The 46er - August 2026
This Month on Table 46
I went to Gen Con this month and wrote up what I did there!
A late addition! IsaacIsAfraid has put out a call for Indonesia-related blog posts for Indonesia's indepencdence day. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of this jam.
Blog Posts and Other Gaming Reading
Theory
- Rules Don't (Necessarily) Elide - Orkish Odyssey - an argument against Jared Sinclair's Rules Elide.
- Crossing the Rubicon - Woo the Moon - what does "linear" mean when it comes to scenarios?
- A Matter of Systems - Farmer Gadda - on rules and how they do and don't shape gameplay. What makes one game distinct from another?
- In one round a lifetime: rounds 2 - A shrike for my dreams - do OSR games have more varied and fun tactics in combat than trad games?
- Levels of Play - Murk Mail - how does abstraction and the fruitful void interact with play on different levels of rule use? Are rules the game or just scaffolding?
- Structures, Decisions and Mechanics - Ladino's Rogue Thoughts - when and how mechanics are engaged greatly alters the texture of play.
- Religious by Design - Explorer's Design - what is religion in fantasy for?
- The Destined Heroes Play Style - Patchwork Paladin - a look at the elements that make up a significant channel of mainstream play culture.
- The Living World Sandbox Campaign - Bat in the Attic - what elements are necessary for a sandbox and how can you put them in motion?
- Simulating Pain in TTRPGs - Orkish Odyssey - it's easy to ignore the moment to moment experience of existing when your character is just an avatar. How can pain and discomfort be simulated in play?
Gameable
- One Million Planets - Idraluna Archives - what do Classic Traveller's rules spit out if you use them to generate a million UPPs?
- One Hundred Thousand Travellers - a continuation of the above. What do the odds look like when 100,000 characters are generated? How many of them live? Now with Pt. 2!
- Remaking Lord of the Rings out of Only Public Domain Sources: Part 3 - Throne of Salt - the thrilling conclusion to the fascinating look at how to remix mythology and public domain literature to reproduce The Lord of the Rings.
- Crawlspace, and His Majesty the Worm - Fogknife - a virtual tarot deck for use with His Majesty the Worm.
- Darkmantles - TRAIPSE - a reimagining of the monster.
- Medusa Class - Among Cats and Books - a GLOG class for playing as a Medusa.
- Difficulty Spikes, a silly mechanic - anb's logs - using d4s as negative modifiers.
- The Great Midwife Campaign: Procedures and Ideas - Lonely Star - an interesting look at how to run a campaign centered around a midwife and her assistants.
- Pokémodule B1: In Search of the Unown (an Adventure for Into the Oddish), Upper Level of the Caverns of Quagsqueton - Blog of Forlorn Encystment - a conversion of In Search of the Unknown into a module for Into the Oddish. Lower level here!
- B.U.R.G.L.A.R.s - Rise Up Comus - turning Roadside Picnic into The Hobbit. Part 3: 10 Traps is a great collection of hazards.
- [HMtW] Making a Magic Sword - Wayspell - rules for how weapons become enchanted for His Majesty the Worm.
- Solar Devlog 4 - Tangent Joy - I'm very curious to see what the end of this development process will look like!
- Organizations as Class and Bad Boy Clerics - Vaults of Zin - thoughts on Clerics and d20 magical relics.
- D66 Maps & Havencraft - Traverse Fantasy - generating random locations in a three-tier hexflower.
- final fantasy xii could have been a ttrpg - Fluorite Guillotine - an overview of several mechanics in FFXII and how they could be adapted for tabletop play.
Advice
- Don't look down. - Crypt Of The Rambling Dead - why you should build tower dungeons.
- bat out of fantasy - in lowercase - an argument for fantasy worlds taking themselves seriously instead of just regurgitating nostalgia.
- One Strong (But Wrong) Opinion - ars ludi - why you should create player characters that aren't the same as you.
- "Jaquays Your Dungeon" - Another OSR Maxim - All Dead Generations - how to avoid too much of a good thing when it comes to designing your dungeons.
- Distancing yourself from GM-centrism, one step at a time - anb's logs - why you shouldn't put all coordination on the GM when running without strict initiative.
- Wilderness expeditions in medievalesque settings - RPGnet - a thread about what gear for moving across the wilderness would actually look like.
- Stuck in the Sandbox - And How to Break Free - Golem Productions - how to get your players past the blank page problem in sandboxes.
- Not All Prep is the Same - Ladino's Rogue Thoughts - what is prep, what is it used for, and what are the different ways to go about it?
- Into the Sandbox - Starships & Scoundrels Press - advice for how to create player characters driven to interact with a sandbox.
- Emergent Setting - Weeping Stag - how to develop a setting with your players in play.
- Arguing with the Olm: Anatomy of a Negotiation - how to make negotiation more fruitful and interesting along with an example of play.
- Link, Leverage, Language - Murkdice - what do characters need to actually be able to negotiate?
Critique
- The Thoughtlessness of Deathbringer's Sales Pitch - Magnolia Keep - following on from the previous post about marketing, a review of the crowdfunding campaign.
- On Combat: The Broad Strokes - Eldritch Exarch Press - a length review of the combat systems of many versions of D&D, clones, and other OSR-adjacent games.
- Arden Vul - Halls of Thoth - Beau Rancourt - a review of the largest level of this giant megadungeon along with musings on how possible it is to create a megadungeon that's both fully interconnected, allows for impactful player action, and is vast in scope.
- Why Didn't Silent Titans Change the World? - Valeria Loves - a review of Patrick Stuart's least-discussed module and an analysis of why it was hard for some people to understand.
- Arden Vul - Conclusions - Beau Rancourt - the wrapup of Beau's 12 part series reviewing Arden Vul, including the bad, the good, and the recommendations he makes if you want to run it.
- The Skim: Stonetop - Old Men Running the World - a brief review of Jeremy Strandberg's magnum opus.
- Thoughts on Ultraviolet Grasslands - Familiar Waves - a review of Luka Rejec's setting and whether it fulfills its potential. I've played two campaigns in UVG and both quickly moved past being concerned with the caravan logistics game once they had the resources to do so, so the main issue raised here didn't become a problem in practice for me.
- Deathbringer's Satirical Commitment Issues - Danny Fist's TTRPG Stuff - another Deathbringer critique, including what it would need to change to be the satire it wants to be.
- Thief Design & The Super Thief Class - Press the Beast - a review of various ways people have attempted to design Thief classes over the years along with a new version.
- Wages of Sin Gave Me a Midlife Crisis - Valeria Loves - a review of the new setting/scenario book for Mothership. Spoiler: it's good.
Meta
- My Exogenous Rules - a wandering mind - an accounting of the rules that govern play that aren't normally conceptualized as part of it.
- Physical Digital: Bringing the Friction of Physical Media to our Digital Libraries - Kreggar Wandering - on media consumption, games, and why having a physical representation of whatever you're reading can be helpful.
- Keep on the Borderlands Alternate Cover Art - Process - Gorgon Bones - Jenx goes over his process for a piece reinterpreting the cover of the classic module.
- (Do Not Distribute) RPG discourse terms 2027-2032 - Whose Measure God Could Not Take - five years of RPG discourse in advance!
- On the Eve of the Masquerade - Orthopraxy - on changing as a person and GM and running a campaign that no longer fits.
- Experting while female - sarahdoom - Sarah talks about the experience of being talked over, contradicted, or asked pointless questions while running and designing games.
- The Valley of Lune, Kickstarter Debrief - Hilander RPGs - an overview of what the money was used for and recommendations on how to budget your own crowdfunding campaign.
- Feeling & Thought: Social Checks and the Strawman Introvert - HiskiH - an argument against letting introversion be an excuse not to roleplay at the table.
What I'm Reading
- Wytch Mountain
- Stonetop Book 1
- Race & Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation
What I'm Playing
- D&D 5e
- Warhammer 40K: Wrath & Glory
- Under Fantastic Skies
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Imperator: Rome