Graph Paper Games

If you frequent my other blog (and Analytics tells me that a whole lot more of you do that than come here) then you know I'm a bit soured on the wargaming side of my hobby universe . Ergo, I've been packing up my paints and busting out more three-ring binders down on the hobby table as I contemplate my RPG stuff.  I've got one iron in the fire right now, my one-shot for End of the World 2011 (EOW).  That's the annual five-day gamefest that I play with a few of my friends back home.  There's three full days of gaming with one of us running an all-day session Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  This year I'm running one of the sessions, and for the first time I'm running a scenario set in the group's primary setting, Morrow Project . For those who are unfamiliar with Morrow Project, the game was written initially in the mid-70's but wasn't published until 1984, smack in the middle of the heightened anxiety of a nuclear war.  Drawing from the same cr...

Even if I didn’t just love the name, Super Galactic Dreadnought is a fun blog that shows off a wide variety of hobby interests, much like my own past-times.  Recently its author, Desert Scribe, decided as a sort of solo venture to come up with nine dungeon levels, using the old original B/X D&D rules for random dungeon encounters.  Or rather, he just decided to populate them, leaving the trivialities of a graph paper map to a later date. It’s a fascinating bit of reverse engineering, and I thought I’d copy the process here.  Basically, every level has roughly sixty rooms, with one-third being occupied.  So using the random generator charts for dungeons, you come up with twenty encounters.  You then look at the encounters to see if there are patterns or obvious alliances between the creatures, and then sub-divide the entire lot into factions, plus the odd roaming monster or vermin.  Once you understand the “big picture” you can build the dungeon aroun...