Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 30/09/2026That's the common brown terrestrial urso-stygiaform arcanovore if I remember my taxonomy. 040
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 30/09/2026It is said that a shaft dipped into the warm heartsblood of a great basilisk will shoot through stone and penetrate any armor. (1D3 shafts per great basilisk. Treats all armor as none [AC 9], shoots through stone.) 031
Reposted by Gus L.Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Here 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.comGreat Covers: September '26Great covers from across the tabletop rpg industry. 58630
Reposted by Gus L.Ben L @benlaurence.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I 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. 1357
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Don't forget the original floating eyeball/orb monster... the ophanim straight from the Book of Enoch or even Ezekiel 1:15–21... also known as "wheels of galgallin" or "the many eyed ones"... 0100
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026The difficulty I think would be to capture the core uncanny nature of the backrooms - dungeon games are hard to do slow burn horror with. I think one can do shock horror to a degree but player detachment/pawn stance makes other stuff hard? 030
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 13/09/2026One can dream? The EU may not be all it could be, and union members keep electing creepy governments ... but it feel like the only potential world power that cares even a bit about the rule of law and representative government these days... 021
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 06/09/2026I think most things in fantasy settings must smell pretty awful. Heck imagine how badly Hobbit holes smell (assuming they don't have indoor plumbing)... 130
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026This seems like a fun exercise, but I think it may be useful (at least in the spirit of old school design) to note that these 4-5 room blocks aren't "5 room dungeons" - they are imagined spaces without a narrative structure attached - no rising and falling action, no climax, just some keyed spaces. 2130
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026I studied maritime law - never got to practice - as it was all "mercenary law"* when I was looking for work. Cargo and such had largely vanished in the 2000's. *US federal private contractors overseas are mostly covered by maritime law concerns... mercenaries keep getting hurt. 040
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Absolutely! For me the 70's-80's stuff is hard to sift - reading the court cases that TSR and Gygax were involved in is where my expertise ends, but ... with and the personalities involved they add doubt to the early first hand accounts. Lee Gold is about the only grognard I trust these days. 000
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026A great sentiment! I sincerely hope it's true. I note that modern RPG fandom is a 21st century one, with corrosive social media/influencer age trends ... plus the founders of the hobby appear to have obscured much, often in the process of suing each other. I am rooting for your efforts to succeed! 100
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026I would compare Palace to its contemporary "Temple of the Frog" in the Blackmoor supplement. Temple isn't much more fleshed out, but it's got enough to be very different, including a much more complex setting and story. Early D&D seems to having been evolving rapidly and have varied playstyles. 060
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Agreed - and it's not just art - it's every form of human expertise or skill from medicine to tour guide. If it doesn't require trained hands and a trained body some ghoulish billionaire is trying to seize it with a broken chatbot version of expertise. 040
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Plus - there's a real easy way to learn to respect the ozone layer... go to New Zeeland ... walk around on a mildly sunny day without a hat. Get a "totally inexplicable" dose of sun sickness and a nasty sunburn... 000
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Nice. 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. 070
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Since 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.comPROCEDURALISMSLOUCHING TOWARD PROCEDURALISM “Here we come across another, very positive feature of play : it creates order, is order. Into an imperfect... 050
Reposted by Gus L.Mircalla @inplacesdeep.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Guy 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??? 4383
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Compounding this is that the "D&D is terrible" crowd often aggressively refuse to acknowledge that anything related to any D&D is not the thing they insist they have a moral right to hate. 060
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Yet for a dungeon crawl that's how things work - if the party decides to leave - they can. They won't usually unless there are other places they know they can go (there should be). Having goals in a dungeon is also very different then having a baked in narrative. 000
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026I don't know that it's the first "good" adventure, but Jaquays had her own great design style. I also don't much like either Castle Amber or Ravenloft precisely because the overlay of scene based atop and location based design is clumsy at best - but them I'm a dungeon crawl fan. 130
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Who? And why am I on twitter? Is this a future where I'm mind controlled by an oligarch microchip? Also again ... not my point. 000
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026With all credit to Dyson (he made this back in 2014 or something - and out of love as far as I know). 090
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026It's even worse because the OSR is dead... this is a zombie attack (against other zombies). Just don't let yourself get bitten. 031
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Wait until they hear about Trophy Dark! or Trophy Gold - noted OSR system. Clearly the work of OSR saint Dinkee Rizzle... under a pseudonym... 010
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026This seems a popular sentiment here. "Just BUY someone else's game..." Not my point. Play what you like, heck play 5.5E D&D if that works for you. My point is that TTRPGs aren't static and "RAW" is an anachronistic myth - especially for D&D, which has been hacked and house ruled since creation. 240
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2026I've had to switch to playing games in the "Bludgeons & Blasphemies" style lately. 010
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2026I think this is especially telling given that Nightwick isn't just an OSR game (and I mean OSR - Miranda's been at it for at least a decade) ... It's a notoriously deadly one designed as horror. In some ways Nightwick is closer to Trophy Dark then Greyhawk... 150
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2026There's nothing more D&D then hacking D&D into something that works... Official D&D has been going downhill since the publication of Greyhawk in 1975, while the bright spots have always been third party publications like Caverns of Thracia. 6780
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Sounds right, and long before the term "woke" was wrapped in reactionary meaning ... I maybe conflated it with a zinefest thing Fiona KS'd ... "Dischorse"? I don't think that ever went anywhere either. All for the best ... our niche of a niche conflict is some sort mystical initiate's revelation. 011
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Didn't @save.vs.totalpartykill.ca write a one page game about ttrpg beefs and discourse back in the ancient days of yore (2013 or so?). G+ was pretty cool, but it's big feature - online play - is now widely available. 110
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026It was not. I do remember some play reports from it though. 010
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 14/08/2026I love the idea of a bounty hunting campaign for Crystal Frontier - In my home campaign the players (2 who were new from 5E) decided to become "monster hunters" ... which while not a wise decision in the setting was a lot of fun. Manticore bandits ensued. 010
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 11/08/2026Some Elvish dis-track vibes here. Needs more interjections of "West Side" here to really match the energy of "Hit 'Em Up". 030
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 03/08/2026"Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon; burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc." 020
Reposted by Gus L.𝖂.𝕯. @icastlight.bsky.social · 01/08/2026Big 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! 53813
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/07/2026I also see this is a lot of the contemporary takes on old D&D. Yes everyone is armed to the teeth ... but the idea that 1970's tables were strictly focused on vernacular fantasy (e.g. orcs in a hole) is false. Instead it was clearly "gonzo" era of play filled with science fantasy elements. 3762
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 29/07/2026“The problem is all inside your head” She said to me “The answer is easy if you Take it logically..." 020
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 28/07/2026You've always seemed pretty chill to me? maybe the test reads intelligence as crazy.. of course the smarter one is the more you wonder about things and people... My crazy test. 1) Have you ever thought that you were a werewolf/wizard/vampire? 2) Has the belief that you were such led to violence? 110
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 28/07/2026Well that's gratifying .. but I think this test is meant for children? 110
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 25/07/2026This one I think I need to steal the cover and title of... 050
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 25/07/2026A 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 MaximBe 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... 0246
Gus L. @ratkingrpg.bsky.social · 18/07/2026I've enjoyed Crockett's songs and performance - he's very much retro/old timey Texas cowboy style country who started out as a busker. I would figure he'd be into these two who have a pretty solid 'Evil Louvin Bros" vibe. Oh well America is weird and getting weirder, not in a good way. 120
Reposted by Gus L.Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus @riseupcomus.bsky.social · 17/07/2026Alas, 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.comDesigning Dungeons CYOA1. It's pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a g̷̫͍͓͙͔̒̅̈́́̇̏̑͂͗̽̿͝r̷̟̬͛̓͌̐͆̈͛͐̽̓̚̚͝͝u̵̗̭̗̤̭̤͖̱̹̠̙͎̝̲̼͈̩̿̇̒̐̌̌̃̄̏̍́̀͋̅̋͘͝ẻ̶̡̧̱̜͚̲̗̞̘̩̼͎̬̘̲͔̽͑̀͋͑͗̓̒. - You cautiously grope through the darkness. ... 36019
