The Dripping Tap

I've been thinking a lot about sewers this month. I continue to plug-away at Dungeon 23, and August's level is a section of sewers from Myr Regath, the city that is now a megadungeon. My long-running story game, set in an Urban Fantasy metropolis, also features a lot of sewer exploration and adventuring. Archetypal of the human struggle to maintain public health amidst growing crowds and communities, they make great sites for adventure. Tight, cramped corridors extending into darkness, an ecosystem all its own, you're bound to come across the carcasses of anything and everything the city-above discards. The waste - literal, and metaphorical - intermingle in a sewer. They fit the old-school definition of a "dungeon" or site of adventure even better , I think, than the historical donjons that we got the English dungeon . To this end, I picked up Beneath the Metropolis | The Secret Lives of Cities by Alex Marshall from my local library. Friendly reminder to go and ...

Earlier this year, when I used my substack like a blog (which I've now separated into blog & newsletter) I wrote up a love-letter to Ava Islam's ERRANT . Over the course of this year - working on Dungeon23, looking for my next long-term TTRPG system - I've fallen more firmly in love with the Old School Renaissance and the kind of play it encourages. You can read that article here . It's a good window into where I was back in May, falling in love with old-school play and sensibilities and still trying to form the language to describe what I liked about it. I've had plenty of OSR experience playing, running and designing for M Ö RK BORG, but my personal life has been so rocky the past year or so I never truly actualized on that scene like I would've liked. At the end of my initial ERRANT article I created a covenant for the game. Here on this new form of my blog I want to revisit this content, updating it and getting it in front of more eyes. Behold, TSATHOG...

  Welcome Hearthside to The Dripping Tap, traveler. Here's a list of some of my favorite books, ttrpgs and historical sources that inspire me to run and make TTRPGs. In no particular order: BOOKS: The Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark City of Brass (and the Daevabad Cycle) by S.A. Chakraborty The Black Company by Glen Cooke Terry Pratchett's Discworld Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. by Mike Mignola Dune by Frank Herbert Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin The Dying Earth by Jack Vance TTRPGs : Primal Quest Gubat Banwa HIS MAJESTY THE WORM Mothership Oops All Draculas! Errant Cantrip Here, There, Be Monsters! M Ö RK BORG Frontier Scum PIRATE BORG Wyrd Science magazine Ghosts of the Sierra Verde & Wolves Upon the Coast Everything SandyPug Games does, but especially HELLPIERCERS   ART :  Gustave Dore Artem Demura Brom   Ezra Rose DysonLogos Blog Venommoe Hazem Ameen Anato Finnstark Andres Rios SOURCES : God's Shadow by Alan Mikhail Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon Mutual A...

  This blog post is about a magic system for my work-in-progress ttrpg called YOU ARE A DEATH (K)NIGHT , or YADN for short.  [This post was originally on Substack. Now it's here!] This ttrpg is weird, specific, and it’s my love letter to a game of villainy and horror. Players play as archetypal “death knights”, reanimated servitors of a Big Bad Evil Guy. The game diverges in that, spontaneously, the PCs have all become possessed of their free will and collectively slain the Evil that made them. Now, possessed of great power and magic, their free minds must grapple with the horrors they’ve been made to do, finding themselves in a world they helped to ruin. A human brain piloting a petrified killing-machine is ill equipped for the horrors that follow it, like flies to a carcass! In other words, it’s not quite horror - horror is best defined as having a lack of choices, and this game is something of a power fantasy intertwined with a sudden end to horror and ensuing ...

  Nazgul from Bakshi's LotR adaptation   Back in April I teased the very beginnings of my TTRPG pet project YADN - You are a Death (K)night. A game for roleplaying powerful, undead wraiths like the Nazgul or The Ten Who Were Taken …if they had killed their master(s) and regained their free will at the 11th hour. I’ve been iterating on the basic resource management that I think I can share a sneak peek! Dice pools, resource trackers and boxes await you… [This post was originally on Substack. Now it's here!] Rules & Fantasies   Characters have three core stats: Malice , Gloom and Dread . Malice is the physical stat, covering strength, resistance to harm and intimidation. Gloom is the social stat, covering social interactions, determining how many minions you can have under your influence, and resistances of the mind. Dread is the magic stat, covering casting and resisting sorceries, as well as keeping one’s soul in one piece. This becomes important for resis...

  Hello all! This issue of Hearthside talks about the TTRPG I started noodling with in my spare time, talking about specific fantasy influences, as well as the mechanics that I’ve got - a dice pool and what I hope is a fun twist on Lifepaths.  [This post was originally over on Substack. Now it's here.] I want to openly share this development process, where I’m at and what inspires me. I could wax poetically for an epoch about all the games I enjoy, but let me try to stay on target. Recently - and especially with 2023 ahead of us - we’re in a golden age for what I’ll call targeted experiences . Many ttrpgs attempt to cast a broad net to allow for a wide variety of fantasies or experiences (Dungeons & Dragons, but also Savage Worlds, Traveller, etc). A focused and specific storytelling experience - while limiting the amount of options inherent in the game - can allow for more evocative, streamlined experiences within the creative confines that are set. MÖRK BOR...