The first proper wargame, called, appropriately enough, Kriegsspiel (“wargame” in German) was developed in the first half of the 19th century, initially as a curiosity. By 1860, it had achieved broad adoption as a training tool for the Prussian military. But In 1873, Lieutenant Wilhelm Jacob Meckel published a treatise citing four complaints about the […]
This seems like something every RPG talker-abouter is talking about right now. First there was Matt Colville and Amy Vorpahl’s video, then Zee Bashew’s video, then Matt Colville’s other video, oh and actually there was The Dungeon Newb’s video a bit earlier and it’s all over RPG Twitter, oh and of course a lot of […]
In the dark beneath the stars That swim in inky firmament Where the grey elves’ houses are, Where e’er they’ve dwelt since sky was rent Their fishers dredge from darkness deep The things below, all pale as snow, And in their tongues they sing to keep The words they know, whate’er they meant A dozen […]
Update (10/22/2021): Version 1.2.0 has been released! GitHub: cogspace/roll20bookmarklets Release: Roll20 Bookmarklets v1.1.0 (New) đź•’ Turn tracker controls Clear Turn Tracker – Clears the turn tracker. Close Turn Tracker – Closes the turn tracker dialog. Next Turn – Advances to the next turn in the tracker. Sort Turns Desc – Sorts the turns in the tracker numerically (descending). (New) […]
Roll20 is a great tool for running tabletop games online. One of its features is the ability to play audio that is synchronized across all players in the game. Excellent for setting the mood! Unfortunately, the built-in audio controls are a bit clunky to mess around with, especially when you’re trying to keep all the […]
This blog costs me $6 a month* to run and only took a couple hours to set up. I have complete control over it, and it should be able to scale to large numbers of readers. This post is about how I set it up, presented as something of a tutorial. * This is at […]
The Stream Deck XL, as you might infer from its name, is a useful tool for streamers, but it has also proven to be a powerful and easily programmable macro pad for games and productivity applications. In this post, I’ll show how I’ve set up my Stream Deck XL for augmenting the RPGs I run […]
There is a gaping wound where the heart of American politics should be. I’m not talking about the much maligned “political divide” between “left” and “right” (which presupposes, erroneously, that America even has a “left” of any kind other than theoretical). No, I’m talking about the pervasive and all-encompassing reality of class struggle that effortlessly […]
Context: This was written primarily for the players of one of my current RPG campaigns. No effort has been made to provide further context, but I may eventually publish more about the setting. Ardland, the country in which the town of Blightmoor exists, is a quasi-mercantile feudal society. Land ownership is divided between the crown […]
If you want to know what this is about or how we got here, read on. Otherwise, If you’re just here for the updated reference, click here. Back in 2009, Penny Arcade published a noir detective comic best summarized as “prohibition with robots” called Automata. I was immediately interested in the barcode-like text used to […]