I read the 1st edition MM, so I didn't want to go out on a limb there.
 
Not a blog post but a cool Twitter thread with pics by @skullfungus aka. Karl Stjernberg.

 
FWIW, someone started an "old school tabletop gaming blog posts" group on MeWe for people to link to their new blog posts about old school tabletop RPGs now that Google Plus is dead. It has over 800 members ATM. Now what constitutes "old school," your guess is as good as mine.

You can find it here.
 
The Gustatory. A food court the size of a mountain, with a dragon sous chef, soup baths, self-milking minotaurs, goblin waiters... this is the kind of material I love to run, but I'm not sure how you'd justify going that far gonzo.
 
The Gustatory. A food court the size of a mountain, with a dragon sous chef, soup baths, self-milking minotaurs, goblin waiters... this is the kind of material I love to run, but I'm not sure how you'd justify going that far gonzo.
I need a justification:smile:?
Nope, what I need is a way to explain to the players where did those goblins come from, and why the minotaurs aren't attacking. The only one they've met previously was a mutant created by a potion whose formula is only known to the priests of a nasty wargod:wink:.
 
This blog has a free take on fantasy rules for Traveller. I don't know how much more gameable you can get!
 
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