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!

Link to the Kickstarter


Random Party Generater

Everybody invited to tonight's Random Party Generator when the kickstarter will end at 10pm Eastern Daylight.


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.     

Link to the Kickstarter



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.