Traverse Fantasy

I really like the idea of Nymphs as, like, natural spirits who take the form of young women and just hang out in their environment. I think the way they are treated in pop culture sucks because they are taken as sex-crazed female divinities (which is where we get the word “nymphomania” from). In OD&D , dryads have a 90% chance of charming visitors into never leaving their forest. What gives with that? I’ve been thinking a bit about how to handle magic for a DIY-fuck-your-book nonsense project, and it occurred to me that there might be room for nymphs in a sort of animistic setting. I’d say “This is a take on druids!”, but I’d be lying because I don’t know anything about druids. This is more like Roman folk religion where divinities called numina live just about anywhere. Out of respect, let’s not call our figure a druid. Why not whisperer, to be vague? The whisperer can seek out and talk to nymphs to investigate or learn more about certain natural areas. The Gist Nymphs live a...

Before you get mad at me, I didn't come up with the title; Zedeck did! I have him to thank for that and also for inspiring me to revisit this topic by revising and expanding upon the article I had written before. Please read his article [1]. I am going to talk about Dungeons & Dragons from a psychoanalytic angle again ( original version ), but this time I will be integrating a more direct feminist critique of the original D&D base settings: the Underworld and the Wilderness. We will see how these settings interact with the phallic drive of D&D adventurers, and how they reflect real life intersections of sexism with colonial imagery. This involves an in-depth examination of the aesthetics of D&D , to understand what literary or social influences were being evoked in the text. This will contribute to a fuller reading and critique of D&D as a sexist text and game setting. Shout-out to the Twitter discourse of which I got secondhand whiffs, but didn't read...

This was a kinda-wargame, kinda-RPG that I wrote almost two years ago for some game jam on Itch. It's kind of an exploration of different Roman arena games: the munus , the venatio , and the naumachia . I had taken a seminar on the Roman area that semester, and thought that it was kind of weird that there was no gladiator ruleset (or at least one of which I was aware). I myself am not really interested in super fighty games, but it seemed like a nice way to summarize some of what I had learned in my course, and to also explore certain implications of early pre- D&D games such as Braunstein. Introduction This game requires a couple six-sided dice and some sheets of paper. You will probably choose someone to be the munerarius , the master of ceremonies who funds and runs the gladiatorial games. This participant will narrate combat and other situations, and they will also act on behalf of characters not played by the players. Finally, they are entrusted with making sp...

It is not uncommon for a rulebook to introduce itself by its universal resolution procedure. It's become a cliche at this point, so let's say it together: "When your character attempts something difficult or dangerous, [perform procedure] to see whether they fail or succeed." The exact nature of the procedure differs from rulebook to rulebook, whether you roll a twenty-sided dice or a bunch of six-sided dice, whether you aim for high or low numbers, whether there are degrees of success (or failure), whether the distribution of results is even or biased towards the center, et cetera. Whatever the exact method, the universal resolution procedure looms over many rulebooks published today no matter the play culture they are a part of—traditional, story game, or OSR. The universal resolution procedure is often associated with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition (2000), the first edition of the game developed and published by Wizards of the Coast. It was famous for int...

I thought I'd write a series about converting different Minecraft encounters and monsters to tabletop, because there are some interesting things to learn as far as monster behavior and environmental interactions. Stats given are loosely for OD&D , but are broadly applicable. I mean, this one is just a dragon. The actually important part is structuring the encounter and its 'stage' using interesting patterns of behavior and restrictions of movement. The Ender Dragon HD 10, AC as plate, Mv. 240’ flying The Ender Dragon is a black and purple dragon that lives on an island in the sky (or in another dimension, of sky islands). As usual for dragons, the Ender Dragon has an age value from 1 to 6 (representing age levels from infant to elderly). Instead of rolling for HP, you multiply its total HD by its age level. Thus an Ender Dragon of age level 3 has 30 HP. All physical attacks against her deal half damage except on a to-hit roll of 20, representing a blow against ...