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Ben Torell

@bentorell.com
193 followers 178 following 146 posts

Tabletop enthusiast and general giga-nerd. Also known as "dodgepong" around the internets. TTRPG blog: gordianblade.com Itch Store: gordianblade.itch.io

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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 31/08/2026
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch is now available on DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5... Itch gives me the best cut of sales so I generally prefer people to purchase there, but I figure I might as well have it on all the major platforms in case people have a preference
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 09/06/2026
Underrated feature of @rpg-trader.bsky.social: The built-in ability to separate your "personal" (buyer) profile and "creator" (seller) profile when using with the site. I can post comments as "Ben Torell", but I can also sell my products as "Gordian Blade" without having to make a second account.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 07/06/2026
I'm pretty stoked to see @rpg-trader.bsky.social launching soon as a new #TTRPG storefront! I've always wanted a sales platform that allows me to sell digital files plus POD from Lulu. Great work @hlashbrooke.bsky.social! Give my #Lancer module a wishlist/recommend! rpg-trader.com/products/109...
rpg-trader.com
LANCER: The Demon of Dogwater Gulch on RPG Trader
A LANCER RPG one-shot adventure module for 3-5 pilots
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Lysus @lysus.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
It's the middle of February, so that means it's time for another edition of my newsletter, featuring a roundup of interesting OSR blog posts, a look at what I've been reading, and what video games and RPGs I've spent my time on this month. table46.bearblog.dev/the-46er-feb... #rpg #osr #nsr #posr
table46.bearblog.dev
The 46er - February 2026
It's been a great month for blogging! The Bloggies are in full swing, with voting about to begin. There's been many great posts - I've curated a selection of...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/01/2026
As a follow-up to my previous #TTRPG blog post about forecasting enemy intents, I go into detail about why and how you should consider running group-based initiative: gordianblade.com/if-you-haven...
gordianblade.com
If You Haven't Tried Group-Based Initiative, You're Missing Out
Man, Chrono Trigger is rad as hell. I'm not a JRPG connoisseur, but it's definitely my favorite of the genre by far. Nothing from my childhood will ever be cooler than seeing the characters in that ga...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 25/01/2026
Dusting off the blog to write about forecasting threats in #TTRPG combat and running group-based initiative: gordianblade.com/reveal-enemy...
gordianblade.com
Reveal Enemy Intents; Or, How I Run RPG Combats Like Slay The Spire
TL;DR: Tell your players what the enemies are about to do, let them respond to those threats with good plans as a group, and deliver on threats that were not mitigated. In the hit 2019 rogue-like dec...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 13/01/2026
Looking forward to running Mothership and Shadowdark at Dice + Diversions in Atlanta in a couple of weeks! First time running games at a con so it should be a good time. My games are both sold out!
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 11/01/2026
My beautiful wife got me a variety pack of pens from JetPens for Christmas and I'm having fun playing with them today, drawing a familiar-looking map from memory. Pretty happy with how this turned out! Using a gray highlighter for shading is really fun.
A D&D-style dungeon map drawn on dot-grid paper surrounded by three different Japanese pens used to draw it.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/11/2025
My #Lancer #ttrpg one-shot adventure, The Demon of Dogwater Gulch, is on sale today for 50% as part of the Itch.io Creator Day sale! Check it out here for an all-time low price: gordianblade.itch.io/the-demon-of...
gordianblade.itch.io
LANCER: The Demon of Dogwater Gulch by Gordian Blade
A LANCER RPG one-shot adventure module for 3-5 pilots
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 12/10/2025
hundred dollar idea: gachapon machine that gives you new d&d characters
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 20/06/2025
Absolute cinema this morning with Telegram spammers
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 10/06/2025
Just uploaded a fun #ttrpg side project: Printable Trait and Role cards for FIST: Ultra by @claymorerpgs.bsky.social: gordianblade.itch.io/fist-ultra-p... These cards help my players make new characters in a snap, as easy as drawing 1 Role and 2 Trait cards and you're good to go!
gordianblade.itch.io
Printable Trait and Role Cards for FIST: Ultra by Gordian Blade
Printable cards for quick and easy FIST: Ultra character creation
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Reposted by Ben Torell
Billy Domineau 🇵🇸 @billydomineau.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Ugh I’m getting so many of these
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 11/04/2025
So uhhhhhhh anybody know a good wedding planner around Atlanta
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 17/03/2025
#TTRPG GMs: Suppose you had 2 hours to run an adventure for a group of mostly-new players. What system and adventure do you run?
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 14/03/2025
👀👀👀
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 01/03/2025
Ok, doodling on a tablet is very fun...
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Reposted by Ben Torell
Dani Calzone @danicalzone.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Macrodata refinement #severance
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/02/2025
I think I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to cancel my Adobe subscription.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 27/02/2025
#OSR #TTRPG Folks: What modules would you say nail both vibes (evocative, imaginative, inspiring) and usability (concise, well-structured, easy to reference)? I'll start: Valley of Flowers has immaculate tone and is packed with incredible ideas while being well-written and designed. S-tier module!
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 23/02/2025
Great video from @techconnectify.bsky.social about pushing back against algorithmic content curation. It's definitely been something I've bee feeling more strongly lately, moving back towards blogs and RSS instead of relying on big tech to do it all for me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJp...
youtube.com
Algorithms are breaking how we think
YouTube video by Technology Connections
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 20/02/2025
Look, I'm super in favor of de-Googling, and I've been using alternative search engines like Duck Duck Go and Brave through Firefox for a while, but... they are still not as good as Google as a search engine. Too many times I have to swap to Google to get a result the others won't give me.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 19/02/2025
Hyped for the Liminal Horror Deluxe campaign -- such a great and easy go-to modern horror system.
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Goblin Archives @goblinarchives.itch.io · 16/02/2025
Liminal Horror Winter Giveaway Enter to win a bundle of LH goodies by March 2nd Multiple ways to enter: - follow: liminalhorrorrpg.com/deluxe - Bsky: Repost the Giveaway on bsky - Bsky: Quote repost the Giveaway on bsky - Substack: Follow the Goblin Archives Substack goblinarchives.substack.com
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Tom Bloom @orbitaldropkick.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Checking out the lancer rpg one shot game jam, tons of cool stuff in here: itch.io/jam/lancer-o...
itch.io
Submissions to LANCER One-Shot Module Jam
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 04/02/2025
time to add elmo to the blocked word lists
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 04/02/2025
Dammit. I want to run an RPG campaign in the Android universe and I don't want to use Shadow of the Beanstalk/Genesys, so I'm nerd-sniping myself into writing a Cities Without Number + Stars Without Number mashup
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 30/01/2025
I'm really glad I took the time to learn good typography and layout lessons while writing The Demon of Dogwater Gulch. It has helped me in my day-to-day life, even at work, improving basically all my written communication. Information design is for more than RPGs and technical manuals!
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 29/01/2025
Very glad I moved my main blog to a self-hosted Ghost site. There's really no other viable option. As long as you're hosting on someone else's dime, you're going to be beholden to them.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/01/2025
My tests of the 14b Qwen distill of Deepseek R1 are going great, nothing to see here
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/01/2025
I'm very excited to run His Majesty the Worm on Thursday but this is the second game in a row that I've run that seems wildly difficult to run as a one-shot. I feel like 80% of my prep has been making reference material and pregens when I'd really rather my prep just be limited to the adventure.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 27/01/2025
(Spoilers for Tomb of Golden Ghosts from His Majesty the Worm) Having fun playing with a new IRL GM setup, getting ready to run His Majesty the Worm. I'm tickled by the idea of using a three-ring binder as a GM screen of sorts, without creating too large of a barrier between myself and the players.
A three-ring binder on a book stand with ttrpg adventure notes, a map, tarot cards, and notepad
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 22/01/2025
Prepping for a one-shot of His Majesty The Worm last night, doing some "goldfishing" of the Meatgrinder table, just drawing new encounters with each dungeon turn and imagining player reactions. I was struck by how much of the dungeon resides on the encounter table, maybe more than the map key?
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 22/01/2025
Got a pair of notifications today saying that Grimwild was release, and a new game called Glumdark just launched on Kickstarter. NSR TTRPGs really have a vibe, don't they I'm just gonna name my game Cave Losers
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 17/01/2025
Now that my Lancer adventure is published (just waiting for a marketing push), I'm finally turning my attention back to His Majesty The Worm. Hoping to run a one shot of it within the next couple weeks. Meanwhile: coming up with new Dungeon Seeds for a HMTW Zungeon... rezuaq.be/new-area/
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 14/01/2025
One of the last steps in getting this past the finish line was editing. I went back and forth quite a bit deciding whether to get this edited, and I'm glad I did. Publishing a TTRPG module without send it to an editor is like selling furniture without sanding it.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 14/01/2025
My #Lancer #TTRPG adventure, The Demon of Dogwater Gulch, is finally released! This has been an amazing and educational experience, and I'm thrilled to finally get this into people's hands. Enjoy! If you can't buy it now, feel free to grab a community copy. gordianblade.itch.io/the-demon-of...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 12/01/2025
At long last, I've published my article on making NPC Faction Rosters in the #Lancer #TTRPG. This massively improved my campaign for the better and ought to be useful for anyone running a long-term Lancer campaign! gordianblade.com/supercharge-...
gordianblade.com
Supercharge Your Lancer Campaign with Faction Rosters
One of the best decisions I made when I ran my last Lancer campaign was putting together a faction roster. Instead of making new bespoke NPCs for every single combat, I made a list of 9 NPC "builds" t...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 07/01/2025
#Lancer #TTRPG GM Tip: If you're playing in person and suddenly need a map for a combat, break out 15-20 d6's and roll them on a blank hex map, and draw terrain based on their results: 1-3: Size 1 4-5: Size 2 6: Size 3 (Examples featuring terrain from The Upgrade Factory on Etsy)
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 06/01/2025
Looking at some doodles I did for my module, I actually really kind of like this one overlooking the gulch from Porthull. It uses an older version of the map, but I think I was onto something here. Might clean it up into some sharpie lineart and put it in the module somewhere, if I have time.
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 06/01/2025
I wrote a "pre-postmortem" while the thoughts are still fresh in my mind regarding publishing (such as it is) my first #TTRPG adventure: gordianblade.com/the-demon-of...
gordianblade.com
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch Pre-Postmortem
I did it! I published my first RPG module! Here it is: https://gordianblade.itch.io/the-demon-of-dogwater-gulch That is, it's mostly published. It's still in a WIP/early access/beta stage. Listen, a ...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 05/01/2025
My #Lancer #TTRPG one-shot module, "The Demon of Dogwater Gulch", is out in early access! I'm really happy with how it has come along. The One-Shot Jam may be coming to a close, but I'll be continuing to work on and polish the module in the future. Grab it here: gordianblade.itch.io/the-demon-of...
gordianblade.itch.io
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch by Gordian Blade
An Introductory LANCER One-shot for 3-5 LL0 Pilots
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 02/01/2025
Had a great time running my playtest of #Lancer #TTRPG at @levelupgames.bsky.social last night!
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 30/12/2024
Sometimes when you're working on sumething and need to be in the zone, you just gotta put Fluvial Beat Deposits on repeat literally for hours
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 28/12/2024
Fun arts and crafts for #Lancer #ttrpg today
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 26/12/2024
#Lancer #TTRPG players and GMs: What are the biggest pain points that you want to see solved in a published Lancer one-shot? What has nobody done before that you want to see done? The Lancer one-shot jam is live, and I already have a rad idea I'm working on. Looking forward to sharing it!
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 17/12/2024
Exactly why I started self-hosting my blog with @ghost.org bsky.app/profile/katz...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 16/12/2024
#TTRPG Artists: I'm looking to dip my toe into RPG art, specifically digital art. When it comes to the size of your drawing surface, is bigger always better? Looking into getting a drawing tablet, but not sure if, say, a 12.4" display is dramatically better than 10.9" for drawing. Thoughts?
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SachaGoat @sachagoat.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
The Bloggies are back for 2024 (and with two new categories)! sachagoat.blot.im/the-bloggies...
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Ben Torell @bentorell.com · 01/12/2024
Nominations for the 2024 Bloggies are open! Hype! sachagoat.blot.im/the-bloggies... The Bloggies are always an absolute treasure trove of amazing content published by the TTRPG blogging community, and I love reading through the excellent posts featured in the event.
sachagoat.blot.im
The BLOGGIES 2024: Call for Nominations! - sachagoat
The BLOGGIES are back, and it’s time to celebrate the best of the TTRPG blogging community! Hey! I’m Sacha (or SachaGoat). I am not a TTRPG creator,
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