My thoughts have returned to Mythic Greyhawk and fleshing it out a bit more.  I like the north, geographically speaking, in Greyhawk. It strikes me as a region with its own distinct life and character. A good mixture of barbarian 'nations', some not-lawful kingdoms (Bandit kingdoms), large swathes of unforgiving wilderness, definite chaos lands of variable flavors (Iuz, Horned Society, Stonefist) and some lawful lands on its borders (Shield Lands, Tenh, Ratik, Blackmoor). In other words, a savage borderland with plenty of potential for adventure in lands where Law exists mostly on the edges. The vibe I am getting from its barbarian cultures strike me as a bit dull though. I'm pretty sure what the reader is meant to take from the folio is that wolf & tiger nomads are turko-central-asian horse nomads, ice/frost/snow are vikings and and rovers are northern native americans. Wolf and tiger nomads strike me as especially dull, since that trope is already covered

One of the blog entries I find myself returning to is the one I wrote about  Dragonlance being a unique sandbox setting . I ran it as a kid and it's a campaign I'd love to run again as an adult. Here are my thoughts on where it all went wrong for Dragonlance and how to fix it to run a proper campaign that feels  like a dragonlance campaign. My main frustration with Dragonlance as a setting is how unrealised its gaming potential is.  There's the issue of the novels, obviously, and the iffiness of how to set them aside in a way that makes the world more open to player characters.  And how the original adventure that mirror the novels kind of ends up being the only story worth telling in the setting. It's not of course, but the setting has continuously struggled with its identity as a gaming  world in light of this. How to escape the novels and make the setting itself greater than the original adventure path? They've tried, but the attempts have been ha

On reddit, I was alerted to another 05R game, BA5IC, an OSR adaptation in 54 pages that was released in October and is PWYW. I shelled out the recommended 2 bucks and decided to have a look. I will do a basic review and also compare it a bit to Into the Unknown and 5TD. tl;dr - A whiteboxed Epic 6 treatment of 5e that has some good stuff in it, but ends up looking a bit more like the author's heartbreaker than a fullfledged game. Presentation & First Impressions: Clocking in at 54 pages in letter format (23,000 words), this is another candidate that goes even slimmer than whitebox. The layout has generous whitespace on the outside, a bit too much for my liking considering the narrow space between columns and slightly cramped space between paragraphs. It is not so much worse than Into the Unknown in this regard though, but still a noticeable difference coming from 5TD's generous spacing on every page. Still the layout is mostly neat, paragraphs mostly don't

When I first learned of Five Torches Deep, it was seeing their kickstarter launch just as I was preparing to release Into the Unknown and I was wondering just how much overlap there was going to be between this 'O5R' game and my own. After reading  Robot Goblin's comparative review of both systems, I decided to pick up the pdf and do a review of it myself. I will of course be comparing it to Into the Unknown as well, but will leave that for a follow-up post. Without further ado, let's go: tl;dr - a "whitebox" style  adaption of 5e. Even slimmer than whitebox, it is missing essential parts for running a full game, but wins out with superb layout and usability at the game table. Presentation & First Impressions: Five Torches Deep (hereafter 5TD) is a 5e-inspired OSR system in a mere 49 pages. Despite its short page count, it doesn't skimp on rich full color art, makes generous use of whitespace, has large fonts and a dedication to smal

I mentioned in the introduction to Mythic Greyhawk that: The occult workings and experiments of the eccentric scholars, alchemists and mystic savants called "wizards" can somehow tame Chaos and produce so-called "arcane magic". But how controlled is it really? And who can say how tainted they become? Godly and Law-abiding people do not meddle with such forces. Witch hunts are rare, but wizards mostly stand outside the social ladder on the fringe of society, somewhere between shunned and exiled. A contributing factor to this is the fact that Alignment Language is a thing in Mythic Greyhawk and wizards are in the disreputable position of having to learn Chaotic and Neutral in order to cast their spells. Archetypical member of the Circle of Eight But a large part of the distrust of wizards is historical: It was wizards who catastrophically wiped out the two biggest empire in human history (not to mention sinking the Isles of Woe, creating the Bright

I find that I am enjoying chronicling Mythic Greyhawk more than I anticipated. Much of it are impressions from way back when, but some of it is also new discovery from taking a closer look. One thing I like about exploring a non-homebrew setting like this is the sense of exploring an independently existent world. The fact that others have studied the same world, albeit through a different prism than my 'Mythic' one, renders a feeling that somehow Greyhawk exists 'out there' to be explored. My interpretations don't feel like creating either. It is more of a - "when looking through this mythic prism, what is Greyhawk really like?" I study the lay of the land, observe and mull until Mythic Greyhawk reveals itself to me. And putting all this into writing is like a refinement process. Greyhawk stands out much more vididly and alive to my inner vision now than before I started. It's been fun.  With that said, let's talk about religion, metaphy