Blorb is not enough

They did it.  Out of curiosity or boredom or misplaced trust, they pushed the big red button.  The party gave the MacGuffin to the evil priestess, she summoned her evil god, and literal hell is about to break loose.  

Today's post is a writing exercise, because I have twenty minutes to write it.  I have some long posts queued up, but my weekend got away from me and this is what I have: my mental prep for next week's game.

So yeah, last week my players (roving crew of the good ship Murderbucket, stop reading here) accidentally summoned an angry god, and are currently trying to get the hell back to surface before she destroys the undersea dungeon they are in.  They know there is a way back to the surface in the heart of a palace in the middle of the alien city, so that's where they are now.  

At least, that was their first reaction.   Then, over our group chat, they began to coalesce around the idea of burning it all down, to stop her.  And I began to think, wow will happen next?  

Blorb would say, go with what your prep says about the world, and let the players work out the story.¹   And sure, I could do that.  There is technically a way to drop everything to the bottom of the sea.   Well, several things would happen after.  What would happen then to the evil?  I am the GM, I have no idea, I'll make something up.  That's off the map of what I expected them to get to.  

On top of that, I don't know from my prep how the neutral NPCs will react to this unexpected situation. I have to decide for them.  Yep, all the prep in the world is not a shield against GM choice.  Blorb is attempting to fix GM choice in place via prep, so players can work through a 'reality'.  In this case, how the NPCs react is critical--will they choose to blow the city first?  Abandon ship?   Attack the goddess with everything they've got?  

And here's the one thing I do know from my blorby prep--burning it all it down would likely kill the entire party, the way I set up the world in my head, with no chance of escape.   Where's the choice in that outcome?  They released a god.  They know they fucked up, and it was their choice.²   I want to honor that choice, but I also want to not make them feel like I am railroading them out of guilt into killing their entire party.  I mean, they are doing the railroading to themselves out of guilt, but I set this situation up, so...

So what's the solution?  Well, I am off the map.  Time to build some new prep onto my old prep, and build in the opportunity for more interesting choices than morally-enforced, guilt-driven collective party suicide.  Sure, it may involve a reborn Quantum Ogre or two, but I think the world needs more Quantum Ettins--times when the players face different roads, all leading behind the scenes to a restricted, manageable set of really interesting choices.  

Janus, the original Ettin

I mean, I am going to keep party self-sacrifice on the table as an option--what sort of evil, choice-manipulating evil GM do you think I am?  

No, I just want to give them MORE choices, so that if they choose to kick the bucket, they feel GREAT about it.  Thus, the Quantum Ettin--one road leads to self-sacrifice, and the other road....well, wouldn't it be funny if they had to choose between a local good and greater evil?  I may add more roads...the point is, I hadn't really considered what would happen if anyone tried to sabotage this alien city for destruction.  The exact way the machine works is up to me. So in doing this blorby prep, I am constructing a Quantum Ettin--a story where my players have a real choice, with many options.  One they will feel they selected with clear eyes³, even if they all die afterwards.  

Because Blorb isn't enough, especially if it doesn't give players choice--the heart of an adventure game.

1 To quote: "A prepper might think long and hard how many wolves are appropriate in the forest for a good and fun game play experience or a nice interesting exploratory simmy experience but once you're running, you're committed. You can't go around changing that stuff! Things can happen in the game that are too boring, too unbalanced, too easy, too hard but that's gonna have to be OK." Thanks Luke for finding the relevant section I am bending. ^↩

2 To be clear, they chose to hand over the MacGuffin and knew it was a Bad idea. They didn't know about the whole Goddess summoning (accompanied by the standard holy army) thing, just that Bad Things would happen to their mutual enemies. ^↩

3 In a super helpful discussion on the Dice Exploder discord, I think Seraphina hit the nail on the head, "Which, circling around, points at something interesting about blorb- if the players have limited information about the blorby bits they are engaging with, you can inadvertently have a world that doesn’t...feel like it has verisimilitude and instead feels like it’s on rails" ^↩

Breaking a GM star pattern: d20 more ways

Is talking to your players like playing a game of verbal ping-pong?  Is the table quiet unless you are speaking with one of them?  Do you fill the silence?  Then you may have fallen victim to one of the classic GM blunders! The most famous of which is, 'never use your friends as props to write a novel,' followed by 'expecting your players to notice something'...but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never allow a GM star pattern when you are running a game!"  

The GM star pattern was first described by the blogger and Microscope creator Ben Robbins: "When I say 'star-pattern', I mean when the players all talk to the GM but don't talk to each other. Picture the table, and draw lines showing interactions: all the lines go from the GM, the center, out to the different players, like a starburst. There are few or no lines from player to player."  

Now, Ben spent an entire post laying out five potential fixes to the star pattern, including a player fix, a GM fix (the campfire challenge), and three system fixes (GMless games, GM's using group initiative, and GM's running West Marches games).  

But that's only five fixes, and for the Randomness Blogwagon, I rolled an 8 (post on June 8), then a 10 (2000 words exactly), and drew the King of Spades (Ben's ars ludi blog).  So how many fixes to the GM star pattern can I fit into 2000 words?  Time for a random table!

Overall design idea from ars ludi, with bad art from me.

But I must say, before I begin, 2000 words is a LOT of serious advice to lay down–I may get desperate quickly.  Also, I often have the opposite problem, which is getting my players to shut up and decide already on which of their nefarious plans they are doing, so I reserve the right to add a second table, "How to Blackhole your Group", to pad out my word count to round out this post. Without further ado, I bring you:

d20 more ways to break a GM star pattern:

1	GM: Describe an interesting problem with multiple possible answers and no easy solutions.  Then ask the players, "What do you do?"  Then shut up, and listen, and briefly and honestly answer follow-up player questions.  It's time for them to decide what to DO, so stay quiet!  Throw them no ropes!
2	Player: Join forces with your fellow players to stop the game to look up and debate how spells and/or rules work. The more you can say before someone finds the right description, the better.  Do not let the GM do this alone, this is a competition.  Invoke this one at your peril however, because if you are sufficiently annoying the GM may fry you with a lightning bolt.  In or out of character.
3	System: Play a Honey Heist, Cocaine Owlbear, or Raccoon Sky Pirates one-shot.  Steal that enchanted cocaine so you don't revert back to being a non-talking forest animal!  When your group is planning a heist while squinting at a blood-stained map, they are not talking only to the GM.
4	GM: Next time they encounter an NPC, create language issues where only one player can speak with them, and that poorly ("Eh? I only speak a little Elvish! What did you say?).  This designates one player as the Talker-to-GM.  Put your hands over your ears and hum while the players tell the Talker what to say to you.  Then, before they talk, have them roll for comprehension.  If they fail, they can only use mono-syllabic words when speaking to you.
5	Player: When a fellow PC says or does anything to an NPC in character that smacks of a decision or agreement, object out of character and start a 20-60 minute debate about the best course of action.  Even better if you do this mid-combat or mid-negotiation, and by the time you return to the original matter at hand, they still need to finish their sentence and the GM had time to go pee, drink a rootbeer, check their phone, doodle a bit, and completely lose track of the narrative.  That's how you grab control!
6	Player: Talk at length with each of the NPCs, to the point where your fellow players break in to ask if you can all move on.  Then respond politely to their rude interruption, in character, and you are talking to each other, presto!  Feel free to flirt outrageously with the NPCs at any time.
7	System: Next time you don't have enough players for a full session (or you just need a break), encourage one of your players to run a one-shot, either in-world or whatever system/scenario they want.  Let them be the GM and see how hard it is to be at the center of the star pattern.  Help them by talking to other players.
8	GM: If a player is quiet and doesn't talk to you or others much, give them: A) the Talker role for a whole region of badly-accented NPCs, B) a cursed or magical item that forces them to declaim loudly at random times (preferably with a reward for doing so), or C) a pet that annoys the whole party but that they love and want to defend.
9	Player: All player shenanigans operate on the buddy system.  Recruit your buddy, split the party, and sneak off to go do that thing (push that statue, TP the mayor's house, adopt that goblin dog).  No one will mind your side conversation as you endanger yourselves.
10	System: Don't just use group initiative, use speedy parallel resolution to model the chaos of combat: chaos sandwich initiative.  It's a group initiative system where the party goes before and after the monsters, all actions are resolved at once at a rapid clip, and your players will inevitably come up with plans and then have them go awry as they kill the same monster twice in a round.
11	GM: Acquire fake laryngitis at the start of a session.  The show must go on.  Talk softly, in a raspy voice, and say as little as is needed to paint a scene.  Ask the players questions about what they see, make go-on gestures when they are talking, and point to other players when they ask you questions another player can answer.
12	Player: Same as #2, but for zany edge-case antics you have dreamed up.  If you are not dropping 2000 darts out of a bag of holding while flying, or covering a giant squirrel in syrup and launching it off the side of your castle using a water slide supported by an Immovable Rod, you are not trying hard enough.  Make your GM sweat, then help as a group by suggesting all sorts of rules that do not apply to this situation in any way whatsoever.  Bonus points if you planned your antics with your buddy (#9) and/or propose these antics improbably mid-fight or mid-negotiation (#5).
13	Player: Mid-fight, turn to a nearby player and start negotiating with them to borrow their magical item(s).  If they turn you down, ask the next player for a different item.
14	System: Each player is given a role to play in the party.   1-Bursar: The GM doesn't track party money and magic items, and if the party doesn't do it, shit disappears.   2-Mapper: the GM may draw the scene by scene maps, but they erase them as they go.  Players better be mapping if they don't want to get lost.   3-Salmon-of-doubt: This player is there to point out the others' plans will go wrong.  The GM will prove them right about 50% of the time.   4-Scapegoat: This one is the one who answers when the GM asks, okay do you all like this plan?  Feel free to blame them.   5- Chaos Monkey: This player is always looking for a buddy, but in the meantime, they are going to taste the weird glowing mushroom, poke the sleeping owlbear, and put on that creepy amulet.   6-Straight arrow: This player is in charge of remembering what happened last time, taking notes, and otherwise trying to keep the burning train arriving on time.   If your players don't already follow these roles, assign them a role randomly.
15	GM: Give each player loyal minions and/or pets.  Then assign control of those pets and minions to neighboring players, with you making final rulings on things like morale and betrayal.  Remind the neighbors that, while minions and pets are loyal to their individual employer/owner, they also look out for themselves.
16	Player: Randomly roll for a group drinking song and sing it with your buddy every time you want some sort of favorable break from the GM (or just to annoy them).  Alternatively, if you and your buddy don't like to sing, start a serious in-game prank war against them.  Make sure you win the challenge of escalating pranks.  Nothing will go wrong, stop worrying about it.  The more in-game you do to each other, the more you are talking.
17	System: Use a Luck point system (Tales of the Valiant has one that works well in 5e, so does Shadowdark, and Pirate Borg too) and allow players to help each other with rolls by sharing Luck points.  The only catch is they must describe their intervention in-game, and it must be plausible ('I call back down the tunnel, reminding Delg that a good dwarf with a beard like his shouldn't fear a fire elemental!').  Make stuff harder for them, so Luck is needed.
18	GM: When you are doing your campfire challenge, every 20 seconds a players doesn't say something, sigh heavily, pick up 2d6, roll them, inspect the results carefully, and look worried.  At some point, if you do this 3-4 times in a row, something bad happens in-game.  Blame the dice.
19	Player: Play a drinking mini-game: every time there is a new problem/enemy/trap at hand, you must turn to your neighboring player and loudly complain.  'I can't believe this is happening!'  Then ask them how they feel about the situation. Be alert for opportunities to form plans for buddy shenanigans.  And here's the mini-game: if you forget to complain each time there is a problem, you take a drink.  Up to you if this is in-game or out-of-game.
20	System: When you play an NPC in a conversation with the party, talk in turn to each of the PCs directly, as if they were real people and you are trying to be a good host.  Ask each of them questions to pull them out.  Try to draw them into conversation with each other, by asking the next player about what the first one said ("Do you agree with his request, for me to give you passage through my barony for free?  Don't you think it's a bit rude of him to ask me this without even offering a bribe?  Have you two even talked about giving me a bribe?  Go on, I will walk over here and give you a moment to confer.  Make it good.")

And, yes, these are all things my players DO, so if they won't shut up…

 d4 ways to Blackhole your party:

1	GM: As the players continue plotting / debating / arguing in the middle of combat / negotiation / wildfires / chases, every 30 seconds the players keep talking, sigh heavily, pick up 2d6, roll them, inspect the results carefully, and look worried.  At some point, if you do this 3-4 times in a row, something bad happens in-game.  Blame the dice.
2	Player: Point out that the GM needs to describe something.  Follow up with more questions.  End only when the GM notices this trick or their loredump gets to the length of a Wikipedia article.
3	System: Play using grid rules, but theatre-of-the-mind, without minis or markers.  If your RPG system lacks grid rules, introduce them.
4	System: Use an air horn.

 

AD&D, B/X, and the OSR: By the numbers

 Is AD&D still alive and well, or an older part of the OSR that is fading in popularity?  This week’s post is an apology: after I wrote “AD&D is too complicated for the OSR” in the Sly Flourish Discord, a pair of kind folks rightly pointed out (and I quickly agreed) that I was wrong-headed and ahistorical there, between OSRIC and a persistent community of fans.  I lacked perspective: while I grew up memorizing BECMI and the AD&D 1e and 2e books, I then took a break for decades, started back on to 5e in 2014 and then, in covid times, found my way the B/X side of the OSR.

Hearing about AD&D’s continued popularity surprised me, especially since many new OSR+ games are derived from B/X D&D (e.g., Shadowdark, the Borgs). But we all agreed that we didn’t know exactly how popular AD&D was, relative to B/X-derived OSR games.  In general, it seems like we all don’t know which RPGs are popular, if Bob World Builder’s recent poll is any indication.  So, this week’s post examines data from con games to answer an important question: how many OSR folks are still playing AD&D?   

Relic of the past, or ever-open door?

But before we answer that question, a few others come up, the answers to which I have moved to the end because who wants to wade through a page of text before reading the cool stuff?  The questions are:

1. Does playing the older editions count as OSR play?  tldr: yes.

2. Which older editions count as OSR?  tldr: all of them that feel right.

3. How am I going to count the relative numbers of AD&D and B/X OSR players?  tldr: using game attendance data from three 2025 cons: Gen, Gary, and North Texas RPG.

Now let’s get to the fun stuff: what I learned.

 Takeaway 1: There is a ton of AD&D still being played at all kinds of cons.   

Look at the size of that orange slice, which is the number of attendees at AD&D con games (including retroclones and the rare AD&D-adjacent OSR game).  Not too shabby, even at GenCon!  Clearly there’s a vibrant community of AD&D-playing con attendees. 

Takeaway 2: B/X-derived games outnumbered AD&D at all cons, but were less dominant than I believed. 

B/X-descended games, as a group, do dominate OSR con games, led by Shadowdark, Mork and Pirate Borg, and B/X itself.  But it’s worth noting that AD&D was more popular than any individual OSR game across all cons, with the sole exception of Pirate Borg at GenCon.  That’s right, more folks were playing AD&D at these cons than Shadowdark!  My mind is officially blown. 

Here’s the data itself in table form: one can see the large number of AD&D games on offer, which makes it less likely this is all one group of really focused fans.  GaryCon had the most OSR games, but a respectable variety of OSR games were found at Gen Con.  NTRPG focused on older games and (not shown here) had the greatest number of OD&D games.

Other interesting observations: 4e is rare as hen’s teeth at cons, while 3e-descended OSR games are well represented, showing the enduring popularity of Dungeon Crawl Classics (and its sister systems) at conventions.  And as OSR-adjacent games derived from Runequest, Mothership and Dragonbane were popular at GenCon and GaryCon.  

Takeaway 3: Trad games are common at both Gen Con and Gary Con

Gen Con, to likely no one’s surprise, was dominated by trad games.  Trad games had nearly 7x more offerings and 9x more players than OSR games at that con.  But it surprised me to find that an OSR-focused convention like Gary Con also had a robust trad game scene.  That said, trad games have broad appeal and promotional budgets to boot, so I don’t know why I was truly surprised.  NTRPG is differently focused: trad games had far less traction there, but the diversity of older games was impressive, with many I hadn’t heard of before or seen in the wild.

Takeaway 4: OSE and Cairn are rare finds at con games: maybe we ought to change that?  

Across GenCon, GaryCon, and NTRPG Con, I found a grand total of 27 games of Old School Essentials (counting both OSE and Dolmenwood), 2 games of Cairn, and 9 games of Mausritter.  And apart from 2 games of Mausritter at GenCon, all of these wonderful games were at GaryCon.  That’s right, there were no OSE or Cairn games, and almost no Mausritter games, at GenCon or a smaller OSR con, and that’s a shame–I love each of these systems, and Dolmenwood is a fucking masterpiece, with top-notch adventures and a hexcrawl so detailed you could retire there.  And while Between Two Cons is going to host a ton of Cairn games of course, we need more!  

I had a chance to meet Yochai last week at the wonderful indie con Gamefacecon in Baltimore, and I suggested that he start a Warden program for Cairn, like Pirate Borg does for its Harbormasters.  He said he has been thinking about it, and I encourage you to bug him about it until it happens.  

But honestly, we don’t need to wait.  If you are like me and want to see more Dolmenwood, Mausritter, and Cairn games at cons, well…we have to create the world we want.  Time for me to volunteer to GM Cairn and Mausritter games at local cons: more people need to wander through the woods, and to learn to fear cats.  

________________________________________________________________________

The DETAILS:

Does playing the older D&D editions count as OSR play? 

Yes, because A) OSR is a play culture that re-interprets and re-imagines the playstyles of older D&D editions and B) retroclones of older editions are part of the OSR’s history (OSRIC, a retroclone of AD&D, literally put the O.S.R. in the OSR!) and present.  Modern AD&D players are certainly playing in a culture where they are influenced by OSR ideas–the one time I played AD&D at a con (2023), it bore a decent resemblance to the games I remembered from the 80s, but it was NOT the same.  So, because we all know a single experience is certainly the truth, let’s move on.  

Which older editions count as OSR?

Here I could arbitrarily draw the line at 3rd Edition, when DnD got so complicated and full of player options that it became a trad game.  But because fruitful cross-pollination can come from pulling cool ideas from newer editions (like my Feats for Shadowdark, if I say so myself) AND because DCC is derived from 3rd edition and yet beloved by OSR folks, I am going to track the relative current popularity of 3e and 4e as part of my OSR game tally.  I am also going to track OSR+ games like Mothership that derived from Runequest, because they are spiritual OSR cousins.  

How am I going to count the relative numbers of AD&D and B/X OSR players?  

There’s no one best way to do this.  But today I am going to pull player numbers at RPG conventions, which we all know are heavily influenced by promotion efforts from RPG companies, organizing legions of DMs to keep the torch burning and fans excited.  If AD&D is still a popular OSR game at conventions, then it must have a big loyal community, right?  Because last I checked, Wizards is not promoting AD&D at conventions.

Focusing on cons with data on all games in downloadable form, I pulled attendance numbers for one big general convention (Gen Con 2025) and a couple of medium size OSR conventions: Gary Con 18 (2025) and North Texas RPG Con 2025.  Here are links to the game data for Gen Con, Gary Con, and NTRPG Con: while the OSR cons were neat csvs to pull from Tabletop Events, Gen Con was a tough nugget, it exported as series of a funky game tallies that I had to write an excel script to process after manually downloading all relevant categories.  On top of that, Gen Con doesn’t make its past con attendance info available online, so the link above now leads to the 2026 con events.  However, I just found this wonderful website listing all past Gen Con events, which I wish I had found last month.  

For each game at each con, I sorted them into three categories: 1) OSR games, 2) Not-OSR games (Trad), and 3) Huh?, or the I-have-NO-idea-what-this-rare-game-is-and-life-is-short-let’s-move-on category.  Then, within the OSR category, I further sorted games into their ancestor system: B/X and earlier (including OD&D), AD&D (1st and 2nd edition), 3rd edition, 4th edition, Boot Hill, Tunnels and Trolls, and Runequest.  

First I counted the number of games offered in each category.  Second, for each game played at each con, I added together the tickets sold and the number of people wait-listed, to arrive at the total number of people that wanted to play that game.  Yes, that means that the total player-numbers will be repeats of individuals playing in different games, and it’s possible that all the Shadowdark players at Gary Con were just ten kobolds in a trenchcoat–but it’s unlikely.  Regardless, because all games were treated the same, we can learn something useful here about community excitement, even if it’s all just gangs of rival kobolds in trenchcoats.  

If you have questions about the data that you want me to explore, or are more curious about how I cleaned and parsed it, please let me know in the comments.

__________________

Digging
By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

_______________________________

And the cleaned data and excel files (.xlm):

Gary con #18 (the cleaned data csv, and the summarized data)

North Texas RPG 25 (all together, cleaned data and summary)

Gen Con 25 (all together, cleaned data and summary)