Your Own Worst Enemy

You can read this post on my personal site with other Goodies here!

    Howdy, Farmhands!

    I think everyone would have a better time if we could all internalize the reality that our dearly loved hobbies are all a little bit shit. Yes, that one. Yes, even the one you like the most. Yes, yes, ESPECIALLY all of mine. No, it's not a moral failing that you still like them. And while we're on the topic, we should also all internalize the reality that we'll never be the Number One Fan or Bestest Boy at doing whatever that hobby is! Perfection isn't attainable, nor should imperfection prevent you from enjoying your sort-of-shit hobby!

         There is a pervasive opinion among the laymen that just because there is a high skill ceiling for any given activity, that all people engaged in that activity should aspire to reach it. This line of thinking is bullshit. It's cool that olympic athletes can challenge and break the documented bounds of human achievement. I go for a walk every day. Same basic behavior, but I'm doing it because it's enjoyable to me, not because I intend to ever reach for the top rung. 

    This is a blogpost about TTRPGS, by the by. Not sure that's been entirely clear up until now.  

    Let's be very blunt with each other. We're sat around our tables with some shapes with numbers stamped on them, pretending to be elves and shit. I love doing that. You love doing that. But we're still just pretending to be elves and shit. This hobby, even at it's highest level of production and academia, is an act that is meant to be enjoyable. It's surprising how easy it is to forget that, especially when the person whose elfgame shit you're critiquing happens to yourself.

    I personally have an issue with this, as I am a very critical person. There is nothing I love more than stripping a piece of media down to it's bare parts and discussing how they fit together and where improvement could be made. It is my favorite activity. This sort of thing is absolutely fine and a valid way to engage with media, but it can become a little much when you start to turn that energy inward. Once, during a session of My Pirate Game, I ended the game with the normal wind down of "let's critically analyze our choices and consider mechanic changes to better accommodate our needs" and got hit with one of the new players going "you could be a little less harsh on yourself." And they were right. I wasn't discussing a product made for consumption by the masses or sold for money, I was treating my friendy-friend game time like it was a test I needed to ace. That's unhealthy.

    Roleplaying games, even at their grindiest, crunchiest, and "we have to pull out a physical tape measure to ensure the target of that mini is within range"-iest, are about having fun. What counts as fun is different between individuals, sure, but the enjoyment of the thing is very much the point. There's nothing wrong with improving your craft or being open about your weaknesses, but you simply cannot lose sight of the point of all this in your drive to better your skills. Give yourself the space to be imperfect. Refrain from judging yourself so harshly. We're all pretending to be Elves in a hobby that is, by god, a Little Bit Shit.

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda 

I Like Trains

 

chugga choo choo, bitch

    In November of 2024, Maggie Mahoney hosted a month-long Itch Jam titled the "Tabletop Train Jam." At the time, I thought this was a fantastic idea, but knew I wouldn't have the time to participate myself. However, I am, if nothing else, full to the brim with Opinions. I chose to share those Opinions on social media, intending to edit them into something of a larger essay later. It is now November of 2025 and high time I fulfilled that intention.

    Howdy, Farmhands!

    The implementation of Trains in TTRPGs is an interesting topic to think about. Their inherant purpose as vehicles assumes they're meant for overland travel, hauling large amounts of cargo (passengers or otherwise), at a speed incapable by other mundane means. However, Elfgames rarely operate at a scale that requires A Train to be available. If they are on offer, they risk trivializing the mechanics used by the party up until the point that said train was made accessible. The same can be said of teleportation magic and airships, so this isn't a novel conundrum by any means. How do we implement Trains into our games, and maybe more pressing, why would we want to?

    Trains are COOL, is the thing. They're infinitely customizable- new cars can be added or removed with only the limitation of the engine's capacity. They're an enclosed space- until you reach a destination, there's no just Getting Off the train. They can be natural extensions to the existing resource management the party has been dealing with, simply scaled up beyond their individual capabilities- Logistics such as fuel and available track come into play. They can be transport, player base, or portable dungeon. They're also inherantly Timers for Situations.  Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door has an entire chapter of it's story dedicated to a mystery inside a Train- with the ticking clock counting down to their arrival, at which point the suspects disperse, giving tension to the scenario. Stick your party in A Train with a bunch of characters, have Something Happen that needs to be resolved before you reach the Station, and bam, you have an adventure. 

    Trains also provide a premise for episodic adventures. Stopping at a small station to refuel or drop off some cargo is the perfect excuse for a small one-shot to happen in between larger modules. Ressha Sentai Toqger managed 52 episodes of mostly Just That, with each new Station basically not existing in the fictional world until the show runners needed a filler episode. If all of your stuff is On The Train and the Train is going to be In a Location for a while, the party has good reason to engage with the barrier preventing the train from moving on. Or, if they get in a situation while OFF the train, there's impetus to wrap things up before it embarks without them!!! 

    Trains arent all comfort or portable set piece. In order for a Train line to be successful and worth persuing, a significant amount of infrastructure is required for the fantasy world to make any use of them. With infrastructure comes the risk of that investment being damaged, destroyed, or delayed. Digimon Frontier (and isn't that a deep cut) had it's entire Digital World crisscrossed by Tracks, meaning the entire planet was accessible by Train... But the tracks were made of Data and could be absorbed or altered at any time. Narratively, this was how the story kept the protagonists in one place for any given amount of time, and produced free mcguffins wherever they found themselves. Does the party want to leave? They gotta get the track data from the bad guys to continue on their journey. 

    And this entirely assumes the train in question is traveling physical Distance. Take Kamen Rider Den-O; their train runs through TIME. Secret Trains are the primary transport between protected magical locations like Jowling Kowling Rowling's school for Wizard Cops, acting as a thematic transport between WORLDS. In a fantasy elfgame, the literal use of a train can play second to the tonal vibes it gives for being present, and can be fun to play around with!

    Trains are cool, and their use could be levied in an Elfgame to make really creative adventures and campaigns is what I'm saying, I guess.

    Or maybe I'm just Autistic.

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda 

    As a final note and a bit of an example- here's a translated replay of a Sword World 2.5 game that primarily takes place on a train! It's got a neat, non-train related Fellows system that I keep eyeballing for other stuff. 

Themes - Quicker Game Prep for The Sanic Hack

Oh, the places we'll go

This post is part of a series of Blogs where I work on my home-ruleset, 'The Sanic Hack.' You may or may not gain better comprehension from reading the other posts in this series.  

PREV/NEXT

 This post directly follows after both Kludgebuckets and Costumes. You may wish to skim those first to understand where my head was at when writing the initial bluesky thread that then became this post. I love regurgitating my old skeets into blog posts. it is my favorite activity

    Howdy, Farmhands!

    A major draw of the media I intend to emulate with the Sanic Hack is their fantastical world design. Mario has his Mushroom Kingdom, Klonoa his Phantomile, and Sonic his various Zones on Planet Mobius. Earth. "Sonic's World." They've retconned a lot about Sonic's setting in the past, don't think about it too much. Unlike video games though, Tabletop Roleplaying is not necessarily a visual medium. This leaves a lot of the heavy lifting to the DM to properly describe with words, and as much as this project has been "Gadda Complicates An Odd-like", I do still want there to be simple solutions to the problems I'm inventing. How do I make the act of preparing a wacky video-game level setting for players to imagine their blorbos running around in easy for the DM? How do I keep them from feeling rote, without needing to write a full on Gazette for hyper-specific examples? OSR is no stranger to Gonzo settings, but there's a difference in mouthfeel between, say, The Dark of Hot Springs Island and Donkey Kong Country's Jungle Japes.

 

I'm FAIRLY certain Jungle Hijinks doesn't have any sex slaves in it. 
I could be wrong; they never clarify the relationship with Rambi the Rhino.

    The first draft of this idea is something I'm calling "Themes." In theory, during prep, a DM would draw 2 and combine them into the core premise of the location. "Rainy" and "Jungle" would have overlap but still be distinct from "Rainy" and "Woodlands", for example. Each component Theme would then include a list of resources, lootables, and key items for the DM to populate the bespoke location with. This template would, theoretically, be just enough for the DM to run that location quickly and inspire on the fly npcs and adventure sites without the Theme prescribing those parts of play. Preferably, these would each fit on a single page, allowing for one's personal collection of available themes to be added to or removed from to match the table's needs. A table with an arachnophobe would remove the "Webs" Theme, for example, and play could continue with no hiccups. 

    For each location theme, you'll need the following:

• 3 Costumes: +1, +2, and +3
• Accessories for the +3 Costume to be craftable, plus 3 unrelated.
• At least 1 of each category of weapon: Light, Heavy, Ranged, etc. 
• Core Kludgebucket Parts: Between 1 to 3 should do.
• Auxillary Kludgebucket Parts: I would prepare at least 3, though these can be bs'd in the moment if needed.

    My running tally puts this at 16 items per theme at the low end. This seems like a lot, but keep in mind Themes will be reused and no one location should contain every possible option for the theme. A Jungle/Carnival Island might only have 1 Costume from the Carnival List, and the Core Parts from the Jungle List. Part of the DM prep involves determining what from each theme your location will pull from their lists and what will be saved for later. There's no harm in deciding that an item you hadn't planned on including was there all along, should your players take an interest in seeking them out. Alternatively, if players spot a doo-dad that was there for flavor and want to take it with them, DMs can just quickly slot it into one of the item types. 

    Let's make an example-

buzz buzz the posts must flow

Theme: Beehive 

Weapons
Light Wp	Bee Stingers	(1d4, Dual)
rMed Wp	Bear Claw Gloves	(1d6)
Heavy Wp	Giant Honey Wand	(1d10)
Light Range	Pollen Arrows	(1d6, blast) Creates a Pollen cloud on impact, works as smokescreen
Heavy Range	Beezooka	(1d8, blast) Fires a cloud of Bees, 3 Charges, must be placed near an active hive overnight to repopulate

Accessories
Honey Pot Lid	(+1 AMR)
Striped Dungarees	(+1 AMR)
Buzzy Bee Slippers	(+1 AMR)
Suspender Bee Wings	(+1 AMR)
Antenna Headband	(+1 AMR)

Costumes
Honey Bear Suit	(1 Armor)	(A Fuzzy Ear Headband and a Red Pullover)
Apiarists Suit	(2 Armor)	(Beekeeper Helmet, Gloves, and a Thick Coat)
Hive Knight	(3 Armor) (Craftable)	Giant Honey Wand Honey Pot Lid Striped Dungarees

Core Kludgebucket Parts
Bee Nest (0 Star)	(-3 STR)
Box Hive (1 Star)	(+1 STR, -2 SPD)

Propulsion Parts
Large Bee Wing (0 Star)	(req manual flapping)

Random Guff
Honeycomb Hex	(It's very sticky)
Pollen Pod	(Hope you're not allergic)
Empty Honeypot	(Careful, it's ceramic)
Saxophone	(Do ya like Jazz?)

    Actually, now that I'm looking at all this, it DOES feel a smidge overkill, especially as I'm meant to mix and match this with a second, equally long list. The hope, though, is that once these Themed lists are done, they will pay for themselves as quick and easy reference sheets for multiple sessions of play. 

   This draft obviously is focusing on lootable items, but the vision for this includes descriptors of flora, fauna, and weather for these themes. I think that's probably best saved for the post on the second pass, as I've whacked at this post long enough.  

Additional Thoughts: 

    I'm playing with the idea of Costumes innately containing a weapon as one of their component parts. This slightly alters the math, making a comparable setup for +3 AMR with a lower level Costume + Weapon 1 card more? I don't know if this would be that noticable to a player. I'm also considering codifying a rule where a player can only have 1 Costume in their inventory at a time? Changing your costume entirely on the fly feels easily abusable, and I KNOW we're not supposed to design while assuming the worst of our audience, but it's still a concern. The only real balance I can think of is in the possibilty that if you have to drop the Costume for whatever reason, it's component parts go with it. insert gif of mario 3 losing a suit power-up here 

    Perhaps changing costumes in the middle of an adventure would require a Bulky "Costume Closet" item that can hold multiple Costumes and a turn to "Quick Change" into a different one. Then I'm not really removing the ability to do so, just locking it behind a little extra effort on the player's part to seek out the means to do so. How Delightfully Devilish, Seymour.

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda 

Gadda's Blog Crash Course: What is the OSR (And Why Do I Care?)

 You can read this post and find links to my other works over on my static site!
Likewise, you can gain access to blogposts early by pledging $1 or more over on patreon!
Free will is great, isn't it?

    Howdy, Farmhands!

    My blog is very young. While I've been posting various ttrpg design hot takes for years, it wasn't until mid 2024 that I started to produce long-form essays and found that I really enjoyed the experience. Trying to get your entire thought out in a limited format is a good exercise, but some posts just need the extra word count to properly convey their merit. The unfortunate side effect of this switch being that I can no longer assume my audience has passively absorbed my opinions over years of Poasting, and thus a lot of terms I consider fundamental to my understanding of games are new and inscrutable to my readers.

    Basically, my discord server politely but firmly asked me to pause and explain what the fuck I'm talking about, please.

    So here we are, with the start of a series I'm calling ' Gadda's Blog Crash Course.' While these posts exist to educate my handful of weirdos, they aren't meant to be the definitive word on anything. This is TTRPGS As Explained By Gadda, and I have my own biases and incorrect assumptions as does anyone. I strongly urge anyone with different experiences than I to comment or blog their own additions or rejections of my posts, if only to deepen the pool my readers draw from.

    Today's topic seems simple on the surface, but is actually quite deep. 

"What is the OSR?" 

    To put it VERY simply, skipping decades of nuance to get to the core of things- "OSR" or "Old School Revival" is a genre of game that focuses on the trends and experiences people remember from the original years of Dungeons and Dragons. The term began in the year 2000, as a reactionary movement in response to the release of Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. The play-style generally focuses on purposefully risking your character's well being for the chance of acquiring goods that will increase their chances of survival during future risks, with a game master remaining as neutral and impartial as possible, neither helping nor hindering the player in their quest to overcome those risks and acquire those goods.

    Nothing I say after this point will be nearly as simple.

    As time has gone on, and both Dungeons and Dragons as a game and the very online spaces people use to discuss it and it's history have gone through drastic changes, the target and purpose of "The OSR" as a community has changed, splintered, and become incredibly muddled. This is because different people like different things, you see. And also because people dislike people who like different things than themselves. Thus, the term "OSR" has evolved in separate corners of the internet to refer to multiple movements, overlapping play-styles, and as shorthand for an out-group of DnD role-players who aren't currently interested in the ongoing thing WOTC is printing. 

    To be completely fair to anyone who's confused about any of this- you're not wrong, it is fucking confusing! It's confusing to be IN the in-group that gets this sort of thing, and Homestuck levels of unbearable to parse for anyone outside it! Because there is no actual authority of what is or is not part of the movement, anyone can argue that they've involved, even if their actual circle is leagues removed from whatever older folks believe to be core to their hobby. This leads to some of the absolute worst offenders of online shitheads retreating to "OSR" as some sort of safe zone where they can regurgitate their unacceptable beliefs about sex, gender, and race unchallenged, having been driving away from the current generation of Dungeons and Dragons by a younger, more open minded audience. For many, "OSR" is a dog whistle; whatever takes on it's name is going to be gross and regressive, and is only attended by Bad People.

    I will take this moment to assure the reader that this is not my personal experience, and the vast majority of OSR players I engage with are Trans Commie Furries and the straight folks they've befriended along the way. I do want to stress that this hobby has a bright spot. 

    It is not hard to imagine a movement based on returning to a previous state of a game already rife with colonial and racial subtext (or hell, just Text) to be a haven for regressive politics and hateful ideology. The original DnD is notorious for pushing disgusting stereotypes, and the earliest years of The OSR was primarily about continuing to support that existing game. HOWEVER, I would be a massive dick if I pretended the worst of the worst was the entirety of the hobby during those original years. While is it historical record that many of the game's authors were shitty people with shitty opinions that bled into their work, DnD was a hobby filled with all kinds of people from every walk of life. Many were just as critical of the game's output at the time it was new as there are now that it's flaws have been well documented, discussed, and ultimately ignored by it's publisher. There are a number of individuals interested in an old school style of play who experienced a very different kind of Dungeons and Dragons than is usually spoken about online.

    "So... again, What is the OSR???" 

    OSR is a form of role-playing not dissimilar to it's evolutionary predecessor, Dungeons and Dragons, where you go on medieval fantasy adventures with a Game Master and 1 or more Players. However, it focuses on high risk scenarios and a neutral authority who describes the situations characters are placed in and details the results of said character's choices without favoring or purposefully hindering the player. Different tables and groups and corners of the internet will argue for more specific descriptions, and will continue to argue and debate and add and remove points until the end of time. 

"...Okay then, What is the OSR to YOU???" 

     A number of individuals have attempted to write encompassing descriptions of the hobby, most of which are still pointed to for newcomers to get a quick overview of what to expect. As the hobby and it's corner evolve, new descriptions and summaries are needed. The list of positive attributes I associate with OSR games is very close to Ben Milton's 2019 attempt to coin a separate name from the baggage of  "OSR", though it wasn't able to replace the term in common usage:

Adventure Game: The term “Adventure” does a lot of heavy lifting for a single word, and covers the vast majority of what I enjoy.

1. It implies authentic peril and the possibility of loss.
2. It implies strangeness, travel, the unexpected, and the confusing.
3. It implies variety and an episodic structure, a picaresque rather than a novel.
4. It implies cleverness, ingenuity, and cunning rather than a bloody slog.
5. It implies characters like Conan, Luke Skywalker, Elric, Hellboy or Fafrd.
6. It’s short, simple, and isn’t obscure. Episodic-high-stakes-open-ended-lateral-problem-solving-fantasy-game might be more accurate, but good luck with that catching on.
7. It evokes (in my head) a game that’s simple, unpretentious, and focused on fun at the table.

    However, the post that I repeatedly link to, is W.F. Smith's Posters, Posers, and POSR(s), which includes the argument that the current batch of OSR games in line with the online diy-dnd blogging scene largely is it's own beast, with a lineage connecting to the original OSR but without a direct through-line. It's also a significantly better historical guide through the OSR than the one I've made above, if only because he's very good at linking to other people who have posted further reading.

    This "blogosphere" of people posting and debating and creating answers to problems for others to maybe make use of is the backbone of the OSR as I experience it. There is no need to adhere to a specific vision of a lost playstyle, nor the necessity of keeping your math compatible with a game written by shitty people with shitty ideas. There are carried on elements of those products, for sure, but only after they have been inspected, dissected, and deemed worthy of carrying on. And just as the very term "OSR" itself evolved in different pockets of the internet, so too have different camps around specific mechanics and vibes formed as different people judge these smaller elements of a larger experience and find them worth keeping or something to discard. 

    This, then, is the "OSR" that I enjoy- not a dogged defiance of time, digging it's  heels in to remain in a space that was outdated before the 90's finished rolling through; but a culture of investigation, discussion, and recycling of the historical record of play by people who like pretending to be elves. There have been games that come out of this culture that affirm the principles of those original works, joss them entirely, or even invent new frameworks to emulate the vibes. 

    I just wish we could all agree on a different name for SEO purposes.

    Until Next Time,

    Farmer Gadda 

Reasons to Throw a Hoedown

As if any of us need a reason for unrestrained summer fun

 

 Read this post on my static website here!

Howdy, Farmhands! 

     Celebrations are an oft forgotten part of worldbuilding. Adventures derived from loss or fear are just easier to write, I think. It's simpler to motivate your players to go save the Blacksmith's daughter from Goblins, as opposed to setting them in front of a County Fair and telling them to go have fun. But, again, Celebrations are a big part of the world! How and why people party says a lot about the culture they live in, and giving players the chance to participate in those festivities does a ton for their immersion.

    To that end, I've compiled this d20 list of reasons to get funky with it and party on. No more obvious references to real world religious events or hastily mustached christmas analogues, barely hiding their origin. Roll on the table; that's why they're celebrating. Fluff as needed.  Save a glass of punch for me. 

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda 

Reasons to Throw a Hoedown
1	Harvest Season's Arrived! It's time to yoink shit out of the ground.
2	Barn Raising!
3	There's a Wedding! Some Folks got Hitched, and more importantly, there's an open bar.
4	The Creek Done Rose. Various plans and promises are put on hold until the matter is resolved.
5	A Child has been born! It's their first, and everyone's smoking cigars, as is custom.
6	Tonight's a Blue Moon. Those only come once in a... in a.... huh.
7	The Rain's come! Time to wheel out your parched friends and family for some Moisture.
8	Planting Season's Arrived! It's time to jam shit in the ground.
9	The Boys are Back in Town!
10	The Rain finally stopped. Fish out your loved ones and wait for things to dry out.
11	It's someone's birthday! They survived another year!
12	The Cows came home. I didn't know Cows could do that...
13	Goose laid a Golden Egg. I didn't know Geese could do that...
14	A Child has been born! It's their first... in the double digits. The drinks are strong
15	Timmy was finally rescued from that well. We gotta get Lassie one of those button pads or something.
16	The Ornery Town Bitch finally Croaked (And Good Riddance)
17	The Horses Demand it.
18	Someone bought some Magic Beans!
19	The Chickens have hatched. Quick, somebody count them! Why didn't we do this when they were stationary???
20	Honestly? Who cares?! Pass the hooch!