Tabletop role-playing games are often described as exercises in imagination. We gather around tables – physical or virtual – and agree to pretend, collectively, that other worlds exist and that we can move through them. We speak in the language of freedom: you can be anyone, you can do anything, your only limit is your imagination. However, the rules are always there.

Tabletop roleplaying is a collective imaginative process rooted in personal experiences and cultural backgrounds. Imagination is cumulative, shaped by diverse influences rather than being a binary ability. Exposure to varied narratives enriches creativity, allowing players to create complex worlds. A rich fantasy emerges from blending myths and stories, fostering collaboration and deeper engagement.

Morale is barely two paragraphs in the rulebook, yet it can transform an entire campaign. Once you start rolling it honestly, monsters stop being hit point totals and start acting like frightened, desperate beings. Combat becomes drama, survival becomes choice, and the dungeon finally feels alive.

The Reaction Roll is the OSR’s most elegant engine of chaos: a simple 2d6 table that turns every encounter into a question rather than an assumption. Will they parley, hesitate, demand tribute, or attack outright? It restores uncertainty, personality, and possibility to every creature in the dungeon.

The Tomb of the Serpent Kings, a modern OSR teaching dungeon by Skerples, challenges players by dismantling their assumptions about gaming. It emphasizes that death is part of the learning process, promoting caution and curiosity. The dungeon’s design teaches players to navigate danger honestly, fostering skill development over entitlement.

The Gelatinous Cube is one of D&D’s strangest triumphs, a monster that makes perfect ecological sense in a dungeon. Silent, patient, and relentlessly efficient, it is less a creature and more a cleaning mechanism. In its transparent embrace, we see the OSR’s love for logic hidden inside absurdity.

The Mimic is more than a monster. With one chomp, it teaches players that trust is a luxury and curiosity is a risk. It’s the creature that turns every chest, door, and chair into a potential betrayal. This is the OSR at its most playful and cruel.

The stirge is small, simple, and often dismissed. Yet it remains one of the purest expressions of old-school danger. No drama, no grandeur, just a blood-hungry nightmare that turns low-level play into a desperate struggle. This is a tribute to the tiny terror that taught us never to let our guard down.

The Valley of Sleeping Gods is a secretive and ethereal realm that I have sought after, embodying a metaphysical locale brimming with mystery and philosophical exploration. It challenges conventional views on divinity and faith, emphasizing the unsettling nature of true adventure, where players confront profound questions rather than seek material rewards.

The Swine-Things are unsettling creatures that I introduced in my campaign, merging human and animal traits to evoke primal fear. Their origins link to Hodgson's cosmic horror, symbolizing the chaos beneath civilization. They embody existential dread, altering players' perceptions of wilderness and revealing that horror lies in the unknown lurking beneath the surface.

Tomb of Horrors is a rite of passage – one that teaches players the most valuable lesson in all of RPGs: everything can kill you. It’s also a product of its time, encapsulating both the creativity and cruelty of the early D&D ethos. It’s deadly, it’s iconic, and it’s unforgettable.

AD&D 2nd Edition arrived with lofty goals and a polished look, but its timing was unfortunate. Caught between the rising tide of narrative-driven games and the fading traditions of first-wave D&D, it never truly found its identity. But in that limbo, it left behind some of the most intriguing ideas in RPG design.

MÖRK BORG is a scream set to layout. A doom-metal sermon disguised as an RPG, it tears down the walls between art, apocalypse, and play. Beneath the noise and nihilism lies a design ethos so sharp …

MÖRK BORG is a scream set to layout. A doom-metal sermon disguised as an RPG, it tears down the walls between art, apocalypse, and play. Beneath the noise and nihilism lies a design ethos so sharp it cuts through decades of tradition: beauty in decay, freedom in chaos.

The Black Hack looks deceptively simple – a few pages of minimalist rules that strip D&D to its bones. Beneath its scrappy DIY surface lies one of the smartest pieces of game design in the OSR: a system that remembers what made the old games great, and what made them human.

After a few weeks away (thanks to work, illness, and life being life), I looked up and realised OSR October was already half over. Here’s my complete list of prompts and responses for the month – from overlooked rules to misunderstood magic – with promises to expand each in the coming weeks. Consider this a quick resurrection roll and a reminder that the dice are still rolling at One Man and His Dice.

In this wide-ranging conversation, TSR veteran Harold Johnson pulls back the curtain on the birth of Dragonlance, the roots of the A-series Slavers modules, and the improbable path that took him from theatre and biology into shaping the game that changed the world. Along the way, we touch on TSR castles built from paper, conventions past and present, and the enduring secret that makes Dungeons & Dragons thrive: the creativity of the players themselves.

Before Dungeons & Dragons, before Chainmail, before the TSR juggernaut, there was War of the Empires. A ditto-printed postal wargame run by a “Master Computor,” complete with newsletters, medals, and cosmic aristocracies. Gary Gygax himself once role-played as Sub Commander Gygax, bearing the “Curse of Yig” in a galactic struggle. The game died, revived, and died again, but its DNA can be traced through the entire evolution of the hobby. This is the forgotten prehistory of sci-fi gaming.

Imagination is the true currency of fantasy gaming. Dice and rules are scaffolding, but it’s fiction – the myths, stories, and half-baked pulp tales we absorb and remix – that fuels the OSR and NuSR. The broader your influences, the richer your game becomes.

Gods, Demigods, and Heroes is one of the strangest supplements TSR ever published. Less a rulebook than a statted-out mythology handbook, it dares to reduce Zeus, Odin, and even Conan to hit points and armour class. It’s gloriously audacious, wildly inconsistent, and ultimately more interesting as a cultural artifact than as a play aid. Yet within its messy pages lies the spirit of 1970s D&D. It’s reckless, playful, and unafraid to cross boundaries.

The eternal debate over weapon damage is more than a question of dice. Should every weapon strike for the same? Or should swords, spears, and morning stars feel distinct, bound by reach, heft, and mastery? This piece explores how old-school rulings on expertise, dual-wielding, and weapon length still echo in today’s OSR and NuSR design debates, where the balance between simplicity and realism shapes not only combat, but the very soul of the game.

The Tomb of Horrors isn’t a dungeon. It’s a grudge. Every wall, pit, and false door is Acererak’s way of sneering at your pride and daring you to press on. Johnny Nine-Fingers ventured inside and came back with fewer eyebrows, more curses, and a story to tell. This is about surviving the cruellest puzzle-box in RPG history.

First published in 1978, S1: Tomb of Horrors is less a dungeon crawl and more a cruel puzzle-box built to humiliate adventurers. With Acererak’s traps, illusions, and the infamous green devil face, the tomb became a rite of passage – and a graveyard – for heroes. This essay explores its origins, its publication, and why, nearly fifty years later, we still return to die within its halls.

The final reward of RPGaDAY2025 isn’t treasure or XP – it’s community, reflection, and the joy of creating stories together. Thanks to everyone who joined in. See you next year.