2012-12-24 Recommended PPG Blog Posts For This Year

I think of myself as an Old School RPG blogger. Looking back, these are the posts I’d recommend.

• 2012-01-24 Changing Gameplay Over Time*: “The promise of ever changing game play is what makes D&D interesting. The reason this works, I think, is because the spells you gain don’t simply scale. The game changes if you can be invisible and fly. The game changes when you can dimension door and teleport. The game changes when you can travel to the planes. Outside of the specific rules, the tradition also encourages changes to the game when you reach name level and build a stronghold, and it changes once more when you start to forge alliances with and wage wars against neighbors.”

=> 2012-01-24 Changing Gameplay Over Time

• 2012-02-09 How To Write A Module*: I finally finished Caverns of Slime in 2012. This blog post is a write up of the guidelines I used to write this high level adventure.

=> 2012-02-09 How To Write A Module | Caverns of Slime

• 2012-02-09 Social Skills Revisited*: This is more of a link to an article Courtney wrote on his blog regarding interactions with non-player characters. In terms of my approach to the game, Courtney remains one the most influential bloggers. “I enjoy the acting at the table because it’s funny. That’s why I prefer not to replace social interactions with dice rolling. But that doesn’t mean that social interactions cannot be quantified. Have a list of needs, traits and desires ready and pick two.”

=> 2012-02-09 Social Skills Revisited

• 2012-02-18 Ode to Ode to Black Dougal*: “Reading Ode to Black Dougal really made me appreciate the Basic/Expert edition of D&D by Moldvay, Cook & Marsh. Let me link to his awesome series, BX is my Favorite.”

=> 2012-02-18 Ode to Ode to Black Dougal

• *2012-02-28 I don't like Bennies**: “I’d rather agonize over a decision to fight, I’d rather weep because of the blows of fate bringing me down (and not because I made a deal with the referee and got a fate point for it but because I made a mistake).”

• 2012-03-04 Old School Fanzines*: Basically a list of links to RPG fanzines. I assume this might remain a useful resource for a few years.

=> 2012-03-04 Old School Fanzines

• *2012-05-09 Commenting As I Go (1PDC)**:

=> 2012-05-09 Commenting As I Go (1PDC)

• 2012-05-12 More One Page Dungeon Recommendations*:

=> 2012-05-12 More One Page Dungeon Recommendations

• 2012-05-13 More Recommended Dungeons*:

=> 2012-05-13 More Recommended Dungeons

• 2012-05-22 Even More Recommended Dungeons*:

=> 2012-05-22 Even More Recommended Dungeons

• 2012-05-30 The Last Batch Of Favorites*: I’ve run the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 again and these are the entries I personally recommend. If you don’t have the time to look through them all, look through these.

=> 2012-05-30 The Last Batch Of Favorites | One Page Dungeon Contest 2012

• 2012-05-22 Thinking About Solar System RPG*: A return to the topics of this year: I like change over time, I don’t like unified resolution mechanics. “Abstract combat, abstract conflict resolution, and I’m wondering whether as a gamer, I might prefer more grounding.”

=> 2012-05-22 Thinking About Solar System RPG

• 2012-05-15 The Forgotten Depths*: I really liked inventing monster stats for this One Page “Dungeon” (actually a one page hexcrawl). This is when I decided that I want to quickly invent my own monster stats when writing stuff up so that I’m no longer bound by any licensing terms.

=> 2012-05-15 The Forgotten Depths | a one page hexcrawl | my own monster stats

• 2012-06-20 Hexcrawl Procedure*: The step-by-step instructions of how I run my hexcrawls and the assumptions I’m making. Something to add to my Swiss Referee Style Manual.

=> 2012-06-20 Hexcrawl Procedure | Swiss Referee Style Manual

• 2012-07-06 Training Players*: How I handle lies, promises and torture at my table. Basically, I don’t lie to my players, the non-player characters keep their promises and I don’t want to hear about torture at my table.

=> 2012-07-06 Training Players

• 2012-08-15 Unbalanced Encounters Are Fun*: “I think the key here is that what brings me back to the gaming table is the same thing that makes slot machines addictive. It’s called the variable ratio reinforcement schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which the number of responses necessary to produce reinforcement varies from trial to trial, according to Wikipedia.”

=> 2012-08-15 Unbalanced Encounters Are Fun

• 2012-08-24 Ursomancy*: The first of a handful of posts where I tried to extract useful bits from my Caverns of Slime adventure. I feel that these bits make a nice blog post, allow people to comment, allow people to learn about the adventure without having to download and read more than thirty pages. I know that I download a lot of stuff that I end up not reading.

=> 2012-08-24 Ursomancy | Caverns of Slime

• 2012-09-01 SVG Character Sheet*: I posted a number of times about the a little web application I wrote that generates random Labyrinth Lord characters including random equipment. You can also use it to just link to a good looking character sheet of your own from a forum, wiki or blog. All the values shown can be changed using URL parameters.

=> 2012-09-01 SVG Character Sheet

• 2012-10-11 Traveller, Spelljammer, Planescape*: My campaign had taken a turn towards Planescape and Spelljammer, and I discovered that I could use the Traveller subsector random map generator for my Fantasy campaign.

=> 2012-10-11 Traveller, Spelljammer, Planescape

• 2012-11-17 How To Build A Dungeon*: Much like the hexcrawl procedure I had posted earlier this year, this post talks about three dungeons I used in my games and how I went about developing them.

=> 2012-11-17 How To Build A Dungeon

And I think that’s it! The blog posts I returned to, the blog posts I felt are worthy of being read again. If you want more stuff to read, there is a similar overview for 2011.

=> there is a similar overview for 2011

​#RPG ​#Retrospective