u/alexserban02

Soo, I love building characters, looking at how various classes combinations mesh together and how much damage/healing/etc. I can dish out with a character. I will not be a hypocrite and pretend that's not the case. But I reckon that comes at least in part from the fact that I arrived at TTRPGs after growing up with video games, with MMOs and other such things, where character builds where quite central.

I would also make the argument that, TTRPGs shouldn't necessarily be about that. Or at least that the primary focus shouldn't maybe be on that. That the character's story should take precedence to its build. It's identity tied more to his story and the world it is part of then to the combination of race, class, background and feats. Of course, speaking now mainly from the perspective of trad games, like D&D and Pathfinder. I also don't want to present this as if this should not exist, but rather a slight change regarding focus.

I also wanted to look into D&D's history and see how this trend evolved over the years, from the first editions to the current day. And I have to say, this look into the past has been quite interesting. Might do a more in depth article about AD&D's kits in the near future, I found them quite an interesting design space. I hope you will also enjoy it, find it interesting and that you see the perspective of this argument. I know there are other TTRPGs where this issue is not as prevalent, but D&D is usually the first point of contact with this hobby and for many it remains the only point of contact, so I thought offering this perspective might be desirable.

Vampire: The Masquerade is perhaps the most important TTRPG for this blog, and dare I say, for us as a group. Yuno and I met while playing VtM v5, then Yuno met Horia and Andreea while trying out v20 for the first time. So we met, became friends, and, at least in the case of me and Yuno, got together because of VtM. It has become something very close to our hearts, very dear to us.

When we learned of the new v6, there was a chorus of reactions: skepticism, cautious optimism, curiosity, excitement. The four of us got on Discord and did an almost seven hour long close reading of the document, ran the starting scenario, debated among ourselves, and found a lot of things we liked, a lot of things we abhorred, and sometimes we did not agree on what was deserving of a quick Final Death and what deserved to live another night.

So when Horia and I sat down to work on this article, we decided it would be best to offer two distinct perspectives: that of somewhat of a newcomer to the franchise, who started with v5 and only briefly dabbled in v20 and Dark Ages, and that of the veteran with experience across all of the editions and, what, over 15 years of being into this fandom? For the most part we are in agreement, but as always it is most interesting to see where we diverge. Horia was the main writer for this review, and he had quite a lot of thoughts on the newest iteration of the game... almost 8k words worth of thoughts.

With this being said, strap in, this is going to be a long night, but I hope you will enjoy this very in depth review of the v6 playtest! We are very curious to see your thoughts on the matter as well!

So, I recently had a D&D PvP match with Ionut, from the cast of Dicesylvania. I am not here to talk about D&D and PvP, I know it is not generally popular, but I do enjoy it. It is also not important for the discussion at hand, but there is a link.

During the match, I caught both myself and Ionut doing various small rituals with the dice before rolling important saves or attacks. Blowing on them, rubbing them against the neck, mumbling some sort of prayer. And it struck me as odd. Consciously I know that no such ritual influences the result on the dice roll, yet at the same time, when things become stressful, I would do these things. It helped put my mind at ease.

I found the whole concept fascinating and so I decided to look more into it and well, here is the result of that!

So if you were ever curious what D&D and open sea fishing in the Trobriand Islands have in common, grab your dice and fishing supplies, strap on and let's see! I hope you will enjoy this one!

I am giddy. Perhaps I did not show it at the time, but I am giddy. I was talking with Horia about V6 and our various thoughts on it, me starting playing VTM and WoD games with V5 and only after a while trying out the older editions and Horia starting with Revised and later on moving to the 20th anniversary editions.

But, while we were talking about the playtest (we will have a full article going over that, probably next Friday), I also showed him that for V6 they are also planning to release editions of Mage, Dark Ages and Changeling. We stopped at Mage, for, as Horia put it, "there is no Mage without Satyros". And I wondered a bit, hmm, I wonder what is Satyros' take on all of this, is he in any way involved. And I voiced this to Horia, who had a brilliant idea: what if we message Satyros and interview him.

To our delight, he was more than willing to do so and well, two hours and a half of recording + way too much time spending on transcribing and trimming what amounted to almost 20k words, here we are! We talked about the history of Mage, V6, video games, magick, Dungeon Crawler Carl and many many other things that I 100% invite you to listen to if you are in any way shape or form a fan of his work and White Wolf in general!

Cheers!

One of my favorite campaigns I ran centered around the players investigating a string of high profile assassinations that ravaged the continent - generals, kings, nobles, inventors, mages. They traveled throughout the continent, piecing together clues, chasing after shadowy figures on two or three occasions, but while still being in the darkness. A cult of assassins, that much was obvious, but what were their reasons? What were they after?

When the reveal finally arrived, as they came face to face with the leader of the cult - the last Dragonborn still alive and grafted within him a fragment of divinity (which they later learned was Vecna, cause in the words of Brandon Sanderson, there is always another secret) they were ecstatic! And so was I. Playing with a mystery like this can be a double edged sword, the payoff must match the expectations built up by the players.

The center of why this bit of my campaign still gets brought up almost 4 years later is that, perhaps without setting out to do so necessarily, information acted as a center piece, it was a valuable comodity that the players had to chase, that it wasn’t simply given to them.

This piece explores how information can be used like this in multiple ttrpgs and how you specifically may use it in order to make your games better! I hope you will enjoy it!

I always enjoyed exploration. In real life when I would go on road trips with my family, in video games exploring dungeons, cities and castles, in books where I would imagine Gondor, Hogwarts, Narnia and how exciting it would be to wonder around these places.

And of course, once I started playing D&D I was also excited to see how exploring is handled here and well...I think the toolkit of current editions is lacking. I don't think that is a controversial statement. But, as I started to play more and to look into the history of the game I discovered that wasn’t always the case and the not to far, within the OSR movement, exploration was thriving, both due to some gameplay elements that were stripped down, the tone that favored things like hexcrawls and dungeon crawls a lot more compared to 5e and finally, and perhaps most importantly, due to the work of certain amazing individuals such as Justin Alexander, Jennell Jaquays and Ben Robbins, among others.

Unlike other articles, this one will not offer an analysis, but rather ways to make exploration better and more exciting for everyone at the table! I hope you will find it interesting and useful! Cheers!

So, I got to see Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I was aware of the various controversies surrounding the movie, but I was still excited as so far I have enjoyed all movies put forth by Nolan and I was also a huge fan of the source material, growing up with Disney's Hercules and then retellings of the Greek Myths and then in highschool finally getting myself acquainted with the real Homeric Epics. Honestly, even after close to two weeks, I still don't know how I fully feel about the movie. It's a mixed bag. There were some less than stellar performances, the choices in what content was cut don't really sit right with me, the costumes were sub-par and the dialogue is at times quite shoddy. Actually, on the last part, let me quote "Our age of bronze is collapsing". Yeah.

Mild disappointment aside, the movie still managed to get me in the mood for a game set in the times of Ancient Greece and since like you, my drug of choice in terms of entertainment are TTRPGs, I looked over my collection and compiled a small list with the games best suited for this endeavor.

The article here is the result, I go over three titles - 5e's Mythic Odysseys of Theros; Mythras and Agon. I go over all three of them, break down the pros and the cons of each of the three and give you my thoughts on them.

I hope you will enjoy the article and that it will prove to be useful if you find yourself in the mood for some epic homeric hijinks! Cheers!

Making a TTRPG is one of those intrusive thoughts that I feel most people who get in the hobby have at one point or another. Especially Game Masters. I mean, it is only natural and if you start with D&D, as so many of us do, you are bound to homebrew some stats, an item, make your setting. By that point you are already somewhat there. So what are a couple more steps? I would also reckon that even though there are a lot of people who think like this, not many actually follow through. Cause making an RPG is somewhat daunting, there are many considerations to take into account, many things that you will most likely not know. So most of these projects don't get started at all or if they are started, they are later abandoned.

I am currently making a game alongside a good friend of mine, Marius. And it is quite a daunting undertaking. There are quite a few things I have to learn and that's after quite a lot of experience with the medium, with game studies and so on. Yet, I also think that making a TTRPG is one of the most rewarding and fun activities I have done in quite a while. I want to share that a bit with you, and I don't mean just the details about the game we're working on, but also a push to try this yourself. I want to make the case for why and how should you also try this out. Even if it doesn't see the light of day, a project like this can be a lot of fun, it manages to stimulate your creative juices in a lot of fun ways and I do believe you come out a better GM by the end.

It is one of our longest articles yet, I had quite a lot to say in the matter and I hope you will find it interesting, I hope that if you ever had the thought to make your own game, maybe this will be a good push for you in that direction. Before I leave you to the article proper, I just want to share what I think it's the most important rule for such a project: if you are to make something, make something that excites you first and foremost, something that you genuinely find fun. If you keep at it, it is bound to find it's niche, excitement after all is pretty contagious! Cheers! I hope you will like this one!

I have written quite a lot on diferences between OSR games and modern 5e, the difference in playstyle, relation with mortality, various mechanics such as gold for xp, reaction roles, dungeon turns and so on.

For quite a long time after I started to play OSR games, I was enamored, for I always wanted my 5e games to be more gritty, harder, yet still fair and with OSR I felt like I got that.

Now, with this piece, I wanted to look at something related to one of the criticisms I often saw levied against old school D&D and OSR games, mainly that they are unbalanced, too many save or sucks and difficulty just for the sake of it. Compared to nowdays, where even if CR could use some improvements (although it is quite a bit better with the 2024 iteration) it can still produce balanced encounters if followed properly.

And there is truth in both of this statements, but it ommits something - not maliciously necessarily - that balanced was not required for pre Dragonlance D&D and OSR games. The game did not make a promise of balance, but rather one of fairness, the DM, or as it was first known, the referee would be impartial. It is important to point out that you were not heroes, but anti-heroes at best, who might've offered some help only if you got something out of it. This stemming of course from how the game was emulating Conan style pulp fantasy, rather than the heroic epic fantasy later adopted following the success of Dragonlance.

So to cut it short, fairness and balance are not the same. One is about impartiality, while the others is about making sure that the danger the players are facing is winnable, without the requirement of underhanded tactics to tip the scales. One is pulp, the other epic. Both can be good, but we have to be aware of the distinction and not judge them against the same standards. Hope you will enjoy the piece!

Oh, Pendragon, how long I awaited for you, beloved. I think I got this starter set about a year and a half ago and I had a couple of unsuccessful attempts to put together a group in order to run the game. But, finally, a couple of weeks ago, the planets alligned and the Lady of the Lake smiled upon me and I was finally able to run the starter set!

And it was an absolute blast! I was always a big fan of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and I constantly heard how Pendragon is one of the best TTRPGs out there. And finally, I can say that I see why that is the case. The system is elegant, fun, the mechanics flow together very nicely and manage to encourage roleplay in a very simple fashion - the more you describe how you do a certain thing, the easier it becomes (of course, up to a certain level).

The Starter Set is an amazing point to try out Pendragon and it more then makes up the value of its cost! Truth be told, I feel like it's somewhat of a steal, with dice, superbly illustrated characters, combat cards and of course the three booklets. But more about that in the actual review, now if you'll excuse me, I have to look for the corebooks!

Once again, I come with a slightly more academic article on what other but the endless muse that is Vampire the Masquerade (well, World of Darkness in general, but I am most familiar with VtM). This time, I thought of using a scholar I got quite familiar with during my MA, Edward Said. And those of you already familiar with Said, will probably guess where this is going, we are going to talk about Orientalism, more specifically, we're going through an analysis of three of the clans in VTM - Ravnos, Ministry (or the Setites) and Banu Haqim (or the Assamites).

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Said and his work, a very brief presentation. In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said argues that the "Orient" (the East) is a biased Western invention rather than an objective reality. He explains that Western scholars, artists, and politicians historically created a distorted, romanticized, and patronizing image of Middle Eastern and Asian societies. By using philosopher Michel Foucault's theories, Said demonstrates that this cultural depiction is inextricably linked to imperial power. The West artificially divided the world into two halves, portraying the "Occident" (West) as rational, peaceful, and superior, while projecting the "Orient" as irrational, static, and dangerous. This strategic stereotyping served to justify European and American colonial domination.

Now that everyone is on board I also feel the need to say that this is not meant to be a hit piece to denigrate any particular writer of White Wolf or to Cain forbid advocate against this clans. Rather it is an attempt at a scholarly analysis aiming to see how and why the portrayal of these particular clans was at times problematic and stereotypical and how the game tried, for better or worse, to rectify this.

I hope you will find this an interesting endeavor and I am very much looking forward to your comments and opinions on the matter!

Race-as-class was not something I was particularly familiar with. I started my journey into TTRPGs about 10 years ago and while almost from the start I was open to try out new systems, it was only in 2019 or 2020 when I first played a retro-clone that had Race-as-Class. I found it interesting, peculiar, I was wondering why have it like this? I mean, surely there are dwarves who are thieves, or dwarves who are clerics or wizards or any other class. Why be so restrictive about it?

I kinda had that impression, of this being a mechanical quirk of an old edition that was left in the past for a reason for quite a while. It is only when I started to get more into OSRs and played a bit more with the mechanic that I started to get the appeal. Well, actually, appeals, cause there are at least two advantages. First is the simplicity and quickness factor. Quite self explanatory, you have fewer choices to make, so the time between grabbing the character sheet and being ready to play will be shorter. The second advantage is, at least for me much more interested to explore.

So, this game was released in 1974. I don't know much about that particular cultural space in the US, but I think it would be quite safe to think that back then people would not be as familiar with these fantasy races. And those who would be, would most likely take inspiration from the writings of Tolkien. So there would be a particularly higher chance that when they wanted to play an elf or a dwarf, they had a very particular idea of what that would entail. Not an elf, but the elf. Slender, gracious, wielding both bow and sword, but also using a bit of magic. Suddenly, when you take that into consideration, race-as-class doesn't seem so strange anymore. Or at least that was the case for me once I had that realization.

So this article will explore this particular avenue, as well as OSR's recovery process of this mechanic and how it might evolve in the future. I hope you will enjoy it and I am dying to see what your thoughts and experiences are!

D&D's OGL crisis from 2023 should be a case study in how corporate greed can destroy the good standing of a brand. Cause, at least from my memory, before this event, there weren't nearly as many hostile voices levied against D&D, nor weekly "D&D is dead" videos. Their share of the market also shrank a little, they are still the biggest in the hobby, but perhaps slightly less so then before. It's been about three and a half years since that whole fiasco, and given how due to my MA thesis I started to look more and more into authorship theory and media studies over the last year, I wanted to play the devil's advocate.

Were at any point WotC and Hasbro in their right with this attempt? Hell no! But it's a bit more complicated then that, cause when you get down to it, this sort of issue and problem could only arise in a medium such as this - TTRPGs. And that stems from who is the author of any particular TTRPG, in this case, Dungeons and Dragons. Who owns it really? And the answer is that, while WotC are the legal authors and owners of D&D, due to their choice to not enforce that role over the last 26 years, that position has become in some sense a communal one. Of course, once again, the medium also is very much at play here, for we are the authors of each campaign we run and not two of them will be 100% alike.

That would be the general gist of this article, if that sounds like something you would be interested to explore, please do give it a read and also please do share your thoughts bellow! I hope you will enjoy it and as always, it has been a pleasure to bring you more of my silly thoughts on the matter!

I always wanted to play Root. The boardgame I mean. I always found it quite alluring, I always loved strategy games and the art and concept always seemed right on my alley. Unfortunately, I did not get the occasion to play it yet. However, I learned that the boardgame also received a TTRPG adaptation, made by none others then Magpie Games. For those who are not aware, Magpie are the reigning kings of PbtA RPGs, with titles such as Masks, Avatar Legends, Cartel and many many others. So when we approached them for a partnership, Root was at the top of my wishlist. They were gracious enough to send a review copy our way and with the occasion of Playcon, an amazing local con which held its first edition back at the end of May I got the chance to run a couple of public sessions there.

Needless to say, I had a blast, I adored the art, the setting and the implementation of PbtA (between us, I actually enjoyed this one way better than Avatar Legends). And it wasn't just me who had a blast with the system, but also my groups of players! So I knew that I had to make a review and explain at large why you might enjoy this little gem. Unfortunately, life is sometimes a bitch and some personal stuff delayed said review, but I am proud to tell you that it is now ready and published!

So if any of you have even the smallest amounts of interest towards lite-political games, fun low fantasy adventure, a nostalgia for series such as Redwall or Guardians of Ga'Hoole I think you should give this game a try! My thoughts at large are found in the review, I hope you will enjoy it and I hope you will give this game a try, I assure you, it will be a fun time!

For the longest time I have been fascinated by the medieval. Looking back, I think the first "gateway drug" for this obsession was the Redwall cartoon, when I was a little kid. Of course, Lord of The Rings followed not too far behind, various video games such as Mount and Blade, Assassin's Creed and of course Oblivion and Skyrim. In 2016, when I first started playing D&D, incidentally also the year I started to watch Game of Thrones (it is such a shame it got canceled after the 6th season), the general quasi-medieval setting of the game was quite a big plus in my books. I continued to play D&D, eventually venturing towards other systems and about 4 years ago I also got to play Vampire: The Masquerade for the first time.

Thus I was introduced to the franchise, or rather I realized it was a franchised, I was somewhat aware of the videogames, I knew some of the clans and I saw some pics and memes with Smiling Jack and Jeanette, but until I started playing, I didn't really delve that much into it. But then I did and I fell in love with both the game and its setting and I was aching to learn more about it and I was imaging how cool it would be to also see a medieval version of the game... and OH MY CAIN, it is a thing! I rejoiced in the fact that it existed, but for about three years, I didn't get around playing a single session of Dark Ages. I read on the lore, I fell in love with the whole Constantinople Saga, but I didn't knew any ST who runs it. Then Yuno met Horia and in turn I met Horia and we became friends with him and at one point he dropped the bombshell that he also runs Dark Ages, but he currently has a full campaign and does not know when he will get to play something with us as well. So it goes...

A couple of weeks ago however, one of my D&D players, who is also quite an experienced ST started a new Dark Ages chronicle and was gracious enough to invite me! So thank you Anca!

I played my first ever session, I am very much looking forward to play some more (in case anyone is wondering, I am playing an Old Clan Tzimisce Koldun and the chronicle is set in 14th century Wallachia + Transylvania), but until then I decided to write this piece on some of the differences I have perceived so far between the two systems and why I think that the assumption I have seen on my side of the internet, that Dark Ages would be less political then its modern nights counterpart is, frankly speaking a bit silly!

I hope you will enjoy this piece, I am going back to read a bit more on the lore and to plan for the next session!

I think I was in 10th or 11th grade when I first stumbled upon the concepts of the Hero's Journey and the Jungian Archetypes. Needless to say, having a new hammer, every problem was a nail, in this particular case, every literature essay I was doing for highschool tied in some way to one or both concepts. Even though I was playing D&D at the time, for some reason I didn't turn the proverbial hammer to my beloved hobby yet. It was actually quite recently when I got this particular idea, after an MA course in which I got to go into more depth with both concepts.

After quite some time with having this one baking nicely in the oven, I think I like it enough to share it with you. I go on to analyze how some of the archetypes map onto the Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue and also how the campaign can map onto the Hero's Journey as well and tie everything together somewhat. It is also tacitly a piece that maps quite nicely onto my theory that D&D and TTRPGs in general are part of the broader storytelling tradition of humanity.

Also, being an article with a somewhat academic flavor it is also perhaps a bit more pretentious than my usual pieces, I hope you will manage to suffer through it. I am also very much curious to see what you all make of it and if you also harbor similar thoughts. Nonetheless, thank you if you took time to read it and to those who did not, I hope in the future I will improve.

Basically, the reddit algorithm shadowbanned my account a couple of days ago, it was fortunately reinstated, but now my posts are gone. Could you help out with that?

Hii I was shadowbanned for a couple of days, my account was reinstated, however my posts are still gone. How can I get them back?

I have a confession to make. I, sometimes, fudge the dice. As a GM, of course. I await your rotten eggs and tomatoes, let it be my penance. However, my heresy and pride flairs even more, for not only do I stoop this low, but I, like the great deceiver try to hook others into my wicked ways. Ergo, the essay at hand and also a livestreamed discussion/debate with the wonderful folks at Dicesylvania.

Jokes aside, I know, or at least I observed that fudging, as a practice, seems to be quite a hot topic when it is brought up online and I thought it might be interesting to do a deep dive into how and why some people use this (including myself from time to time) and whether there is a, hmmm, I guess righteous way where you may use it. Going into the history, Gygax flip-flopped on the issue, but more often then not he seemed to be on the side of fudging, with what I consider to be a very common sense addendum: fudging should not be done out of a direct desire to harm the players. Or I guess, rather their characters :))

In my opinion whether you should fudge or not will depends on a number of factors. The primary one is multi-faceted, it refers the type of game you are running - first and foremost, the system, for fudging mostly has its place among trad games such as D&D, Pathfinder and their ilk (as well as some OSR titles), the tone tone of your game, whether it puts more emphasis on tactics or narrative, etc.

I went in as much detail as I could and I hope you will find something interesting there. If not, don't worry, I will get right back to the pillory and you are free to resume the egg throwing!

This is something special. Truly. By now you know I love TTRPGs, I have almost 120 in my collection and while I have yet to properly go through them all, I also keep an eye out for new interesting games that might catch my eye. Gloam is one such game, I think I saw it either on the OSR subreddit or on one of the many TTRPG facebook groups I am part of. It was, I believe, right on the day it was released and when I saw pictures of it, when I read the little glimpses I could, I made up my mind that this was something special.

So I reached out to Sam Helms and he graciously agreed to provide a review copy. And my hunch was right, this game was something special, from the two superbly crafted magic systems, to the ingenious mechanics centered around a Tarot deck as a randomizer instead of the usual dice, the sheer flavor oozing through every aspect of the game, from the rules, to its art and overall presentation. But. I also showed it to our friend and colleague, Horia (whose birthday is right around the corner, on the 7th, so early Happy Birthday you wonderful Malk!). And like me, Horia also fell in love with this game and asked me if he could handle the review.

And honestly, seeing him so excited and eager to write the review, how could I say no. So let's see what he delivered. *Opens article* FREAKING 3500 WORDS! God damn, mate, you really like this game!

So yeah, I at least gave you a bit of a sample with this one, but for the full review, I leave you in the capable hands of Horia. He sincerely has lots of love for this game, but he is fair and I believe this to be one of the best reviews we published. I hope you will enjoy it and more so, I hope it will convince you to give Gloam a chance, cause Sam Helms really managed to create something rather special!