Who Plays RAW Anyway? AD&D is a famously crunchy system. It took the relative simplicity and, dare I say, elegance of OD&D, and started piling on subsystems for magic, combat, falling, drow…

Downtime Discussion I had a really interesting discussion last night with, friends of the blog, Tom and Isaac. They’ve both been along with me for the Editioning ride and have some great insights. …

We're back. With two days until my self-imposed deadline of the closer-to-death-remembrance of my 50th birthday, here's the next part of my Top 101 TTRPGs I

The Wizards Loom Time marched ever on, TSR faded and went into the West. Wizards of the Coast loomed over Dungeons & Dragons as its new masters. It was a new millennium and it was time for a ch…

The Wizards Loom Time marched ever on, TSR faded and went into the West. Wizards of the Coast loomed over Dungeons & Dragons as its new masters. It was a new millennium and it was time for a ch…

And the GM-player gap

Star Base 343 In between missions, the crew of the USS Challenger had time for some R&R on Star Base 343. This particular star base is mentioned only once in a TNG episode as a spot where Picar…

Surprise! Welcome back, dear reader, to the Editioning, our challenge to play an adventure in every major edition of D&D over a period of about two years. We’ve already completed OD&D and B…

Character Growth There are more ways to deal with character advancement in RPGs than I could even attempt to name, never mind describe. A number of them depend on XP, whether it’s in large numbers,…

Starter Campaign Dear reader, last week, I created a character for Star Trek Adventures 2E. His name was Mesh and he was an Orion Star Fleet Officer on the command track. The lifepath character gen…

Boldly Going Dear reader, if you have been around here for a while, you might be aware that I have an interest in Star Trek. I don’t know if I’m what you would call hardcore, but I am currently in …

A Case of Mistaken Death Below, you will find some spoilers for DCC adventure #109 Beneath the Isle of Serpents, just so you know, dear reader. Fun & TPKs At this point, I don’t think any of us…

Investigations I wrote a post a couple of years ago comparing a D&D mystery/investigation-based scenario to one for the Blade Runner RPG. D&D didn’t come out of that head-to-head too well. …

Zero Prep It’s the dream, wouldn’t you say, dear reader? Pick up and play. Many claim it, few deliver. One thing I’ll say about this Stay Frosty adventure, and, to be fair, any Stay Frosty adventur…

Collections It’s been a long time since I collected anything. I used to collect comics, although it wasn’t a conscious choice to build a collection. I just bought 2000AD every week and didn’t…

Thanks for checking out the Children of Time RPG, and giving the campaign your support. This game is a personal project for me – when I read the book in 2015, it inspired me as I wrote Legacy 2nd…

Create millennia-spanning sci-fi epics in this groundbreaking roleplaying game based on the award winning Children of Time novels.

It’s thedicepool.com’s second birthday today! Two years ago I decided it was time to stop keeping all my thoughts on RPGs to myself and start writing them down for other people to read.

Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module de…

The Kept on the Borderlands You see, it’s past tense because the game’s over now. Anyway… dear reader, if you are reading this and you don’t know what any of the words in the title or sub-heading m…

Character-work We’re back in Sigil, dear reader, and it feels like coming home. Long has it been since my players had their characters sneak around its darkened byways and razorvine-choked alleys, …

The Editioning Format Just in case you’re new here, the Editioning is a challenge that my fellow members of our little, local TTRPG community, Tables and Tales and I have taken upon ourselves (ok, …

The First Ending Last night we finished up the first of our games within the Editioning, our challenge to play all the major editions of D&D from Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to Dunge…

Welcome back, dear reader, to the Woes of Sorrowfield, my homebrew adventure for OD&D. You check out the rest of my posts on this game here. We are playing this as part of the challenge I made …

The Basic Box The Shop on the Borderlands has me in its thrall, dear reader. Every Friday, about lunchtime I receive their newsletter, News from the Borderlands, and my wallet doth quake with fear.…