Author: Brandon Graves
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The Karthan Empire
A Small but powerful force in the world of Celestria is the Karthan Empire. Named after their Capital, the great city of Karth. The Karthan empire is a grand republic headed by an Empire who commands the military and ostensibly leads the Senate. Karth idolizes its military and structures its society heavily on the honor…
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The Unhallowed Sea
Unhallowed Sea Beyond the material plane lies a quiet place. A somber plane of existence where Devils dwell and an eternal fog covers a quiet sea which connects scattered islands. Though the Unhallowed sea seems a restful place at first glance, its eerie expanse is one of great danger. Beneath the calm pale waters leviathans…
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Goblins: Creatures of Chaos
For my latest world building project I’ve been thinking about a take on goblins. The idea being that goblins are creatures of total chaos that spring up from nothing, creating a nest and multiplying until they spread forth into the world causing trouble wherever they go. What follows is a poorly formatted early stage of…
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An introduction to Castle Whiterook
On a seaside cliff, looking over a village of the same name stands a small, but grand castle that has seen better days. Castle WhiteRook. Once the seat of power for the Ancient Kingdom of Aldreth the castle fell to ruins along with the empire itself. 30 years ago(a mere 1000 years after the fall…
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A Simple Weapon Mastery System
Premise In the OSR Community one thing gets talked about often: How to make Fighters more competitive long term. This is a question that has plagued the D&D community since the early day’s and there have been many proposed solutions that have all been met with varying degree’s of success. Recently I have been pondering…
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Blank slates
As someone who lives in the OSR community, but keeps an eye on a couple of “modern” RPG communities as well I’m frequently confronted with an appreciation for subtle things in the OSR mindset that make games better. Things that aren’t talked about much. The unsung heroes if you will. Over the last couple of…
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I miss being “Advanced”
The OSR is a playground filled with every toy you can imagine. Systems as far as the eye can see filled with tables, ideas, Passion & Brilliance (with a Capital P & B respectively). It’s a wonderful landscape that has everything a GM could want.We often espouse the virtues of the “Rules Lite” System. B/X…
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Mechanical Dissonance and Rule #0
I often struggle to balance my desire for a narrative focused gaming experience, and the grand desire to have solid mechanical backing of that narrative. In my head, in the loftiest of my dreams, I see a game that I run in which i simply sit down, players describe their characters and at any given…
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Options vs. Emergent development
(These are just general musings. There is no advice, there is no pearl of wisdom. Read for as long as it interests you, disregard as soon as is convenient. There are no answers here. Only Dragons) I have a problem. A conflicting set of core ethos’ that I struggle to balance and come to grips…
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Examining Dice Rolls
There are two seemingly conflicting schools of thought that exist in the TTRPG gaming space. One side posits that adventurers should be mostly capable individuals, after all if they weren’t they wouldn’t make it very far. With that in mind it is believed that a thief attempting to pick a lock should succeed at picking…