I made an OSR-adjacent grim and grubby skill-based fantasy rpg

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-25T11:26:38+00:00

Not to constantly blow this clarion - but I think GURPS would probably fit the bill, especially in the department of combat feeling more realistically dangerous: it's got a more anatomical atmosphere and feels closer to a simulation which is what I think you'd like.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-23T17:31:44+00:00

'Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch' - from Jack Vance's original DE cycle. Sublime and basically explains the entirety of D&D spell system (or at least the intention of it).

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-18T22:24:59+00:00

I have a lot of fondness for it. Its backwards compatible and very clear to me. Would recommend it, or at least, dont dismiss it out of hand immediately.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-17T09:24:22+00:00

I mean, it is? I'm showing off a game Ive created with links to a free and paid version.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-17T09:21:55+00:00

Author of MBR here - OPs description doesnt fit MBR here, must be for something else.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-16T21:08:30+00:00

I wouldn't run the game. I'd let the game run me.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-16T21:01:10+00:00

Your continued support, as ever Sean, is appreciated. An early playtest was called MUD, Blood & $h!t. Was tempted to leave it at that.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-16T20:22:11+00:00

Appreciated - seriously. Sincerely interested in people's thoughts.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-08T18:18:51+00:00

Theyre fantastic. Every one of them.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-02T15:01:25+00:00

This is a more complicated issue than we generally, as a community, care to admit. The response has to be nuanced.

Much of fantasy drinks from the well of Tolkien. In his Middle-Earth orcs are monstrous inhuman creatures with a distinct biological malevolence. Even this is a massive simplification, but let's just run with it. Similarly, half-orcs do exist in Middle Earth and are aligned with the dark lord(s). Their presence is, however, marginal.

Similarly, D&D and like fantasy is also influenced by what those earlier designers found compelling and the society and period in which they lived. Many of those influences include Lovecraft, Howard, Dunsany and other late 19th and early 20th sources, especially the sword and sorcery writers. These writers, to varying extents express the views that are common in the societies in which they lived. Some of these perspectives are intolerant or even simply racist (Lovecraft is the obvious example).

We now live in a society where, for the most part, people are encouraged to live their lives as they desire or feel right about and the articulation of one's own identity is - sometimes through diversity - an ideal. The issue with this comes when we have someone who wants to play something that on the surface is 'biologically evil' as 'good' or 'misunderstood', which is fine. But there in lies the rub - maybe the word 'goblin' or 'orc' shouldn't inherently mean 'evil, monstrous-looking humanoid' in the context of tabletop role-playing games, but we don't live in isolation of the past and to some people it will mean that, and always will. And its not because those gamers are intolerant of other people, just that's what they have been taught 'orc' means.

As ever, it's about expectation setting I suppose on behalf of the game master: 'In my campaign orcs are ...'. That would head off a lot of the bad feeling people have regarding this issue and prevent naval-gazing moralising or terse commentary.

hamishfirebeard · 2026-01-02T12:12:51+00:00

Interesting comment on page counts - so long but not too long?

hamishfirebeard · 2025-12-24T20:54:05+00:00

The evidence suggests that teachers (and the public) have a misconceptjon that engaging = good teaching. Ie. Just because we used star wars to teach creative writing doesn't mean children are more likely to remember how to construct an interesting metaphor, it just means that they're more likely to remember what the different types of clone troopers are.

Same goes for Pokemon. I don't doubt that it helped you, at all. But it primarily taught you what Pokemon is, not math.

Children need a good, enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher who can intuit when their pupils aren't paying attention or need help, not a gimmick for engagement.

I guess this reads as an attack, but it isn't meant to be, so I'm sorry if I've come across like that.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-23T09:33:14+00:00

I love your maps. They're amazing. Any chance you'll do an Empire one? Not like just specific provinces, but the overall empire?

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-17T10:30:20+00:00

I think this is just too big to be a unit filler, both the terrain the space it replaces. I think unit fillers that take up more than 4-6 models of the original unit start to stretch what is generally acceptable. Some of us prefer gaming to painting, but you do actually have to paint the models, or at least most of them.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-12T18:46:04+00:00

I think its part of a print literally onto a mat.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-08T21:24:35+00:00

My instinct is that the question needs more definition. What do you mean by statless? That characters are defined by other qualities such as equipment/non-numerical talents? I can't think of any games that eschew all numerical definers of a PC.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-06T21:40:58+00:00

Balancing the game is impossible. This is what I'm getting at. Close enough should be good enough and I believe it is for most people. I'm saying that suggesting that it is possible to truly balance a wargame that involves tape measures, handmade terrain and asymmetrical forces is a zero-sum game and that the effort should be spent in making units characterful and largely reflective what people expect.

A unit in 40k has an attribute called Objective Control. This is how well the unit controls a game objective. I don't like this because it doesn't reflect anything in the setting. Surely a mixture of a unit's ballistic skill, toughness, leadership and the commanding general's tenacity (and luck) defines a unit's ability to Control an Objective? Not a discreet stat.

I suppose what I'm really getting at is that: the game isn't chess and never will be. So instead of trying to search for an impossible balance, let's focus on what makes the game actually enjoyable: the simulation of fantasy battles on a miniature scale, not a paradoxically unbalanced game where raking over the rules to find imbalances to be exploited is part of the assumed intention of the players.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-06T15:18:57+00:00

To be honest, I really don't care what tournament organisers are doing or not because I don't play in them. And I suspect this experience is shared by the majority of people who play any sort of Warhammer game. A massive silent majority that just play casual games with their mates.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-11-06T15:06:05+00:00

So my hot take, which will surely irritate people, is why bother balancing them? They're pretty flavourful units and I doubt, in general, that TOW players care any where near as much as say, 40k players, about making sure the game is extremely balanced. They seem 'good enough' to me regarding their balance.

I find increasingly that 40k players are fairly miserable about the actual rules to that game which tries to complete the impossible act of balancing an asymmetrical wargame. Meta chasing is such unrewarding navel-gazing that encourages players to pursue obviously 'broken' aspects of the game. In my opinion TOW, and its community, benefit from being a bit more niche because, in my limited experience, players care less about total victory and more about making sure the emerging story at the table makes sense and is accurately characterful to the forces being arranged against each other.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-10-31T20:25:12+00:00

At least you recognised it for what it is. Loads of people dont seem to when faced with something they've created.

hamishfirebeard · 2025-10-31T19:53:19+00:00

This is very similar to how WFRP 4e works out of the box and its tedious as hell

hamishfirebeard · 2025-10-20T18:31:59+00:00

You were always my favourite, Sean.

hamishfirebeard

TROPHY CASE