Traverse Fantasy

Prereq.: Why Am I Here? The booklet versions of Fantastic Medieval Campaigns are out now (at-cost as per usual)! Links below: Volume 0: Chain of Command (U$3.37) Volume 1: Mortals & Magic (U$3.94) Volume 2: Monsters & Treasures (U$4.22) Volume 3: Fantasy Adventures (U$3.65) So... not been super into TTRPG talk lately, especially in the context of the OSR from which I have been distancing myself (as a community, on blogs and on social media) for a long couple of months. This is partly because of a development in my life where I’m no longer socially isolated due to the pandemic or moving to a new place or my own social hangups—having less time to spend online or even an interest in doing so. However, I have also wanted to distance myself from the OSR community specifically for longer than that. I think that has been obvious, from me being more vocal about my own play preferences as well as my misgivings towards the OSR play style (which, if you have read my blog, you would

I've spent the last two weeks making a super basic Civ -like. You can see in the picture how far I've gotten: units, cities, research, fog of war. At this point it's so bog-standard that it's not worth getting into how it differs in the details. Instead, I'll try to talk big picture about what I'd like to accomplish—if I get that far! Resourciv is a take on the Civ formula more concerned with social development of a culture than exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. (Again, talking as if it's not just messing around and seeing what I can do, which it is.) That's kind of a strange difference, since Civ 's conventions and mechanics implicate its particular perspective on history: one of a clash of civilizations, each with its own essential nature, all converging on a socio-technological path of evolution driven by domination. Different people have offered or implemented their own ideas of how to improve this model, to make it more

I watched a video that YouTube recommended like a cat dragging a dead mouse onto my front porch. I don't usually watch videos like these, and I knew that I would especially dislike this one, but I watched it out of a morbid curiosity about what Reddit-core world-builders have in their brains lately. Today was a rough day at work. You know it. The basic thrust of the video was that medieval stasis is the necessary result of a magical society, one which pursues arcane rather than technological development, and is aided by the extensive lifespans of fantasy races like elves who can dedicate even more continuous time to their pursuits of progress ("What if da Vinci survived another 100 years and invented flight before the Wright Brothers?")—although they might be limited by individual shortsightedness and a lack of willingness to adapt to changing times, compared to younger contemporaries. The narrator describes a potential social conflict between an arcane establishment and