Bat in the Attic
A blog on 40 years of gaming and Sandbox Fantasy.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Rulings, Not Rules: A Foundation, Not an Oversight
Friday, June 27, 2025
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms, Last Day!
My Kickstarter for Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: the Northern Marches is now in its last day!
Random Party Generater
Overview
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Marches is built from the ground up for sandbox play. It’s a fully detailed hexcrawl formatted setting with dozens of lairs, dungeons, and adventure hooks, designed not just to be read, but played. Every location, encounter, and faction was refined through actual campaigns using classic rulesets, then polished for publication. Whether you’re running Swords & Wizardry, Shadowdark, AD&D, Old School Essentials, GURPS, or adapting for 5E, you’ll find the Northern Marches easy to run and rich with potential. It’s a World In Motion, where player choices matter and nothing stays static.
So far, I have released 5 previews covering the major regions of the Northern Marches.
Preview #1
Preview #2
Preview #3
Preview #4
Preview #5
This isn’t just another fantasy setting; it’s a tested framework for long-term play, a living world that supports real agency. I’ve built this to help referees run the kind of open-ended campaigns I’ve run for decades. If you want a setting where exploration matters, choices have consequences, and players carve their own path through the unknown, then Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Marches is ready. Back it now and make this sandbox setting yours.
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms, Final Three Days
My Kickstarter for Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: the Northern Marches is now in its last three days.
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Marches is built from the ground up for sandbox play. It’s a fully detailed hexcrawl formatted setting with dozens of lairs, dungeons, and adventure hooks, designed not just to be read, but played. Every location, encounter, and faction was refined through actual campaigns using classic rulesets, then polished for publication. Whether you’re running Swords & Wizardry, Shadowdark, AD&D, Old School Essentials, GURPS, or adapting for 5E, you’ll find the Northern Marches easy to run and rich with potential. It’s a World In Motion, where player choices matter and nothing stays static.
So far, I have released 5 previews covering the major regions of the Northern Marches.
Preview #1
Preview #2
Preview #3
Preview #4
Preview #5
This isn’t just another fantasy setting; it’s a tested framework for long-term play, a living world that supports real agency. I’ve built this to help referees run the kind of open-ended campaigns I’ve run for decades. If you want a setting where exploration matters, choices have consequences, and players carve their own path through the unknown, then Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Marches is ready. Back it now and make this sandbox setting yours.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
The Old School Renaissance
Debates about what the OSR is have been going on since at least the late 2000s. Lately I seen more rounds of discussion on this topic on various forums and on youtube like this panel discussion.
What sets the OSR apart, from the beginning, is that, unlike most corners of the hobby, it hasn’t been driven by a single author, company, or creative vision. While it grew from interest in out-of-print editions of D&D, its creative output quickly became rooted in open content under open licenses. That foundation created not a canon, but a commons.
And from that commons emerged a kaleidoscope of creative visions: rulesets, zines, hacks, adventures, philosophies, and play styles. The movement thrived not because it had a unified voice, but because it didn’t. It was, and remains, a productive chaos of competing, overlapping, and deeply personal creative visions.
Digital publishing supercharged this. The barriers to creating and distributing game content collapsed. Suddenly, anyone with the time and drive could turn their vision into a PDF, a print-on-demand book, a boxed set, or a full-blown system, no approvals required.
The OSR is shaped daily by those who publish, those who share, those who play, and those who promote. You can see just one slice of this activity on DriveThruRPG, with nearly 15,000 titles tagged OSR. Itch.io adds another 5,000+ projects under the same banner, each one a different take on what an “old school renaissance” can mean.
Many have tried to define the OSR. All of them fail, because definition implies boundaries, and the OSR has none that aren’t self-imposed. At its core, the OSR is an invitation. If you have the interest, the ideas, and the willingness to build, then it’s yours.
That’s the point. The OSR is what you make of it.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Into the The Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches is now Live
I'm excited to announce the launch of Kickstarter Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: the Northern Marches
A Sandbox Fantasy Setting
What if your players could shape a world that remembers them?
From the frostbitten ruins of the Wild North to the magical storms of the Ring Islands, The Northern Marches is a massive sandbox setting built for classic fantasy play.
Created by Robert Conley, the author of Blackmarsh, How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, and Points of Light, this 200-page hexcrawl expands Blackmarsh into the Northern Marches and briefly describes the larger world of the Majestic Fantasy Realms for the first time. With new lands, factions, mysteries, and rules for overland, sea, and underwater travel.
For the Table of Contents and a Preview, please click on this link.
This Kickstarter will fund:
- A 200-page guidebook
- A travel and encounter system
- 5 referee maps (12"x18")
- 5 player maps (12”x 18”)
- A Creative Commons SRD for open use.
Explore. Discover. Change the world!
Find Adventure in the Majestic Fantasy Realms and the Northern Marches.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches pre-launch.
I'm excited to announce that my third Kickstarter launches on Wednesday, May 28th, just two weeks away! Click the link below to get notified when it goes live.
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: the Northern Marches
A Sandbox Fantasy Setting
What if your players could shape a world that remembers them?
From the frostbitten ruins of the Wild North to the magical storms of the Ring Islands, The Northern Marches is a massive sandbox setting built for classic fantasy play.
Created by Robert Conley, the author of Blackmarsh, How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, and Points of Light, this 200-page hexcrawl expands Blackmarsh into the Northern Marches and briefly describes the larger world of the Majestic Fantasy Realms for the first time. With new lands, factions, mysteries, and rules for overland, sea, and underwater travel.
This Kickstarter will fund:
- A 200-page guidebook
- A travel and e
ncounter system - 5 referee maps (12"x18")
- 5 player maps (12”x 18”)
- A Creative Commons SRD for open use.
Explore. Discover. Change the world!
Launching in two weeks on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
An Update on the Majestic Fantasy Realms
I noticed an increase in visitors, and since my last post was in March, I figured a quick update was in order.
The writing for The Northern Marches is complete, and I’m now working on the Kickstarter setup. Expect a preview page soon, with the full launch planned for two weeks after that.
The last section I worked on was the travel rules and encounter tables. These expand on the travel rules presented in How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. I believe I’ve developed an elegant solution for determining travel speed across various terrain types. The rules also include underwater travel, with new encounters for Descents underwater, alongside the existing Journey, Voyage, and Trip encounters.
Traditional encounter tables are also part of the system, tailored to the various regions of the Northern Marches.
Expect a post soon on the Kickstarter details.