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- June 15, 2024

New posts will go up on Substack: https://therobgoblin.substack.com/

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The Robgoblin

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It Takes A Village To Stock A Hex

- April 07, 2024

It's fairly likely that your favourite fantasy roleplaying game has, buried in the rules somewhere, an assumption that you're using six-mile hexes at the basis for overland travel. This assumption is almost as old as the genre, and is present even if you're using a ruleset that doesn't explicitly use hex maps. Ever wonder why D&D 5th Edition has paces of 18, 24 or 30 miles a day? That's 3, 4 or 5 hexes! The idea that they're the 'ideal' scale goes back to at least 2009, and Steamtunnel's oft-cited In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex . And that idea has merit, it's certainly mathematically convenient. But we don't make maps for the convenience of mapmakers: we make them to describe territory. The 6-mile hex does a poor job of that, because it is too big. This has been remarked upon before, of course. Most recently by Eric Diaz at Methods & Madness , but also by Skerples at Coins and Scrolls . Both authors use European cities as their referenc...

Magic Dealers

- June 15, 2025

This month's Blog Carnival is about magic shops. I don't like magic shops. Having magic sufficiently commonplace that any town worthy of its walls has a dealer in ensorcelled household items just doesn't lend itself to the kind of adventures I enjoy. If you want a magic item, the right and proper way to get it is to find out who owns it, and go take it from them - whether by through strength or through guile. Same goes for crafting them. If you were a good enough blacksmith to make magic items, you'd be doing that - not putting yourself in danger going down holes in the ground full of monsters. If your fantasy is pretending to be a skilled artisan, then all power to you. But maybe play a game that's about that. But, from time to time, it's inconvenient to go and do the deed yourself. Especially if your first name is 'King' or 'Archpriest' or something like that. And likewise, if one finds a particularly lucrative vein of enchanted sandals, the av...

1d6 Celestial Phenomena

- December 16, 2024

Eldritch Fields requested 1d6 celestial phenomena for the OSR Discord's 2024 Secret Santicorn 1 . Also, the Goblette (Goblina?) has reminded me that it was, in fact, her idea that the Christmas elves should form a trade union. So whoever's drawn that one... the credit is not due to me. 1. All three moons - the Red, White, and Black - are full. All that stuff that happens on a full moon? It happens eightfold. The tides are so high that ships are sailing on the market square. All wolves are werewolves , and all men bitten are turned. All emotions are heightened (roll 1d12 instead of 2d6 for reactions and morale). Wilderness encounters at night have a 50% chance of being rolled on the table for daylight. 2. Meteor storm. The emphasis here is on storm. The sky burns bright with bolides. Find cover, and quickly; it'll sound like a cross between hailstones the size of grapefruits, and the biggest thunderstorm you've ever heard. Find cover quickly. Soft objects - livestock, ...

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A Knight at the Opera

M Monsters at the Opera - A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Credit: Joe Sparrow, from *Dungeons & Drawings* Strap in, because there ar...
14 hours ago
The Alexandrian

Untested: Open Table Headlines - I love using headlines as a GM. In my campaign status document, these are short descriptions – usually only one or two sentences long – of current events, ...
16 hours ago
Tales of the Lunar Lands

Saga of the Ortegids: Appendix N - *If you haven't read theNintendo Power handbook,do yourself a favor.*I know the Year of the Barbarian has run on longer than a year at this point, but I ...
1 day ago
Blog of Forlorn Encystment

Creating a New Regional Sandbox for B2: The Keep on the Borderlands - Over on Bluesky, I recently finished up my readthrough of Dungeon Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands - actually, by the time this post sees the light...
1 day ago
Prismatic Wasteland

Playtest Early, Playtest Often - To design a game, you have to break a few eggs and discard some rules or completely rewrite them. But you won’t know what to discard and what to rewrite un...
1 day ago
cryptickeyway

Using Boring Meetings to Design Dungeons - The modern world is filled with a certain number of boring, pointless meetings. Maybe the meeting itself is pointless. Or maybe you are simply an ancilla...
2 days ago
I Cast Light!

SKELETON: A BX Class With A Bone To Pick - *Ha ha! Burn!* *Preamble: For reasons, I realized I might need to allow players to be Skeleton PCs. I've seen undead classes before that march from skelet...
3 days ago
Rise Up Comus

Playing War Games with your Grandmother's Nativity Set - I worked on this over Christmas. It's a little late but perhaps you (like me) haven't quite cleaned up your tree yet. I have limited exposure to war ga...
6 days ago
Whose Measure God Could Not Take

Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy 1e Character Generators - This character generator sketches out a PC, except that it doesn't list out the standard starting skills and equipment, and it doesn't spend your 500 st...
1 week ago
Methods & Madness

Shadow of the Torturer (review) - Shadow of the Torturer (1980), by Gene Wolfe, the first part in The Book of the New Sun series, is an amazing work; so much that the first thing I consider...
1 week ago
Grumpy Wizard

The Grumpy Wizard’s Remembrances of the Curmudgeon in the Cellar - Tim Kask had a reputation for being the grand poohbah of curmudgeonly grognards making me the Slightly Abrasive Junior Sorcerer's Apprentice in comparison....
1 week ago
Dice Goblin

Wasteland & Warzones: Expanding upon Violence. by Luke Gearing - In DANGER CLOSE, firefights and combat take place on a squad level. I can imagine, however, wanting to ‘zoom in’ for particular moments; room breaches, due...
2 weeks ago
Goblin Punch

Secret Santicorn 2025: Two Forges - The Forge of Yakul Yakul was obliterated, and his temples were sunk. Memories of the dead god were struck from the souls of men. A heavy punishment was ...
3 weeks ago
Prismatic Weekly

Blogwagon Announcement: Merry Hexmas - A new blog bandwagon where everyone writes a hex for a winter wonderland hexcrawl and posts it on their blog, linking to blogs that have adjacent hexes.
2 months ago

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