W. F. Smith 7/12/22 W. F. Smith 7/12/22

Encounter Checklist

A checklist you can use to improve your TTRPG encounters.

W. F. Smith 6/21/22 W. F. Smith 6/21/22

What Even Is a “Procedure”?

So a game has “procedures” but what does that mean? This post presents a basic definition for an aspect of TTRPGs that is garnering more and more critical attention.

W. F. Smith 6/9/22 W. F. Smith 6/9/22

Tempus, Fudge It

Include time-tracking directly in your game’s procedures, and you will never have to fiddle with a calendar for your campaign every again.

W. F. Smith 5/10/22 W. F. Smith 5/10/22

Quicker Combat for Boot Hill

I boil down the complicated shooting system in original Boot Hill to a single roll to make a combat system that is quick and deadly.

W. F. Smith 4/26/22 W. F. Smith 4/26/22

Worldbuilding as a Team Sport

A procedure for building a starting scenario (and the seeds for building a world) for both referees and players at the start of a new campaign.

W. F. Smith 4/18/22 W. F. Smith 4/18/22

Universal, System-Neutral Stats

It isn’t much fun to convert monsters from system to system. The answer is to not give non-diegetic stats for the monsters in your system-neutral adventures.

W. F. Smith 3/24/22 W. F. Smith 3/24/22

I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again

A few options for making healing from 0 hp feel more realistic and offer more tactical depth.

W. F. Smith 3/15/22 W. F. Smith 3/15/22

Level Up Everyone and Everything

In most games, the player doesn’t have a choice about what to do with their XP. But what if they could invest it into their character, their followers, their equipment or anything else?

W. F. Smith 2/25/22 W. F. Smith 2/25/22

Calendars, Not Just Maps

Maps are important for running location-based adventures, but having a useful calendar or timeline is equally essential.

W. F. Smith 2/22/22 W. F. Smith 2/22/22

Conspiracy in the Borderlands

An evaluation of the true villains of the classic adventure: the Cult of Evil Chaos, including what they might be up to two hundred years later.

W. F. Smith 2/18/22 W. F. Smith 2/18/22

Your Taverns Need a Procedure

I propose a procedure for running TTRPG taverns less like a beginner’s improv class and more like the Mos Eisley Cantina. I also briefly describe the trend of “proceduralism” in the OSR and Post-OSR.

W. F. Smith 2/15/22 W. F. Smith 2/15/22

Luka Rejec Joins the Pubcrawl

A second project update for Barkeep on the Borderlands where I detail newly revealed stretch goals, including a phenomenal guest writer being added to our team (cf. the title).

W. F. Smith 2/10/22 W. F. Smith 2/10/22

Barkeep on the Borderlands is Funded (And Then Some!)

An update of my Kickstarter Campaign, which has just unlocked it’s seventh stretch goal! Also some thoughts from our star-studded team of guest writers.

W. F. Smith 2/8/22 W. F. Smith 2/8/22

It’s Alive! My Kickstarter

Announcing my new adventure coming to Kickstarter and doing my best carnival barker impression as I exhort the reader to go back it.

W. F. Smith 1/25/22 W. F. Smith 1/25/22

Barkeep on the Borderlands Preview: The Birdcage

How to make an adventure also serve as a modular toolkit for referees, plus a preview from Barkeep on the Borderlands.

W. F. Smith 1/18/22 W. F. Smith 1/18/22

Drinking Problems: The Trouble with Booze Rules in Games

I present my own rules for prolonged drinking after first discussing what makes rules for alcohol worthwhile in the first place.

W. F. Smith 1/11/22 W. F. Smith 1/11/22

The Secret to Realism in Games

People often ask for realism in their games but have difficulty articulating what it is they really want. If realism is understood as a world that reacts to player-character actions in a logical and consistent way, it enhances the verisimilitude of the fiction and the player agency in the game.