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It's been a year!

When I started this blogging endeavor I was hoping I'd keep it up as much as possible, but knowing myself I was worried I'd stop after a while like it happens way too often with hobbies or things I get into...but here we are. On January 5th 2025 I published my very first post , an introduction, and since then I published 52 posts, one per week, every Sunday at 16.00 CET (the one you're reading right now is number 53). I thought I'd take this chance to do a little recap of what happened during this year (TTRPG-wise) and what my plans are for 2026, both for this blog and for TTRPGs in general. During this 2025 I did not manage, like I hoped, to find a new IRL group to play TTRPGs, and many things have happened (both good and...less good) preventing me from dedicating the time I'd have hoped to this hobby, be it playing, GMing or writing adventures or such. With that said, 2025 is also the year I started playing solo TTRPGs , I published my very first small adventure  ...

Caribbean Tales (solo Pirate Borg) - Episode 3

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The following is part 3 of my solo Pirate Borg campaign. It focuses mainly around the character I created in this post , which was so interesting to me that it prompted me to set up a whole solo campaign . You can start with episode 1 here . Let's dive right in!   One member of the crew, a woman with a patch over her right eye, erupted in a howl. That seemed to break the tension, and one moment later Sam, the Captain and the rest of the crew were laughing at the sudden outburst. Captain Ramirez turned to a short man with a hook instead of his left hand beside her:  I entrust you with the newbie, Brother Bilge. Make sure he knows how to behave and that he pulls his weight . Aye aye, Captain  replied the man, who then turned to Sam with a smile:  Walk with me, mister. I'll show you the ropes as we follow the captain . Where are we going?  asked Sam  And how ccan you trust me already? I wouldn't, if I were you . Brother Bilge chuckled.  Ah, don't ...

Caribbean Tales (solo Pirate Borg) - Episode 2

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The following is part 2 of my solo Pirate Borg campaign. It focuses mainly around the character I created in this post , which was so interesting to me that it prompted me to set up a whole solo campaign . You can find episode 1 here . Let's dive right in! He closed his eyes and started running, not caring where he was going or about any danger he could meet. Nothing could be worse than that. He ran and screamed, screamed and ran, trying to suppress any thought his brain might have; his thoughts seemed to have a different voice, but it didn't matter. Not in that moment. All of a sudden he ran into what felt like a massive stone wall, hitting it so hard he bounced and rolled backwards, ending face down on the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but everything was still black. He was definitevely alive, though; he was in too much pain to be dead. He was vaguely aware of voices around him, but it was hard to determine whether they were coming from outside or inside his ...

Shoulds we bring back Hit Locations?

A bit of context before getting into the meat of it: as I mentioned in other posts, I'm in the middle of running an online campaign of Dragon of Icespire Peak (D&D 5e's Essential Kit campaign) for a few friends, and eventually they'll end up fighting the titular dragon, and I want to make it a more interesting encounter than how it is presented, because as it is in the book it is...underwhelming. So I started planning what to add: legendary resistances and actions, lair actions, some minions, making it fly and change the environment (it's a white dragon, so ice patches for players to slip on or to use as cover), but what else could I add? That's when I went to my library for ideas and, while flipping my copy of  Fantastic Medieval Campaigns  by Marcia B., a faithful rewrite of the 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rules which includes a few snippets from the supplements in its appendices, I stumbled upon Hit Locations, originally published in Supplement II: Blackmoor....

Let the systems merge!

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Last Sunday I had a Duet D&D session with my wife, and it led me to think about something related to DMing (GMing, Refereeing) that many of us will take for granted, but it bears repeating for those that don't: games are not sealed compartments, and what you learn in a game can and will make it easier for you to run better games in any system . Let's start with a bit of context: this is a D&D 5e campaign that started over a year ago with me as the DM and my wife and a friend of mine as the players (plus one sidekick and a DMPC to make it a party of 4) set in Eberron, my favorite "official" D&D setting. Sadly, after just a few sessions the campaign ran into an abrupt stop because of...life happening, and it was put on indefinite hold. Recently I found myself wanting to get a regular weekly TTRPG night with my wife, including solo and GMless games...and it felt like the best opportunity to bring this back as a Duet game. We are 3 sessions in at the moment, a...

My first steps into TTRPG design - part 3

This week's post is part 3 of the mini series about my new TTRPG design ideas inspired by the Mork Borg universe (see part 1  and part 2 ). My third and (for now) last idea is not a game system, but rather a supplement: the working title for now is Mork Wars . Inspired by  Grinding the MMORKG , a Cy_Borg supplement I recently found that aims to mash together Mork Borg and Cy_Borg (including a guide on how to convert characters between the two systems), this supplement aims to do something similar, but in a bigger scope: allowing a Cy_Borg campaign to include one-shots of any other Borg-inspired game while still being in the same campaign. Admittedly, as of right now I'm still waiting for my copy of Cy_Borg, which will arrive on my birthday (December 6th, almost there!) and only then I will define better this idea and properly write it down, but for now the gist is: instead Cy there is a VR game that is attracting a lot of attention lately, where you pay some credits to play as...

My first steps into TTRPG design - part 2

This post is a follow-up to the one I wrote last week  about my new TTRPG design idea inspired by Mork Borg, Bronze Borg. This time I'm going to write about the second idea I came up with recently, with the same purpose as the first one: to keep myself accountable and make sure I continue working on this. This second project is called (for now) Steam Borg  and, as the name suggests, it's a steampunk version of Mork Borg. Steampunk has always been a genre that fascinated me (although I've not ready many books about it, I should correct this! If you have suggestions, please send them my way) and it's what got me interested in the Eberron setting in D&D in the first place, before discovering that it's not actually a steampunk setting; it's still my favorite "official" D&D setting, though. My ideas for Steam Borg are all still works in progress, but so far my idea is a world where steam research has brought a lot of progress, but ended up ruining t...