RPG/Tabletop Blogs of interest

(Should I have said " . . . that are interesting"?)

There are a couple of blogs that I like a lot, but they're really the only ones I look at, and I'm guessing others here have some they like, so why not share them?

• Grognardia: I'm familiar with James Maliszewski from too much time on the old Traveller Mail List (TML) (which still exists though I haven't read in years - I think it still has the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any discussion place I've ever witnessed with an amazing pool of real world talent). He's has a heavy old-school tilt these days, discussing Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC and the history of D&D and other RPGs. Often good links to other stuff going on. Kickstarter for his Dwimmermount campaign mega-dungeon just ended (dammit, I missed it). And he's writting a sci-fi RPG: Thousand Suns.
• Jeff's Game Blog: This one hits me right in the nostalgia sack. Occasional mentions of Car Wars and Traveller and early Gamma World. Crazy tables from various games. And he's started discussion a campaign he's running set in Wessex. Genuine enthusiasm for gaming.

I think Vincent Baker's blog is interesting. He talks about business issues related to indie publishing and about RPG theory.

Disclaimer: I quite like his style of RPGs (Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World) and I have no patience for old-school RPG styles any more. Your tastes may vary.

I read Robin Laws' blog. Theory, examples, commentary. Love it.

I used to enjoy http://yesthetruthhurts.com/, which is a very 40k oriented tactics blog. The dude is a tad unhinged, but he had some pretty good strategies and interesting list builds. I mostly moved away from 40k, so stopped reading.

Grognardia and B/X Blackrazor are my two favorite old school gaming blogs, though there are quite a few good ones.

I left out Hill Cantons in my previous post. He does a lot of rules speculation and even has a Domain game-driven ruleset available for download. Anyway, the post I linked is why I love him about as Much as B/X Blackrazor and Grognardia.

I have been slowly coming around to the "D&D is always right" line of thinking he mentions (and here's Maliszewski discussing it, though briefly). That isn't to say that if I ran a retro 0e/1e game I would use the rules as set down. I'd change things to my hearts content, in the grand tradition of tabletop RPG play. But when in doubt, yes, I would fall back on the rules. The post in question is in reference to something that struck him in the previous post: if you follow encounter tables and Monster Manual descriptions, the world is filled with bands of roving mercenaries/reavers/raiders and the powerful men (or women, as your own taste dictates) who lead them. It makes for a campaign world with a large number of mid to high level characters to be sure, and it looks a little odd on the surface. Here Hill Cantons touches on the comments that followed the post and shows how the encounter tables/descriptions as put down paint a certain sort of picture for the world, and how it makes a certain amount of sense when you look at things that way. These are the kind of rules discussion posts I'm nuts about. And it's the sort of thing about D&D I love. I guess I prefer my RPG rules to have a setting in mind. I don't necessarily want it fleshed out the way the FR was. Rather, I like to see it encoded in the rules like this.

And the best part? If you instead want your game to mirror Rome at the height of the empire, you can modify both encounter tables and the composition of groups of humans to account for this. Voila - it implies dramatically different setting just by futzing some numbers.

Robin Laws (cartoonist) and Kenneth Hite (wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History) have a podcast now:
http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/

Is there a difference between Robin Laws (cartoonist) and Robin Laws (legendary game designer)? Or are you just choosing to weirdly focus on the least of his accomplishments?

If someone doesn't know who Robin Laws actually is, they are probably in the wrong sub-forum.

Well guess I'd better pack my bags and go then. It'll take me a while, because I've got to take my collection of 40 or so board games and card games with me. I wasn't aware that playing RPGs and CCGs I've never heard of was a prerequisite for these boards.

No matter how big a star you are in the RPG field, unless your name is Gary Gygax, no one knows who the hell you are.* So it's rough to expect any group to be familiar to everyone.

The only thing I'm familiar with in Laws body of work is Rune (have it, never played it) and Laws of Good Gamemastering (saw it on a shelf, ticked it as something I would never read, regardless of how bad a GM I am).

Well, there's Steven Jackson, but that's because his name is on so many other games.

Aha! But which "Steven Jackson"? There's Games Workshop UK Steven Jackson and "Steve Jackson Games" US Steve Jackson.

http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/
I am reposting this podcast, because if you don't know who Ken and Robin are, well.. you should. And the podcast is really great.

http://blogofholding.com/

Tabletop roleplaying. There's a lot of great stuff, really recommend looking through the archives. Generally 4e focused but covers all kinds.

RPPR has a few good panel discussions...

Dennis Detwiller, Kenneth Hite, Shane Ivey and Greg Stolze on alt-history super heroes in RPGs.

Kenneth Hite, Dennis Detwiller, and George Vasilakos on zombies in RPGs.

After listening to several of these while driving for hours to and from Thanksgiving, I want to second this recommendation. Particularly if you care at all about tabletop RPGs, but also because these two guys can make anything interesting. I almost passed on it because the podcast descriptions were so banal, but I would now listen to Laws and Hite talk about literally anything. They also score bonus points for having big vocabularies and using them without sounding pretentious at all.