RSS Parrot

June 27th Megagame: Super-Diplomacy

https://samsorensen.blot.im/june-27th-megagame-super-diplomacy

Published: June 16, 2026 00:00

The evening of Saturday, June 27th, 2026, some friends and I—including Walid from Dead Letters and ty from OVER/UNDER—are running a megagame version of Diplomacy, which we call Super-Diplomacy. The game runs for four hours for thirty-five players at…

Review: The Crooked Moon

https://samsorensen.blot.im/review-the-crooked-moon

Published: March 25, 2026 00:00

In October 2021, the popular tabletop RPG actual play channel Legends of Avantris began releasing episodes of their “Edge of Midnight” Dungeons & Dragons horror campaign series, with the first season of nineteen episodes concluding in May, 2022. A…

Cataphracts Design Diary #5

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Published: March 20, 2026 00:00

Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. Previous design diaries: Entry #1, Entry #2, Entry #3, Entry #4. Today’s design diary is a little bit different, a little more topical-news-update than…

Apologia for Plain Paragraphs

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Published: March 13, 2026 00:00

Markdown doesn’t play so nice with text formatting stuff. You can read the clearer original Google Docs version here. What was the last book, article, or essay you read that was, by sentence count, composed of mostly bullet points? That is, a piece where…

Cataphracts Design Diary #4

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Published: January 30, 2026 00:00

Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. Previous design diaries: Entry #1, Entry #2, Entry #3. After many months away—and with OVER/UNDER in the middle—I return to the siege. In the time since the last design…

New Words from 2025

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Published: December 31, 2025 00:00

Late in 2024, I started a big list on my phone of new words I encountered that I didn’t know, with short definitions for each. This is that list, to date. ABOMINATE: loathe; despise. ABSTEMIOUS: not indulgent; temperate, ascetic. ACAJOU: the wood of…

Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript

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Published: December 28, 2025 00:00

Development editing occurs while the manuscript is still being written. Compared with line and copy editing, which focus on the sentence-by-sentence questions, development editing focuses on higher-level questions of structure, form, and content. 1. No…

Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy

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Published: December 18, 2025 00:00

When I sit down to read a new RPG book or play at a new RPG table, I’ve got three questions in mind. Basically all of my behavior at the table is downstream of these three and their answers. I. Is my goal to solve problems, or to tell a good story? Both of…

Saint Hunegund’s Tourney

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Published: December 15, 2025 00:00

“Album of Tournaments and Parades in Nuremburg,” courtesy of my beloved Met Every other year, tradition obligates the Grand Duchess of the Thassoloche to call Saint Hunegund’s Tourney, named for Saint-Queen Hunegund the Headtaker, the Thassoloche’s…

Ten More Tangible Tips for Editing Your RPG Manuscript

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Published: December 11, 2025 00:00

Remove instances of here from location descriptions—it’s obvious you’re describing the location already. Instead of “A hobgoblin hammers iron here,” write “A hobgoblin hammers iron on an anvil.” For the same reason, remove instances of this in description…

Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER

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Published: October 9, 2025 00:00

You can now join the Discord server and read the rules. Starting on October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 2025—the annual group-crowdfunding campaign and general season of celebration for Mothership, everyone’s favorite sci-fi horror indie darling—I…

Mask 12: Veil of Saint Svorada

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Published: September 19, 2025 00:00

Tagged by blark as a part of Stella’s relay. A shroud of fine silver maille, the fringes tarnished by time. Fine golden rings pick out scripture, written in ecclesiastic script: “Heaven keep me, for this one is weak; Heaven keep me, for this one is…

1d20 Diegetic Rules, 1d20 Hypo-Diegetic Rules

https://samsorensen.blot.im/1d20-diegetic-rules-1d20-hypo-diegetic-rules

Published: July 25, 2025 00:00

When they step into moonlight, those bearing the lycanthrope’s curse transform into wolves. Magicians can learn magic spells from ancient books written in forgotten tongues. Reciting the commandments causes ghosts to flee. Those who learn a secret word in…

Cataphracts Design Diary #3

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Published: July 14, 2025 00:00

Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. Previous design diaries: Entry #1, Entry #2. Running Cataphracts is sort of like having a large pet that lives on the internet. It’s a joyous, loud, confused, sometimes…

Cataphracts Design Diary #2

https://samsorensen.blot.im/cataphracts-design-diary-2

Published: May 15, 2025 00:00

Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. Since my first design diary entry, quite a few people have reached out to me asking about how to run their own. It’s really exciting! It’s very gratifying to see so many…

Cataphracts Design Diary #1

https://samsorensen.blot.im/cataphracts-design-diary-1

Published: April 23, 2025 00:00

Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. About two months ago, I reread several series on military historian Bret Devereaux’s blog, ACOUP: analyses of Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith, breakdowns of pre-modern command…

Doing a Cool Move

https://samsorensen.blot.im/doing-a-cool-move

Published: March 19, 2025 00:00

My roommate ty asks an important question of each game he plays. The question first emerged, I believe, during hours-long sessions of mid- to heavy-weight board games (Oath, Twilight Imperium, the big crunchy League of Legends board game, several unusual…

Ten Tangible Tips For Editing Your RPG Manuscript

https://samsorensen.blot.im/ten-tangible-tips-for-editing-your-rpg-manuscript

Published: September 13, 2024 00:00

Remove instances of “to be” verbs: be, am, is, are, was, were, being, and been. Instead of “The goblin is dancing,” write “The goblin dances.” In most cases, this also includes the added benefit of changing the passive voice into the active voice. In cases…

What Does a Work Not Need?

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Published: September 3, 2024 00:00

Ten years ago, Steven Soderbergh released an unusual cut of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark: he put the entire film in black and white, then removed all the audio and replaced it with Trent Reznor’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I watched…

In Praise of Legwork

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Published: June 19, 2024 00:00

A question: you ever try to run a campaign with a city in it? Not just a town or settlement or fort, but a proper city, one with an actual street map and whole neighborhoods and thousands of people living within the walls? I certainly have, many times.…

Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #7

https://samsorensen.blot.im/pandemonium-megadungeon-session-report-7

Published: June 18, 2024 00:00

Hello again! Sorry it’s been so long—life’s been busy. You can read previous session reports here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. This report comprises some eleven sessions. 8th Day of the Month of the Imperium Today, two convenient new recruits appeared:…

Art Pressure

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Published: May 19, 2024 00:00

About four years ago, my friend and longtime collaborator nuclearobelisk and I made a campaign guide for running a West Marches-style game, specifically for 5e. At the the time, we were game development students in college, seniors about to graduate. I’d…

RPGs I’ve Played: An Oral History

https://samsorensen.blot.im/rpgs-i-ve-played-an-oral-history

Published: May 10, 2024 00:00

In 5th grade, my first year of middle school, I joined the Dungeons & Dragons club. My first GM was my art teacher, Mr. Bennett. We played some odd hybrid of 3e and 3.5e, running through what I discovered only recently was, I think, an adventure by Harley…

Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #6

https://samsorensen.blot.im/pandemonium-megadungeon-session-report-6

Published: April 30, 2024 00:00

Hello again! You can read previous session reports here: #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. 2nd Day of the Month of the Imperium Today, the party consists of: The Eldest Orphan of Forsaken for Eternity by Birth, Fighter 4; mohawked noble with aristocrat’s boots, a…

Does the MDA Framework Apply to Tabletop RPGs?

https://samsorensen.blot.im/does-the-mda-framework-apply-to-tabletop-rpgs

Published: April 19, 2024 00:00

Does the MDA Framework Apply to Tabletop RPGs? No, it doesn’t. I’d argue it doesn’t even apply to videogames. Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics is a self-professed formalist approach, a “framework,” to games created by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and…

Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #5

https://samsorensen.blot.im/pandemonium-megadungeon-session-report-5

Published: April 14, 2024 00:00

We’re back! You can read previous session reports here: #1, #2, #3, and #4. This is a particularly long one, since I’ve been so late on writing these—this covers some seven sessions. 20th Day of the Month of Grief Today, our party consists of: The Eldest…

Two Projects, One Week, Four Years

https://samsorensen.blot.im/two-projects-one-week-four-years

Published: April 10, 2024 00:00

On Monday, my Mothership adventure Time After Time released. I started working on it in the winter of 2021, during grad school; I Kickstarted it in February 2022 for ZiMo ’22, which I also helped organize. It was supposed to release December 2022. I…

The Five Session Hump

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Published: April 3, 2024 00:00

Something I’ve noticed: it takes about five sessions to get a campaign going. That means five sessions, in a row, with everybody showing up, meeting at your weekly time. This plays out across multiple levels. Logistically, five sessions are enough that…

Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #4

https://samsorensen.blot.im/pandemonium-megadungeon-session-report-4

Published: March 8, 2024 00:00

It’s been a minute! Read reports #1, #2, and #3 of my ongoing open-table megadungeon campaign project, working-titled “Pandemonium.” 13th Day of the Month of Grief Our party consists of: Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Roller of Rugs, Fighter 3; a haggard knight…

The New York 1d6

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Published: March 8, 2024 00:00

In tabletop RPG books, dice are correctly notated as “1d6,” that is, [quantity of dice]d[die size]. 1d20, 6d6, 3d8, and so on—all correct. Much as the serial comma is the Oxford comma, in this case the quantified 1d6 becomes the New York 1d6. Compare: …

Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #3

https://samsorensen.blot.im/pandemonium-megadungeon-session-report-3

Published: February 24, 2024 00:00

Recently, I started an open-table megadungeon campaign using a megadungeon I’m working on, working-titled “Pandemonium.” Here are reports #1 and #2. 9th Day of the Month of Grief Our party consists of: Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Fighter 2; a scraggly,…