Faith and damnation have always been uneasy bedfellows. Having studied Catholic theology and religious studies prior to my deep dive into the gothic rabbit hole of Vampire: the Masquerade, I have always been intrigued by how the game flips belief upside down. The World of Darkness is not only about politics, blood, and monsters. It is also about faith, twisted, broken, yet still somehow existing, in creatures that should, by all rights, be beyond redemption.

History tends to flatten itself. Nuance becomes nostalgia, multiplicity turns into myth. The history of tabletop role-playing games is no exception. And the history of tabletop role-playing games is no different, for its creation myth usually has has two names engraved in gold: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Rightful twin creators of Dungeons & Dragons, the legendary duo whose collaboration (and later discord) gave rise to everything else which followed.

There is an ongoing disagreement in Dungeons & Dragons that simply will not die. It is older than "edition wars," older than OSR vs. NuSchool arguments, older than reddit threads, tweets, or theoretical videos debating the ills and praises of the Vancian Magic System. It was happening when people were writing essays about Gygax in zines, when convention tables were arguing over whether a longsword could block lightning bolt, and when "game balance" had not yet become a phrase, but rather was a gut feeling.

I don't know if it's the air of October, but I am once again in a sort of WoD/nWoD craze. Part of it might also be that after what feels like forever, I once again have the chance to play Vampire (although this time is Requiem) alongside my wonderful girlfriend and that is always an experience very dear to my heart for it was at the VTM table that we first met.

There are many strange RPGs out there, but very few that feel as joyously, gloriously crazy as Troika! by Daniel Sell. To me, this game is a little special not only because it is clever or original, but because it scratches an itch I have had since I was a kid. Its own particular brand of madness reminds me of two of my all-time favorite shows, …

When you hear the term Dungeons & Dragons, it should feel a little raw and mythic. The creaking of a heavy wooden door opening, the scent of moist stone, the quiet, faint scratching of something that isn’t a rat (or you hope it isn’t). It’s a scene nestled firmly in pop culture, a party braving the underground with torches lighting their way.

There’s a certain kind of cool that is genuinely authentic, and cannot be faked. Call it the style that wears sunglasses indoors, quotes Nietzsche between puffs of a clove cigarette, and writes bad poetry about love and damnation at three AM. This is Vampire: The Masquerade - the most unapologetically 90s role-playing game ever written, and somehow, still cool, decades later.

When we think of RPG designers, we often think of "engineers of the imagination" – those fastidious minds who measure balance, calculate chance, and draw charts. But, at times, a designer sits down to write a rulebook and creates literature. Not a manual, not a set of instructions – but something that hums with rhythm, breathes tone, and is undoubtedly art.

From time to time, a TTRPG appears that seems less like a rules fetish and more like a manifesto for a way of thinking. Cairn is one of those. Written by Yochai Gal and published under a Creative Commons license, Cairn is an 18-page pamphlet that condenses the OSR ethos into something lean, elegant, and surprisingly evocative. What is Cairn? At its core, it’s a classless, exploration-focused TTRPG that takes its inspiration from Chris McDowall's…

When we picture the dungeon in tabletop role-playing games, we envision stone hallways, torches flickering in the dimly lit hall, goblins lurking in the darkness, and treasure behind a locked door. It's the defining image of an RPG, and one that has defined the hobby itself since those early days of Dungeons & Dragons, but the dungeon is not just an idea of the game or a well-known way to design an encounter.

Editor's note: Oh gee! I am extatic to present this, first article done by my good friend of almost 10 years by now, Tudor. Those of you who have read the blog for a while might know the name, for he is the one who made me implement the infamous "Tudor Rule" in my D&D games (those he is part of at the minimum), which entails that on a turn you can't do more than 50 damage to a single enemy until level 10.

When people envision role-playing games, they probably envision the stereotypical contents: dungeons with monsters and loot tables, game masters describing fantastical fables to others, and long campaigns driven by dice rolls in hunting maps. However, like theatre and film, the world of role-playing games is not monolithic. Some games, whether table-top based or computer-based, have ambitions well beyond entertainment and, while we normally think about literature in terms of its conventions and pages, these games get closer to things we are more accustomed to thinking about in literature.

I'll confess: I do not enjoy playing tabletop RPGs online. That's perfectly fine, everyone has different preferences. Personally, playing online will never yield the same satisfaction as playing around a real table. That saying, the few times I played online the GMs were amazing and I have nothing but respect towards their craft. This piece by no means should be taken as slander against them or anyone that prefers to play or run games online.

Editor's Note: We have a few announcements we’re excited to share! Our friends at Taverna Aventurierilor, the largest TTRPG community in Romania, recently launched their website! At present, the site is only available in Romanian, but I've been given permission by the great (and delightfully mad) mind behind the website, Alex, aka V3rt1go, to translate and publish some of the most interesting articles from their site.

It is, at this point, no secret that I'm an oWoD guy, mostly. I'm old and grumpy and somehow, not particularly enamored with the direction the oWoD line is going. (The rest of this opinion is probably hidden behind a paywall or has left to fight a mysterious war in the Middle East. You decide.) However, I keep talking to people about RPGs, and they keep being interested in the hobby.

With a little more than a month to go until the next edition of D&D Con, I felt it was the right time to look back and reflect on of my favorite experiences from previous years. If you are not familiar with D&D Con, it is the largest D&D/TTRPG focused event in Romania, and I've been lucky enough to be along for the ride since the start.

The Bulgarian seaside. What a place to write a piece for the RPG Gazette. What a way to start said piece. What a bloody atrocious system I work in, that I have to leave the godsdamned country so I could get some time to myself. Yeah, I missed you too. So, there’s something interesting going on with the OSR, and it started ringing my alarm bells as I was increasingly absorbed by the Oddlike ecosystem.

By now, readers of the blog know I do enjoy and glaze Grant Howitt quite a lot. I very much enjoyed all the games penned by him I got to try so far and I am always on the look-out for more. A couple of months ago I found Goblin Quest and I finally got to play it with one of my groups and well...

It brings us great pleasure to announce that this is our 100th article on the blog. We started this last year in November and honestly, I am humbled by the amount of traction and support this project has received. I never imagined reaching the numbers we are reachings and getting to be part of so many awesome projects (shout-out to…

So, I was at Yuno's place, thinking about what article should I write next, and since she is a briliant women (and an awesome gf) she suggested me something quite fun. I guess since, you probably read the title, you know what it is. Small little factoid about myself, but I actually have a Tourist Guide certification so this article is weirdly right in my ballpark.

When D&D and other such games come up, discussion at one point or another goes to the magical artifacts: the +1 Sword of Justice, a Helm of Teleportation, a fantastic Deck of Many Things, and so on. These magical items are the stuff of heroes' tales -those shiny, glimmering rewards that that drive quests and define character power. But what of the non-dazzling non-magical items?

Yes. You read that right. During our Dice&Destiny Day event I've had the chance to play Call of Cthulhu for the first time, thanks to the great v3rt1go (Alex Griciuc). I don't know about you, but there's something about Call of Cthulhu that stays with you long after you've stopped rolling the dice. I've roamed plenty of RPG worlds with heroes, villains, and spectacular places, but few games stuck to my brain like Chaosium's flagship horror experience.

In the expansive, imaginative worlds of tabletop roleplaying games, few ideas are as fundamental, as resonant, or as conducive to deep player engagement as a pantheon of gods and the religions built around them. For a GM, building gods and religions is not just a lore exercise, but a way to provide meaning, conflict, and scope on a cosmic level, to the domain of the campaign world.

Vancian magic, the spell system created by author Jack Vance, has shaped the last forty-plus years of Dungeons & Dragons as well as the countless tabletop RPGs that have come after it. Looking back on the history of D&D, Vancian magic, aka "fire-and-forget," defined how magic is used (and understood) in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) for generations. Players played wizards, prepared spells every day knowing they would be lost into the ether the moment they were cast.

In the expansive, gothic-punk landscape of the World of Darkness - where vampires battle their inner Beast and struggle to maintain their true self, werewolves wage a losing war against cosmic corruption, and mages warp reality at the cost of their own sanity - there is a game that strikes a distinctly different note. This game is not about gibbering horror, but about a deep, aching melancholy.