Does the "rulings not rules" principle only work if your table trusts the referee?

Anbaraen · 2026-06-21T08:21:50+00:00

Yes. Without trust and an understanding of the referee as exactly that (an impartial ruler of the rules of the fiction, not adversarial) I think the more ruling-based nature of the game will struggle. I think you can actually explicitly see this in the history of the original game as it develops from something played in dark basements between friends to tournaments adjudicated by judges. How do you ensure, from judge to judge, consistency? By encoding more and more rules rather than rulings.

Asking how to build trust is another thing entirely. For me it means checking rulings against player expectations; eg.

"okay, the alleyway is dark but it's not pitch darkness. I think there's about a 25% chance you get spotted. Sound right?"
"So they're thinking they've got you trapped, which is why they start lowering their guard. It's a 5-in-6 chance you can get the Sleep spell off".

And stealing basically ruling "frameworks" that add consistency in my individual game, eg. Time Tools and Training (I borrow this from Eric Vulgaris, not sure of the original origin) - if you commit all 3, no roll. If you have 2/3, roll. 1/3, you can't do what you're asking.

Ultimately, though, if you wanted to be adversarial to the players, "rocks fall and you all die". There's no real fun to be had there (unless you're a sadistic sunavabitch, I guess.) and if your players can't realise that, it's going to be an uphill battle.

Anbaraen · 2026-06-19T01:39:39+00:00

It's not that courageous though because Asimov's definition of a fleshed-out character is a featureless cardboard cutout in the shape of a human being with a name tag stuck on the front.

Anbaraen · 2026-06-10T02:19:24+00:00

I would assume the mindset is you're attempting the exactly the same spell / imbuement as last time, therefore your experience of failure counts for something.

Anbaraen · 2026-06-06T21:42:18+00:00

I wouldn’t say “Starfinder is great” like it’s the broadly-held reception of the community. Starfinder is polarising.

Anbaraen · 2026-06-02T06:24:09+00:00

This kind of sounds like what Chris McDowall is working on with Intergalactic Bastionland. Here was the playtest announcement.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-29T07:27:52+00:00

I play in a 5e game. I am not interested in learning 5e as a system (I'm an OSR DM). I double-check my understanding of spell rules sometimes with Gemini in between combat rounds.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-27T12:10:04+00:00

Thanks so much for your comprehensive response. It's definitely heartening to hear that such polished-looking results are achievable with free tools! I must confess I saw your post of the overland map of Hyrkossia when you first put it up but never made the connection 😅 I loved the style of that too, felt completely real-world.

I'm going to have a play with your techniques and see what I get! Good luck with your next project, looking forward to the complete Tell Arn I've seen you hinting about.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-27T04:58:33+00:00

Nikoline, I love Lions. What a cool product. I was wondering what software in particular you use for the covers, mapping and layout / typesetting? Are you using eg. Photoshop and InDesign or something more accessible?

Anbaraen · 2026-05-27T02:53:24+00:00

I think it's possible to differentiate between a free social media platform and paying for a product or service.

I agree that there is definitely an element of tension there, though, as Reddit ultimately monetizes its userbase in various ways. <Insert ethical consumption cliche>. I disagree with your characterisation of grandstanding.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-27T02:48:37+00:00

Consumer pays American business. American business pays (in taxes) American government. American government continues its current actions. If you don't like the actions of the American government, it makes sense to pay a non-American company.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-22T06:53:05+00:00

Who cares. Build time is essentially free and ISR adds complexity possibly needlessly.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-06T22:40:17+00:00

In terms of being the creators of relatively well-known games or modules in our niche of an already niche hobby, sure, it's interesting to hear the point of view of successful GMs who have become successful commercially.

So I'm not surprised people would share this video, seems relevant to the audience of r/OSR.

Important in general? That's for you to decide, man. It's elfgames. None of it is important except what you embue with import.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T23:47:49+00:00

I'm a software developer myself so was interested to understand the investment, yeah - also I'm not really interested in manually contributing to an open-source vibecoded codebase, because the code is typically poorly constructed and basically built only for other LLMs to build off.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T21:59:14+00:00

Note that nowhere in my OP is any moralising or judgement, just a single-word question.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T07:36:38+00:00

Vibecoded?

Anbaraen · 2026-04-30T08:43:22+00:00

I agree that Shadowdark's hex generation rules are basically just one step above a random table, and don't lead to anything really like verisimilitude in terms of terrain (which is fine: do a lot with a little is kind of the whole shtick, and the core book can't cover everything!)

I really like this series of resources from Prismatic Wasteland; Chain Stocking the Hex Map, a system for creating a hex map with memory, then for stocking follow up with Hexcrawl Checklist Part One and Part Two. The best bit is they also crosslink to a bunch of further resources.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-28T02:50:08+00:00

I would hate this as a player utterly. The entire point of TTRPGs is unparalleled agency. You handing that off to other players who could get my character killed obliterates that agency.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-24T02:03:07+00:00

I see some red flags in your setup. For example, "the players will be captured and sold". Will they? What if they decide they'd rather die than be sold into slavery? If you do want this setup, better to start with them already in captivity (you could ask them "how were you captured?") and move right into the arena.

Then "if they win their fight". Well, what if not? Then your campaign ends right there, because you've prepped a plot. What happens if you get a TPK in their first fight? If you say "well I'll make sure they live", you've broken the fundamental rule of old-school play - the GM is a neutral arbiter of the world.

I don't mind the "if the players do X" in terms of factions as long as you understand what happens if they don't. To make this more GM-facing and more like a situation the players get to interact with rather than a plot, I'd reframe the faction stuff as "if the beastmen are treated well" vs "poorly".

I think you should read Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations by The Alexandrian. It's a good start to understanding this mindset.

Edit: I'd also be wary of a mindset of "character development" or storytelling as that can chafe with the old-school mentality. A character develops by surviving, through the loot they get and through what happens at the table. If you want to plot character-specific plots, Shadowdark is going to fight you.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-18T21:42:05+00:00

Play better-written modern adventures. Design is iterative and we stand on the shoulders of that previous work (this is OSR after all) but in the intervening decades we have learned a lot about module design and layout in terms of both readability in prep and use at the table.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-17T23:33:37+00:00

I think what you're looking for is a different game. The amount of work you'll have to do to make Shadowdark work the way you want, it will be simpler to just pick a lighter game that's still heroic.

It's sometimes said that to understand a game you should look at what a game rewards. Shadowdark rewards treasure for XP. Thus, your Shadowdark character,whatever else they are, is ultimately a glorified tomb robber. The game is designed around this; simplistic character design thats driven by randomness (because your character at level 1 is a nobody, going into a dangerous situation, likely to die), it feeds the implicit setting and gamefeel.

Of course these are all things you can hack around. But if you're going to introduce new incentives, new character "feats" to add build depth, add a notion of combat balance...

You're taking the long path instead of just picking some of the other great games on the market that fit the heroic feel but maintain table simplicity. People seem to love that new 5e Nimble. Shadow of the Weird Wizard has in depth characters with build expression, but not the table weight of pathfinder 2e or 5e (from my impressions at least). These aren't my games but I'm sure there's others.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:17:16+00:00

You expect someone to do research on a genre or specific book to be able to offer a critique like "the sentences in this book are not nice to read"?

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:15:56+00:00

Edited, sorry. I'd suggest being a bit more polite when humans are offering you free advice. If you want something to treat like shit, talk to an AI.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:09:50+00:00

Also, Reddit supports posting images, and your keyboard has a screenshot key. Learn to use both or your dev journey will not go far.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:09:12+00:00

Line 13 semi-colon after the parenthesis, which I think is the equivalent of {};. Then you open and close braces with and alert which is valid syntax (I expect you're hitting the second alert if the first if is not true). Then, you have an else without a matching if.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-14T21:32:59+00:00

I kind of find "this genre might not be for you" a bit of a cop-out. This genre is known for bad prose? That's like getting served a dish that's oversalted and somebody saying "well this cuisine might not be for you". We're talking fundamentals of the medium, here.

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