The Robgoblin

Sea of Stars is hosting the Blog Carnival again: https://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/2025/02/05/beginning-this-months-rpg-blog-carnival-dragon-neighbors-how-do-you-live-with-a-dragon-nearby/ So how do  you live next door to a dragon? Well, if you're an ordinary person, it might not be all that bad. See, dragons and lords don't get on. If you've got a lord, they show with all their cronies – sorry, 'knights' – up talking nonsense about who can fish in what pond, demanding your best cattle, and all that kind of thing. Then their  lord shows up, or Gods forbid the King, and you've got to show up at the castle, looking all happy to be a day behind on your fieldwork while you wait at table. Seriously, fuck lords. A dragon, meanwhile... sure, they take the occasional cow as well. But only for themselves, so it works out less in the long run. But they don't care who does what where. Or with whom, come to that. They collect weird shit. Gold mostly. But then so do so...

Blech. I've been trying to come up with a variant Fighter class for B/X derivatives. Trouble is, so has everyone else, and all my ideas are either (a) ones that someone has already tried or (b) difficult to implement sensibly. So instead of turning them into a coherent class, here's a mini slush pile. Some of it leans quite heavily on posts at Methods & Madness, particularly this one and this one , as well as Chainmail – whose Fighting-Man was clearly supernatural. Hey, if we've got someone in their dressing gown chucking fireballs around, and someone else in a leather waistcoat climbing sheer walls, I think the person who's good at fighting should be really good . Bump hit dice up one size.  This was based on the idea that a Normal Human has 1 HD, rather than ½ HD, while sticking with the d8 standard. This lets Mages be a bit stronger than standard rules, with d6 hit dice, but still weaker than your average peasant. Thieves get a d8. And Fighters get a d10. Attack...

The Goblovna 1 has always been a bit sceptical of the whole 'roleplaying game' thing. In part because being handed a 300-page technical manual to read isn't her idea of a fun time. Strange I know. But evidently I've been doing something right as an ambassador for the hobby, because she asked me to run a game for her and two friends - themselves gamers. We settled on Scurry! from Stout Stoat games, because (a) the actual rules  fit on one page, and (b) the allure of playing as a cute woodland creature was strong. Although, as things turned out, 'cute' may not have been quite the right word. Characters were: Helizabeth:  A hedgehog poulticepounder, apparently unaware she is a hedgehog. Married to Weatherwarts the toad for three years, bearing him two children before he absconded. Wee Bobbins:  A robin mapmaker. Had an on-again, off-again casual relationship with Weatherwarts the toad. Apparently it's all about the tongue. It's now been off for entirely t...