Malin Freeborn

Random Encounters Disarm Chekov's Gun

Chekov’s gun poses a real threat to some games. If a group playing Vampire: The Masquerade (‘VtM’) encounter a Ravnos, spinning illusions, and confusing mortals, then the next time they hear about unusual events, they will assume that the Ravnos did this.

Having a Bash at Travel in BIND

They say you have to playtest, but they forget that I’m a lazy man, so when it came to travel rules, I didn’t feel like simulating a bunch of journeys.

Against Collectors

I sometimes feel that collections can imply something shameful, and it’s especially potent in RPGs.

Extrapolation & Necessity

When designing Fenestra, I noticed it had no magical universities. I really mean ’noticed’, rather than ‘stipulated’, or ‘invented’.

Magic Rules

Your last three sessions have felt like a mini-campaign, bursting with mystery and possibilities.

Designing around Spike-Traps

When making things, once in a while you spot a pit-trap laden with spikes, and screech to a halt to think about the route ahead carefully.

Open Source RPGs

Sneaky RPG creator often trick people into thinking their books are open source by just giving a book away for free, and slapping the word ‘open’ on it (or using the ‘open’ gaming licence).

The Cost of Shared Narrative

RPGs with a shared narrative mechanic - where players and the GM both come up with interesting people, results, and situations - come with a cost.

Print it Yourself

I’ve decided against having online printing available for BIND. This may change, but here’s the thinking so far:

Consumers of BIND

I’ve rather gone off the notion of ‘collectibles’. Collectible RPG books are special because they can’t meet the demand.

Running an RPG in Real-Time, All the Time

Last year, I got excited about the idea of tracking realworld time over downtime .

One Roll Only

RPGs should avoid asking people to roll dice more than once for any result.

Subraces Should be Cultures

Referring to elves as a ‘race’ makes perfect sense. They’re clearly different from the other humanoids, have their own features, and biological properties and oddities.

Parallel Rules and BIND

I want contradictory things for BIND, so I’ve been trying to do both.

BIND's Meta History

RPG worlds need histories, so I had to write some history for BIND.

How I Made BIND's Monsters

BIND began as a D&D-reaction. “Mathematically, these rules stand some serious improvement”.

Why BIND Rules Don't Allow Players to Go for the Eyes

(a story about spreadsheet failure) I’ve considered changing BIND’s ’to-hit’ system to let players ‘go for the eyes’ (or a headshot, or otherwise decide to attempt a vitals shot), and decided against it.

New Handouts

BIND’s maps have their numbers and comments applied by its writing tool, LaTeX.

Dungeons Need More Space

The dungeon ecosystem doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think Tolkien has a fix.

No Introduction Necessary

It’s been commented that BIND has no introduction, saying ‘what is a roleplaying game?

Minified vs Minimalist Rules

D&D got a way with a lot of bad habits, because it was the only game in town.

Group Rolls

Dice can give unexpected results when groups of people roll.

Spreadsheets are Great

Whenever I’m unsure about a rule, I pull out a basic spreadsheet, and start populating numbers.

BIND's Attack Style: Aftermath

The previous post went over changing BIND’s Combat system significantly, but I’ve not been able to resolve the problems.

BIND's Attack Style

BIND is changing how attacks work, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of this trick before.

Always Say the Target Number

A player rolls the dice, and the table watches the result, like a roulette ball bouncing about.

Real Time Passing Between Games

RPG Vloggers chatting about Gygax note on real-world time-synchronization have got me thinking about really using this rule.

System Realism Matters

A hundred paces down the dark tunnel, you see dozens of goblins dancing round a fire and singing about eating anything that moves.

Fate Points in BIND

Remember that book or film where the protagonist received a nasty wound, then persevered, and won the day?

BIND's Story Point System

The Problem While I’d hope to rock up at the gaming table and just game with friends, the DM had other ideas.

The OGL is not Open

The Open Gaming Licence (OGL) does not in fact produce terribly open games, so I wish people would stop referring to such RPGs as ‘open source’.

The Open Source RPG Dream

The cynics say that we keep reinventing the wheel. They say we have too many RPGs, mostly doing the same thing, and why bother to write yet another RPG about elves and magic swords?

Weaving Stories

Classic RPG adventures suffer from chronic flaws. When PCs should to go somewhere, they don’t.

BIND is a fantasy tabletop RPG designed to solve a number of problems: