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Gus L.

@ratkingrpg.bsky.social
291 followers 101 following 235 posts

RPG blogger and author.

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Reposted by Gus L.
Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Here are 5 covers I liked this month. One of them doesn't even look like an rpg cover. It looks like junk mail. www.explorersdesign.com/covers-sept-...
explorersdesign.com
Great Covers: September '26
Great covers from across the tabletop rpg industry.
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Ben L @benlaurence.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I just released a 139 digest-sized ruleset for my upcoming Jorune campaign to my Patrons. I'll be sharing some material on my blog next week. In the meantime, if you want to see a ruleset built for large player base, living world campaigns in a psychedelic science fantasy setting, link is in bio.
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🌈 Hailey Piper 🌈 @haileypiperfights.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
King Conan as seen briefly in Conan the Barbarian (1982), now an old man, with a subtitle added to read "Our Hyborian Age is collapsing." This is a riff on the now infamous Bronze Age line from the Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey. We're all going to pretend I'm not months late making this joke.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Nice. Games take time ... "free" time even. This is part of the allure. Games are a celebration of mental freedom and creative excess. Mock time's arrow. Play games when you can. Play because you are safe, but also in defiance when you're not. Perhaps this is why commodifying games is uneasy.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Since people seem like they want to focus on how RPG rules work again, here's my contribution to this argument: alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-ma... It's getting a bit old now, but I still think it solves a lot of the nonsense.
alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com
PROCEDURALISM
SLOUCHING TOWARD PROCEDURALISM “Here we come across another, very positive feature of play : it creates order, is order. Into an imperfect...
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Mircalla @inplacesdeep.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Guy who has been blogging about pre-2000 versions of D&D for over a decade: I like D&D Someone who found it from a TTRPG feed: Um, don't you hate having to ask Jeremy Crawford for rules clarifications???
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𝖂.𝕯. @icastlight.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Big thank you to @riseupcomus.bsky.social for the fun collaboration on this! And thanks to Jon Britton @3d6downtheline.com for lending his voice to the whole thing, @bertdrawsstuff.bsky.social for lending their illos, and Gus L @ratkingrpg.bsky.social for the great worksheet!
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
A bit about how even some of the best advice for adventure design can fall apart when it becomes dogma: alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2026/07/jaqu...
alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com
"Jaquays Your Dungeon" - Another OSR Maxim
Be Cautious of Maxims As I've written before , the "OSR" loved its maxims, short phrases that try to describe shared principles and act as a...
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Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus @riseupcomus.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Alas, to be an indie RPG designer is to wear many hats, including marketer. I've talked a lot about ENNIES voting this week. I make no apologies for shilling! But, if I must advertise, I should at least be funny. That's why I put together the... CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVERTISEMENT (CYOA)
docs.google.com
Designing Dungeons CYOA
1. It's pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a g̷̫͍͓͙͔̒̅̈́́̇̏̑͂͗̽̿͝r̷̟̬͛̓͌̐͆̈͛͐̽̓̚̚͝͝u̵̗̭̗̤̭̤͖̱̹̠̙͎̝̲̼͈̩̿̇̒̐̌̌̃̄̏̍́̀͋̅̋͘͝ẻ̶̡̧̱̜͚̲̗̞̘̩̼͎̬̘̲͔̽͑̀͋͑͗̓̒. - You cautiously grope through the darkness. ...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Vote for this - it's the sort of thoughtful, free, creative, and helpful tool that reminds me of the best of the long vanished OSR culture. Plus it helps make dungeon adventures.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
When it comes to RPG adventure creation I applaud both the bullet point fans and the paragraph partisans ... as long as you are writing it yourself and using your human brain. If you are using LLMs for the hobby though ... it doesn't matter what you do - you're bad and you should feel bad.
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Casey G. @caseyg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Reminder that Voidfighter is very on sale on the Osprey website. Order two games and get free shipping. Nice. www.ospreypublishing.com/us/voidfight...
ospreypublishing.com
Voidfighter
A streamlined wargame for cinematic space dogfights.Voidfighter is a wargame of space-fighter combat where players pilot their squadron, perform special maneuve…
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
I need to get back to drawing dragons and finish writing one of those dragon adventures ...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
RPG dungeon design inspiration is everywhere. I've decided to fill this one with very annoyed/Rilkeian angels. Also it needs a basement.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
A question I meant to put in this original post... What level is appropriate for a beholder encounter? In Greyhawk and AD&D give beholders don't have HD, and 5E has them CR rated for at least 10th level parties. My own thought is that a beholder is a serious challenge for a 6-9th level party?
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I have once again produced RPG content. alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2026/04/ever...
alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com
Every Angel is Terrifying...
Reskinning the Beholder This is an attempt to reskin Dungeons & Dragons classic weird and terrifying monster the Beholder in a way that work...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
The Post-OSR is so tiresome ... let's fight about keying design. Bullet point vs. paragraphs... framed as artistry vs. utility. Ugh. 1) We had this discussion in 2016-2019 - productively. 2) Information/Communication design depends on context and designer subjectivity. 3) There is no one true way.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
I spent literally entire rainy days playing this game in the late 80's on the C64. Usually against my neighborhood friends. So much beheading. Good sprite work and surprisingly fluid controls for the era.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I'm not saying imagination and poetic writing are bad... but if you're writing an RPG adventure, your monsters need more then lore, adjectives, and similes ... In the end it's a game and that means its parts need to work under the rules and structure that exist. You have to do both art and design.
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𝖂.𝕯. @icastlight.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
The past couple of days I’ve dropped links from the course to folks stumped on some aspect of dungeon design- it helped them break through! So give it a listen or jump around in the course itself-each piece is semi-self contained
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jay Dragon is unstoppable @jdragsky.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
a response to the @rascal.news article on yazeba's bed & breakfast, clarifying some misunderstandings and (hopefully) providing a clearer explanation of what happened possumcreek.medium.com/a-response-t...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Triumph of the Guillotine in Hell (1795) is a very weird allegorical painting by Nicolas-Antoine Taunay. I wouldn't call it sympathetic to revolutionary violence, but would also note that the Jacobians invading hell in it are executing demons. The penalties of misrule I guess?
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Oh look a hit piece about a successful TTRPG creator in the micro-payment clickbait media... Am I old fashioned thinking journalists should have financial and legal literacy when discussing business deals gone wrong? ... at least if the goal is journalism and not whatever that was ...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Just so you all know this (overly) linear map is also from a Jennell Jaquays' product... Loops are good, but are neither necessary or sufficient for good map design.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Apparently there's some kind of Story Games/OSR argument on here somewhere? Two funny things about this: 1) The OSR has been dead since at least 2020. 2) Story Games and the OSR are basically the same thing. They need to hug it out and make up. Deal with the real enemy ... Collectible Card games.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
I'd argue that Zedeck is being to generous here - the "Heist" as a modern narrative concept is rooted in lionizing risk taking and cleverness as a means of acquiring unearned wealth outside of the structures of law or community. It is derived from the Western's narrative of heroic individualism.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
A thought on RPG location design ... I am so so tired of tombs and ruined castles. The real world in infinitely more inventive. Consider instead the first "modern" observatory in Europe - Uraniborg - a pre-telescope astronomy island, including the "underground observatory" Stjerneborg ...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Still illustrating Bones of Bronze - it needs more skeletons.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Welcome to the barrow... Additional Bones of Bronze art - part of why it's taken so long is because it's just a lot of skeletons...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Another piece of interior art for Bones of Bronze - my upcoming five level dungeon set in the Crystal Frontier's Barrow Fields.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Leo's a chill creator ... makes good stuff. Don't steal it to sell, but if you must ... credit him. This is not a big ask.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
So the plagiarists and grifters are still involved in the Post-OSR space... Not shocking - it's the same shifty, yelling crew as always. Silver lining ... they seem to be recruiting very slowly and their work is still bad ... the mirror of the "TrvOSR" chud boys. Solution? Make good things.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
This was a great campaign - very freeform sprawling, but one where so many detail and player initiated goals arose from play. I wish we'd been able to go on a bit longer - as it was ripe to turn into a domain game with dinosaur riding armies clashing in the wastes.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
I have no idea what any of this means - maybe "RPG blogging isn't dead"? It sure is cool though.
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elmcat @elmc.at · 18/11/2025
Added a community detection algorithm to the data and it found five clusters. The layout now forms a pentagram unintentionally fitting for this little satanic panic hobby. Here's a fun scroll through the years
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𝖂.𝕯. @icastlight.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
If you ever thought, "Damn I love Fallout", then here is one woman you can thank for that legacy.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Serwer is obviously someone with a good understanding of D&D. I also agree with his thesis on Musk and co ... but I'd suggest that fantasy rpgs are less reactionary/conservative coded when they allow player ethical decision making - including the choice to be horrible.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
I blogged yesterday - it's been months. This is just a little thing but I think it could be helpful for folks designing dungeons. It's the result of chatting with @icastlight.bsky.social who was so kind as to post a link yesterday.
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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
I love award shows. It's no secret. It's why I've spent months writing, refining, and trying to distill my Ennies judging experience. It's a 4-part series (I know, I know). One article a day. Today's lays out my goals and puts the focus on awards in general. www.explorersdesign.com/ennies-1/
explorersdesign.com
The Awards Debrief 2025
An in-depth look at the Ennie Awards, its process, design, and role from the perspective of one former judge.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Some more Bones of Bronze Art - a Mellified Royal - one of the Palace Queens of old Sildvar laid to rest in a sealed coffin of magically puissant honey and revived by the corrupting sorcery of the Iron Barrow.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
This is good. I wish I had more to say on it, but it's just good sense.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Deep in the red rock beneath the Iron Barrow, the bronze bulls still haunt the catacombs - automations maintained by deathless smiths at a forge of cold fire.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Still drawing away slowly on the art for Bones of Bronze, which is now through its final edits.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
I've said elsewhere that while I am fond of Jay and Jay's thought is good, I don't entirely degree with this manifesto. That also means I largely agree with it. An RPG is best when player desire is in conflict with some of the rules, and when the game questions itself. You can find this playing B2.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
I haven't played miniature based games since the mid 90's, but I still follow Casey's work. He's chill and amusing but also thinks hard about his rulesets and is never weighed done by that fussy gravitas that seems endemic in the wargames space (sorry mini's peeps - you have a few tedious people).
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Lazy_Litch @lazylitch.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
I have three dark fantasy print bundles left here: mana-meltdown.backerkit.com/hosted_preor... Last chance to grab one before next print run
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Casey G. @caseyg.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Hey that's my game. Using your D&D dice for wargames is objectively 46% better than just using six siders.
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
WD put this together to be small but allow exploration - a hard task and while space constraints are always limiting I think he succeeded and has included some weird wizardly touches that don't feel "gonzo" but manage to feel very Appendix N fantasy.
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Marcia B. @traversefantasy.itch.io · 03/08/2025
part 2! regardless of whether or not we know which author contributed which passages, can we poke major tendencies and axes of difference across od&d? and do the poles of such axes correlate? traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2025/08/od-h...
traversefantasy.blogspot.com
OD&Documentary Hypothesis, Part 2: Characterizing G&A
( Previous Post ) I’m going to invoke the death of the author here before anyone else does (never mind). It’s easy to talk and argue about...
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Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
I helped a friend out a drew Amanda a mediocre map - she made it look pretty good.
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