Monday, March 25, 2024

No Foolproof Illusions

This post has some required reading: a blog post from Swedish designer (?) Sandra Snan called Blorb Principles.
[By the way, Sandra's blog is absolutely bonkers. She's written about blorb a lot but you'll have to hunt for it. Good luck]
Additionally, you may also wish to read this post from Rise Up Comus and/or this post from Technoskald's Forge. They are both good, although not necessary to follow my line of thinking here.

I like Sandra's blorb principles. When I first read her post, I felt... relief. For many years, I've felt a sharp and uncomfortable distance between my own playstyle and the philosophies described by my colleagues and other popular designers. Sandra's post was the first time I saw someone clearly articulate a set of preferences I've long held but which I couldn't effectively advocate for on my own. It feels nice to see your own philosophy given a name, and to finally have a way to easily connect with like-minded GMs.

But part of why Sandra's post instantly clicked for me is because she was describing things I already believed, techniques that I already rely on. By far the most common response I've seen to the Blorb Principles is still outright confusion. So just like many others before me, this post is my own effort to explain why I prefer a Blorby approach to the alternatives other people offer up. Maybe this will help it make a little more sense to some people.

Monday, March 11, 2024

G Monsters at the Opera (Part 1)

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Credit: Ivan the Terrible and the Souls of his Victims by Mikhail Petrovitch Klodt

Yes, there are that many G monsters. Even splitting this into three parts, each post will be ridiculously long. This letter also has the highest density of "Dwiz's favorite monsters ever" in it, unsurprisingly. Apologies in advance if I get carried away with some of these entries. On the other hand, once I finish up the G's then I reckon I'll be about halfway done with this series (at least in terms of monster entries).

Monday, March 4, 2024

F Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Credit: more sister art

Part of the reason for this series is because it scratches my itch for the kind of content I associate with "the Golden Age of RPG blogging" but also because it's kinda easy to write compared to my normal faire. I don't know if it's nutritious exactly, or even engaging, but I can at least be confident that my readers will find it highly encherining. Which is really all I ever aspire to.

Monday, February 26, 2024

E Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Credit: Yoshitaka Amano

Be thankful that this isn't just a 10,000 word overview of everything ever described under the "elf" entry, with all their many, many subraces clogging up the E section of most monster manuals.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Dragons at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Credit: my sister

The first dungeon I ever made was a chapel of a dragon cult that I spent days painstakingly crafting. It was a pastiche of the cult of Set in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie. Every long-running D&D campaign I've ever run since that has been dragon-centered. Even the published adventures I've run that don't have dragons. I'll add a dragon final boss fight if I have to. There is no other fantasy I've spent so much time chasing than the epic climax of heroic adventurers facing off against the ultimate challenge: one big "fuck you"-sized evil dragon.

Monday, February 5, 2024

Demons at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Credit: Kentaro Miura
Note: direct Berserk comments towards Ben

The title says "demon" but I'm using this post to cover all the creatures that D&D calls "fiends." Demons, devils, and everything in between. Don't expect me to consistently refer to each thing according to D&D's taxonomy. To me they're all just demons.

I felt this warranted its own post in part because there's so many to talk about, but also because I view demons as a particularly important category of monster. They're one of those special creature types that's nearly universal across human cultures, in some form or another. You could easily throw out all other monster types and still have a rich and strange fantasy setting just by having the heroes face off against demons.

Monday, January 22, 2024

D Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Welcome to the D's. Demons and dragons will get their own posts. This one is crowded enough as it is.