Travis Miller's Blog About Sword & Sorcery Fiction and Classic Fantasy Adventure Gaming
One of the common tools used by referees who run classic fantasy adventure games is random generation tables. These are useful tools that have many applications but they also have tradeoffs that I find undesirable at times. The Benefits One of the major and perhaps primary uses of random generators is they can be great …
Continue reading The Benefits and Tradeoffs of Random Generation Tables
The Dreams In Gary's Basement is a documentary about the life and creations of Gary Gygax. Though the creation of Dungeons & Dragons and the importance of the game in the broader culture is a major part of the narrative, the film is about Gary himself. Who is it for? Obviously, the film is for …
Continue reading Film Recommendation: The Dreams In Gary’s Basement
Is Sandbox Vs. Railroad a useful comparison? I don't think it is. Here's why.
In my Kalador campaign, the group lost the player who ran the wizard to real life issues. It quickly became clear to the players that they needed a wizard in the group. I offered several options and what we came to was a player character would become a dual classed fighter/magic user. Because Swords & …
2024 is the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why D&D has lasted so long, been so successful, and continued to gather new fans throughout that time. The answer I've come up with is that it is not just one thing. The reason D&D is such a …
Tom Shippey's Laughing Shall I Die is an examination of the viking attitudes about death and how they lived knowing that they would almost certainly come to a violent end. It's a book worth reading if you are interested in the vikings or how the stories about vikings influenced the sword-and-sorcery genre. Tom Shippey has …
Continue reading Book Recommendation: Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings
Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto provides some valuable insights and principles that agree with many ideas I've written about on this blog while challenging me to be more rigorous in their application. Who is it for? One of the reasons I've hesitated about recommending this book is that I'm not entirely sure who it's for. …
Continue reading Book Recommendation: Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto
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