Eow Links 42
2021-10-17

Eow Links 42

"Eow" for End Of Week. TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 42.

For more weekly links, head to The Seed of Worlds Shiny TTRPG link collection.

Most of the links below are found via the RPG Planet that Alex Schroeder built and maintains. If you have a RPG blog, please consider joining the conversation.

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No images, no comments, no favourite, this week.


Old School but no modules

Modules have had a strange impact on the hobby. They are easy to write, but hard to get right. If many people play them, as happens when they are published by the same people publishing successful rules, they turn into touch stones.

Games and the people that play them

In order to break out of this, I just provide magic items as part of random treasure. It’s appropriately rare and difficult to obtain, and never for sale.


Powered by the Apocalypse Engine: An Overview

An open game engine allows any developer who wants to do to build a new game without having to develop the mechanics of the game from scratch. They simply take an existing game and modify until it is sufficiently different to fit their theme, world, or ideas.


Frazetta Museum Travel Log

A theme that shone through many of those stories was that Frank Frazetta was a man who had a deep emotional states. I have the sense that he went with his gut and did what he felt was the best thing in the moment. Sometimes it got him in trouble and other times produced a magnificent result.


Favoured foes to fight - survey responses

The big surprise in all this to me was the distinction between PHB and Monster Manual humanoids as classes of foes.


Rules and Rulings

However, this was one of only a few times in seven years of running 5E that the situation came up. And that is a reason for the rules not including what happens: It is too infrequent.


Using random words to create characters

Then, stats are dropped. Then, skills and abilities are condensed, shortened, till only their names remain, without rules attached to them.

FKR The Expanse

So I’ve been mulling over my FKR Trav game and how to adapt it to The Expanse


Free Starspiel

We ran the Crash of Voluturnus adventure from the Star Frontiers box set, with me converting on the fly


Making Magic Items Inspired by Apocalypse World

When I read Apocalypse World I can see that (like me) Meguey and Vincent spent their college years playing Ars Magica


Where Do Stories Come From?

Where do stories come from? Is this important to know?

Telling stories is like cooking fish. You can do all sorts of things with fish: stuff them with chilli and fry; steam them with sour plum; make fish sauce.


[ZINE] Echoes From Fomalhaut #09

Ruined castles, faerie-haunted forests, barren coasts and cold mountain ranges await those who adventure here; druids, reclusive eccentrics, jealous wizards’ orders and mysterious monasteries complicate the network of temporary alliances. This is a land fit for exploration, plunder... or will that be conquest?


anti-sell manifesto

the goal here is precisely to discourage a view of art entangled with buying things because people tell you to


Entish is a declarative Datalog-like language for formal RPG rules via Ropeblogi — Theory Review #30

attribute(Auric, Strength, 16)


Nobody Knows What A Monster Is

The audience should be scared of the monster