State of the Mountain 2026-04-24
Hiya! The Sweet Sixteen bracket is down to its final match, and it's a good one. Public Access faces OSE on Monday, and I have thoughts. If you want to catch...
Four Survivors from the Sweet Sixteen, and a Rabbit Game
The Sweet Sixteen bracket has its four semifinalists.In the Narrative lane, Public Access took it over Teeth. The writers' room is the reason: no canonical...
Sweet Sixteen wraps and a few things got worse (on purpose)
Hey, Quick check-in from the last week. The bracket keeps moving We’ve closed out the Sweet Sixteen and moved into the round of 8. If you haven’t been...
Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - AD&D v Shadowdark
AD&D 1e is the great-grandfather of everything else in the sweet sixteen: crunchy, sprawling, and alive in ways that modern players often miss entirely....
It's Worse Than That! Spring 2026 (Devil's Bargains)
The second volume of my GM training zine series is out today. It's Worse Than That! (Devil's Bargains) focuses on a single technique: how to put a real,...
Sweet Sixteen - Toon v FATE Accelerated
Toon is a game about Saturday morning cartoon characters: unconstrained chaos, pratfalls, and plans that absolutely should not work. (A new edition just...
Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Public Access v Kintsugi
Public Access (currently Kickstarting) is a Carved from Brindlewood mystery game about young adults in rural New Mexico in the early 2000s, encountering...
Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Crash Pandas v Kingdom
Crash Pandas is a one-page RPG about a gang of raccoons who have to cooperate to drive because none of them can reach the steering wheel, the brakes, the...
A free It's Worse Than That! bookmark for your game bag
If you've been using It's Worse Than That! at the table, this one's for you. The IWTT! Bookmark is a quick reference for the moments that matter most: what...
Table Top Sweet Sixteen - Under the Floorboards vs Cairn
Cairn is a classless OSR-adjacent adventure game descended from Into the Odd and Knave. Characters are defined by what they carry, combat is fast and...
Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Old School Essentials v Index Card RPG
Old School Essentials is the gold standard of OSR today: the edition everyone writes to, even if they play something else at their table. It's the common...
The Sweet Sixteen: A Tabletop RPG Tournament
I've been playing tabletop RPGs since 1979. That's a lot of tables, a lot of systems, and a lot of opinions about what makes a game worth your time. This...
The Study Is Now on Itch
A while back I was prepping a session of Under the Floorboards and needed a room. I wrote one up the way I usually do — atmospheric description, a list of...
Starting a New Campaign
Some of my players and I are gearing up for a Space Opera campaign. We know the vibe we're looking for and settled on a couple of options for our system....
What is Beneath Ahknoor
A brief introduction to Beneath Ahknoor, the Carved from Brindlewood Megadungeon
Back to the blog + Beneath Ahknoor update
Hi, I'm moving off Substack and back to my blog. New posts will be sent here via Buttondown. Same content, better platform. You're getting this because you...