The 46er - April 2026
Welcome back to my monthly newsletter, the first of spring! Now that it's been a going concern for four months, I'm curious what people find useful, what they'd like to see more of, what could be improved on. Are folks interested in an email version of the newsletter? Should I try to split up the blog post roundup by categories? If you have any suggestions or ideas, reply to this post's thread on Bluesky (or hit me up on Discord if you know where to find me).
Rootring is a new RPG blog webring! You can see my webring page in the header above. I encourage everyone to go poke around and give other blogs some love, and most of all to let Elmcat know how much his work is appreciated in the community!
This Month on Table 46
Only one post this month - my recap of my time at Gary Con. I had a good time, but Gary Con has been my bubble con for several years now - I go if the mood strikes me, but it lacks something to keep me coming back every year. Forge Midwest is coming up next weekend, and that's probably my favorite con of the year. I'm hoping I'm able to get the new version of Jewelsea RPG and a starter adventure ready in time to throw them at some willing playtesters, but it's not looking good right now. Hope springs eternal however, and I may have time to crack down and get it done this coming weekend.
Blog Posts and Other Gaming Reading
- Teaching Cairn to Kids - Widdershins Wanderings - useful for teaching more than just kids, this is full of examples about how to get people up to speed on a new game.
- Referee Sabotage - Papers and Pencils - a look at how to GM player plans for a specific situations and avoid wasting everyone's time.
- More Ways to Die: Getting Old - Archbrick - some light aging rules for OSR games. They look very playable, even though most campaigns don't take place over the requisite scope of time for them to be useful. It's the kind of thing I like to dream about for a grand campaign.
- MIGHT DICE: New House Rule for Fighters - a light implementation that boosts Fighter damage in OSR games.
- Dolmenwood Campaign Goals & Bib- and Blogliography - Dungeon Merlin - this is a great list of principles for a Dolmenwood campaign combined with a bunch of links to other wisdom.
- Minimalist treasure 2: generating hoard types - Methods & Madness - part of a running project on how to make TSR D&D's treasure tables simpler. This one looks at how bulk relates to the practical value of a hoard.
- Seven-Part Pact - The Wizards (Chapter 2) - Jay Dragon - I'm really looking forward to this game. I love wizards and the wizard's council is something that has heretofore been hard to represent in RPGs. I haven't yet read the entire playtest draft, but both Dwiz's series last year and Jay's current deep dive into her work are very encouraging!
- Designing Location Blocks - The Play Reports - I like what Kati's done here to expand Clayton's lore blocks idea into something useful for locations as well as monsters or NPCs.
- Role Playing for GMs - 3x5 Arcana - a great look into how to quickly create interesting NPCs - make them want something and believe something.
- Elements of a Key 3: Actual Keys - Being An Asshole to a Goblin - a review of a bunch of different keying styles and how they help and hinder the GM's use of the information they contain.
- stop writing like a robot! - Was It Likely? - a manifesto about worrying less about fitting your writing into what your idea of what the scene wants and doing more to make it your own. https://thecrownedcomiserate.blogspot.com/2026/03/npc-knights-for-mythic-bastionland.html
- I Yearn for the Spire - Hags - a moodboard that's a great source of inspiration for buildings on top of big pillars or cliffs.
- untitled - David J Prokopetz - a musing on the nature of why people think System Doesn't Matter (and why they're wrong).
- System Doesn't Matter as a Sales Strategy - Deeper in the Game - a response to the above post going deeper into why some RPG publishers want customers to think that System Doesn't Matter.
- FĒONDAS - Madman's Menagerie - a wonderful set of monster reenvisionings in the style of Luke Gearing's Monsters&.
- looking for the fingerprints on GURPS - Fluorite Guillotine - both a campaign recap for a science fantasy game set in a Dyson sphere and a musing on the purpose of "generic" RPGs.
- Work, Shortcuts, and Shortcomings - TRAIPSE - a forceful argument in favor of resource tracking and against abstraction. I don't agree with all its particulars but it is worth keeping in mind what you give up when using something like the hazard die.
- What Cookbooks Can Learn from RPGs - a lighthearted April Fool's post taking the usual advice about cookbooks and RPGs and turning it in the other direction.
- Announcing My New Kickstarter 5(e) Part Pact - Loot Loot Lore - a jape at Kickstarter marketing copy in the RPG space.
- Coffee Review: Drought Dragon Desolation - Golem Productions - a review of the latest from Merry Mushmen including some bits on the right level of detail for OSR adventures.
- Classic Traveller: Expanded System Generation - Alone in the Labyrinth - an adaptation of a system from Mongoose Traveller 2e back to Classic Traveller.
- Read the Dictionary - Dice in the North - how to use a dictionary for inspiration and vocabulary building.
- How to Talk About Difficulty - A Knight at the Opera - a look at the various meanings we can talk about when we discuss difficulty in games.
- AAJ Reflection 2: The Future of the Antarctic Adventure Jam - Idraluna Archives - I think Idraluna Archives' Antarctica setting is cool and collaborative work is ongoing to expand it.
- Developing the Sandbox: The Town - Blog of Forlorn Encystment - this one combines two running efforts - an exegesis of AD&D 1e and a project to expand and enhance B1 In Search of the Unknown.
- Light the Way! An Alternative to Tracking Torches - Pseudodragon - the debut post from a new blog that goes through some ways light tracking has been done and proposes an alternative.
- I made a weird list - Murkdice - a list of themes (don't call it a manifesto!) for the moods that Murk's designs are trying to evoke.
- Errant: The Mid Levels - Deeper in the Game - I don't see much about Errant, which is unfortunate because it's a great game. This post looks at how the game evolves as characters level up and are more able to throw their weight around.
- Taking time to play - A Telling Ellipsis... - ruminations on the time we all spend discussing, reading, and playing roleplaying games and how each respective step in that chain has less available time for most of us.
- Guards! - Thea Adora - not quite as recent, but I missed this when it was published. Some rules for how to use mercenaries to guard cleared areas of a dungeon and prevent restocking.
- Fiends You Know and Fiends You Don't - Numbers Aren't Real - building on Madman's Menagerie's post above, this adds more monsters in the Monsters& style.
- Using Folklore to generate cool myths in your TTRPGs - Grog For Games - a few examples of mythic creatures that don't involve fighting along with some tables to generate your own mythic creatures.
- [Every Angel is Terrifying... - All Dead Generations] - Gus L's take on a reworked beholder.
- Bathtub Review: The Waking of Willowby Hall - Playful Void - Nova reviews Ben Milton's classic module.
- Who was Woodes Rogers? Pirate Borg World Building - Domain of Many Things - a look at the man who became the British governor of the Bahamas during the Golden Age of Piracy.
- Play is Canon - Prismatic Wasteland - this builds on Sandra Snan's Blorb Principles to discuss the tiers of truth Warren uses in play.
- Let's Talk About Player Skill and Equipment - Patchwork Paladin - a look at how players new to the OSR playstyle can often miss what's important about mundane gear and a useful resource to show them how useful their kit is.
- Old School Police: How to Run an OSR Crimecrawl - Cavorting Whorl - thoughts on how to run a classic police procedural style investigation using OSR principles.
- 5 Rpg Ideas from Urban Design - a look at how urban design principles can influence how we use space in dungeons and the wilderness.
- Fullstack Refereeing - Among Cats and Books - a great analysis of how different elements of prep and play match up to aspects of software design and deployment.
What I'm Reading
- The Woman Who Would Be King
- Corny Gron
- Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World
- 3 Weeks in the Streets/Ra Power
- Time After Time
- An Apple Pie from Scratch, Part Vb: Tectonics: Alternatives to Plate Tectonics
- Persians: The Age of the Great Kings
- Beyond Corny Gron
What I'm Playing
- Imperator: Rome
- D&D 5e
- Under Fantastic Skies
- Warhammer 40k: Wrath & Glory
- Camel Up
- So Clover
- Just One
- Telestrations
- Ares Expedition
- SETI