Category: osr

This blog explores OSR game design through practical mechanics and table-tested ideas homebrews.

  • Better Gods for Your Game: Rethinking Deity Design

    In my last post, I compared and contrasted 38 write-ups for 19 DCC deities, as found on Knights in the North’s website (2017-2020), DCC RPG Annual (2019), and Clerics of the Known Realms (2021). Of these resources, both the Annual and Clerics of the Known Realms include the exact same content for their write-ups: description,…

  • How to Craft a Custom Disapproval Table for Dungeon Crawl Classics

    This is the first of several planned posts offering advice on designing clerics and their deities. I know that clerics often receive a bad rap in the D&D community and its OSR progeny, but I absolutely adore DCC’s take on this classic class. Clerics are my favorite DCC class largely because of the disapproval mechanic.…

  • How to Help Your Players Investigate Rumors in an OSR Campaign

    There is a lot of advice floating around the OSR-blogosphere on how to create rumors for your campaign. The Alexandrian’s three-part series on rumors (Rumor Tables, Hearing Rumors, and Restocking Your Rumor Table) offers one of the most exhaustive explanations. At their heart, rumors are just pieces of information that may or may not be…