The 46er - June 2026
There's (at least) three blogwagons currently ongoing! I encourage you to post about randomness, sex, or girly games if those interest you!
Also, Valeria Loves is running a survey on what people in the community are running, playing, and would like to play in the future. Go check it out and give her some more responses!
This Month on Table 46
I wrote about "magic" and wrote about when to be random for the Randomness blogwagon.
Expedition 33 (it's good) and home improvement/redecorating ate a lot of my time this month, so I didn't get as much reading done as I'd like (only two books!). Hopefully I'll have more time for reading next month.
Blog Posts and Other Gaming Reading
Theory
- The 2 axes of abstraction - Murkdice - an lens for examining the fruitful void and how rules direct play.
- Violence Without* Combat - Binary Star Games - a look at how violence is portrayed at gaming tables and whether or not that violence should trigger bespoke combat systems.
- is it okay to write this? - in lowercase - an examination of power, violence, and how dark subject matter can be portrayed in RPGs without being exploitative.
- A Brief Observation on Putting Guns in your Fantasy Game - Behind the Helm - a look at why guns feel jarring in fantasy to many people despite overlapping chronologically with many of the other trappings of vernacular fantasy.
- Chaos Table Patterns - Roll to Doubt - an inspection of what random tables are used for and if, how, and why they're the appropriate tool for what you're trying to achieve at the table.
- Musings on Randomness - CJ Tucker - a discussion on the use of randomness and input vs. output randomness.
- On Difficulty - Beau Rancourt - a look at how even in games without a lot of optimization possible, differing character capabilities can render content trivial or nearly impossible and why this means it's not wrong to scale content to the character's abilities.
Gameable
- Case Study: Noos, and Conditional Encounter Tables - The Garden Below - a look at how Wolves Upon the Coast's encounter tables work and how to apply the concept more broadly.
- A Tolkienian Magic System - 3x5 Arcana - an attempt to make freeform magic more legible and easier to adjudicate for OSR-style gaming.
- Lore and Factions of the Endless Plains - Trick's Tales - a bit of worldbuilding for a Mongolia-inspired setting.
- TTRPG Combat Rondel - Toucan't Sam - a delightfully janky method of action selection.
- Wights - Dead Tree, No Shelter - an interesting twist on how to represent a wight.
- Dungeon Fruits - dungeon doll - 4 unusual fruits adventurers might encounter.
- Folks of the Guild - Hags - a reimagining of the OD&D Thief.
- A palazzo of some fantastic proportion - Garamondia - rules, events, and encounter tables for exploring the Dreamlands.
- A Bestiary - Rise Up Comus - a reimagining of OD&D's bestiary.
- a finished list of unfinished things - Was It Likely? - d66 strange magic items for use in the Woods Where the Moon Will Be Born.
- Using AD&D's Spying Table to Resolve NPC Missions - Blog of Forlorn Encystment - how to use AD&D's tables to resolve tasks you might set your henchmen, hirelings, and other staff to.
- Undead Programming and You! - Ten Foot Polemic - a system for managing undead minions.
- BEHOLD AND BE NOT AFRAID: The Mistaken Divinity of the Beholder - I Cast Light! - a look at the Specter from L1:The Secret of Bone Hill and its worldbuilding implications.
- Be Yourself or Die Dreaming (Class: Princess) - Lonely Star - a class that takes things in a completely unusual direction.
- Connective Tissue Table - Murkdice - a table of prompts for connections that can be made between rooms when prepping a dungeon.
- Cards Remember - Play.Fearless - several ways to use a deck of cards for encounter tables and prep.
- Dying from the 1 HP Dragon - Explorer's Design - how injury and death for player characters works in Clayton's playtest system.
- Bargaining with the Odd - Behind the Helm - a set of body horror character "upgrades" for Into the Odd.
- Best By - When Potions Go Bad - Magustrate's Curios - rules for how to handle potions spoiling.
- So You Slept with a Succubus... (+ rules for cambions) - TRAIPSE - rules for succubus encounters and cambions.
Advice
- A Closer Look at Travel Events - Phantasmal Dreams - an examination of travel events in His Majesty the Worm and what you can do to create your own following the same patterns.
- Treasure Encumbrance Matrix - Failure Tolerated - a suggestion as to how to vary treasure to make it interesting.
- Contra: Treasure Encumbrance Matrix - Beau Rancourt - an argument against the previous post, pointing out that most rulesets don't mechanize the liquidity of treasure at all.
- The Problem of Knowledge - Rise Up Comus - a Bluesky thread about how to teach players game rules in your designs.
- Posting My Ls - Sandbox Drift and Narrative Collapse in Call of Cthulhu - Taskerland - a campaign recap and an analysis of the errors made in prep and play and how to avoid them.
- How to Design Lists in RPGs - Explorer's Design - an examination of how lists work best and when and where to use them.
- Rethinking an L - Nuromen - Roll to Doubt - a campaign frame and a set of rumors.
- Minimal games have maximal intent - Drifting Press - an explanation of why rule sets tend to bloat and what you can achieve by avoiding the instinctive urge to expand your rules.
- Lessons from the Long, Rich Game - The Ice Queen's Throne - what a player learned about how to GM from a long-term campaign full of deep worldbuilding.
- Hey where the pregnant people at? - Lonely Star - an argument for why you should have more pregnant characters in your game.
- Confession: I do not prep at all - Patchwork Paladin - an explanation of how minimal prep works when running a pre-written dungeon.
- How to Set Up Factions So They Can Be Toppled - Numbers Aren't Real - advice about how to make interesting faction play with a worked example.
- Deus Ex Verbum: Interesting Religions, Dogmas, Sects and Philosophies via Wiktionary - Beneath Foreign Planets - how to make your fantasy religions feel more alive in play, starting with giving them better names.
- Five Solutions to the Birthday Paradox in Tables - Prismatic Wasteland - advice for how to prevent your random tables from getting repetitive in play.
- In Favor of Repetition - Dungeonfruit - why you shouldn't be afraid to have similar dungeon environments repeat.
- In Favor of Repetition - Says Who - part of a series of responses to the prior post; full of suggestions for how to use repetition to make your world feel alive.
- The Dirty Secret of Great RPG Campaigns: Most of the World Does Not Matter - Dice Monkey - why your worldbuilding doesn't matter unless it puts pressure on your players or gives them a lever to solve problems.
- Worldbuilding is Wonderful. It's Also Optional - Dice Monkey - a follow-up to the previous, pointing out that a campaign doesn't need robust, planned worldbuilding to be fun.
- Choice, Change, and Chance - 3 x 5 Arcana - a refresh on Landmark, Hidden, Secret to make sure that what you're showing the players leads to action instead of simply paying a door tax.
Critique
- Turn duration in 0e context - Vladar's Blog - an analysis of the durations of different spells in 0e, the supplements, 1e, and several wargames.
- Every Single Samurai in Dungeons & Dragons - Magnolia Keep - a review of every appearance of the Samurai archetype in D&D over its history.
- I Read Fatherfog - Idle Cartulary - a read through of Tuesday Knight Games' latest offering.
- Fly Me to the Moon - Seed of Worlds - a review of the hexcrawl on the Moon.
- A Qualitative Dragon - Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet - a breakdown of features of dragons in OD&D and an effort to turn them into something more descriptive.
- Mars: The OTHER OD&D Setting - Magnolia Keep - an analysis of the monsters and encounters OD&D lifted from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom.
- AD&D's Most Expensive and Irritating NPC - Blog of Forlorn Encystment - a review of AD&D's rules for sages.
Meta
- How quickly can a new D&D edition take over? - Seed of Worlds - an analysis of Obsidian Portal and Roll20 data to see how quickly new games grow or fall off.
- Kickstarter Goals - Jay Dragon - a Bluesky thread about TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns should be determining the prices for their pledge levels and overall campaign goals.
- Bring Back Game Manuals - The Play Reports - Kati makes an argument I strongly agree with. Bring back manuals for videogames! Don't rely on ephemeral websites and community guides to teach people the more obscure things about how the game works.
- Where Did Fiction First Come From? - Aggregate Cognizance - a history of the terms "fiction" and "fiction first" in roleplaying games.
- Shall We Play a Game? - Asterisk Magazine - an interview with historian Jon Peterson that ranges across several topics relating to the history of wargaming.
- 12 Random Reasons to Never Listen to a Stranger - Unturned Hovel - an essay about how advice can often fall flat in play and how to feel out what you actually need for your table, along with analysis of 12 common bits of OSR wisdom.
- It is time to ditch the "good GM" - Methods & Madness - an argument that games should be designed for people who aren't masters of the craft.
- Talking About Games: Death & Preservation - SPACE-BIFF! - musings on the interpretation of texts and how this applies to board games.
- Fail More, coward - Valeria Loves - an argument that you should try more things and suck at them.
What I'm Reading
- The Wisdom of the Ancients - Four Ideas that Changed the World
- Under Hollow Hills
What I'm Playing
- D&D 5e
- Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory
- Under Fantastic Skies
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33