The slow slog of converting posts from the old site onto the new site continues. I’ve now finished everything up through the end of 2009.
Some good stuff from 2009:
Fixing Munchkin Quest: Some house rules that helped fix the pacing problems of Munchkin Quest. At the time, I was very hopeful that this game would become my go-to dungeoncrawler. Unfortunately, it didn’t prove a keeper in the long run: The game is too long for its shallow mechanics and the end game bogs down. It was defunct at my table even before Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon came long. But if you’re going to play Munchkin Quest, I highly recommend this easy fix to the gameplay sequence.
A Nomenclature of D&D Editions: A one-stop guide to all 10 editions of D&D, including the covers of each edition.
Reactions to OD&D: This series received the bulk of its entries. Basically my early thoughts on reading and playing White Box-only D&D from 1974. A lot of this stuff has been influencing the design of Legends & Labyrinths.
Don’t Prep Plots: This is the core manifesto for how I design and run RPG campaigns. Everything else — the Three Clue Rule, Node-Based Scenario Design, Adversary Rosters, Megadungeons — are just various means to achieving this end.
Halls of the Mad Mage: The Halls of the Mad Mage twist back on themselves in impossible spatial contortions. Here you’ll find everfalling rivers, endless stairs, and mobius chambers. A one-page dungeon that won Best Geometry in the One Page Dungeon Contest.
Stripmining Adventure Modules: Buying an adventure module can be a gamble. This is how I hedge my bets.
So You Want to Write a Railroad?: A sarcastic inversion of Don’t Prep Plots.
In other news, the arithmetic captchas for authenticating comments have proven to be a huge success. I was having 500+ spam comments hitting my spam filter every single day before implementing the captchas, which made it impossible to sort through them looking for comments which had erroneously been filtered. The math problems have essentially eliminated the spam. There’s apparently one guy from Russia who comes by every day and posts a single comment, but that’s it. (Apparently my posts on proxy translating The Seagull have convinced the Russian spammers that this is a Russian website.) This has allowed me to salvage more than a dozen comments in the last month that would otherwise have hit the bit bucket.
Finally, apologies to anyone who may be waiting for a reply to an e-mail you’ve sent. Since launching the new site I think my e-mail address has been easier to find and my inbox is insane. I’m hoping to have some time in the near future to dig through everything in there and catch up, but right now it’s completely swamped. Sorry!
