Blog Posts

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. My reasons sit below, but expect lots of boring numbers. You have been warned. (or just skip to the conclusions)

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New Handouts

BIND’s maps have their numbers and comments applied by its writing tool, LaTeX. This makes handouts really easy, because the same map can present different layers to different people.

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Dungeons Need More Space

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

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No Introduction Necessary

It’s been commented that BIND has no introduction, saying ‘what is a roleplaying game?’, and I don’t think it needs one.

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Minified vs Minimalist Rules

Tiny rulebooks are all the rage, and it’s great. The game of go has (arguably) 3 rules. Chess has a dozen rules. Monopoly has that little booklet-thing which nobody reads. RPGs often have 400 pages of rules without counting an adventure module, and often lack proper indexing. This hobby is mad, and the backlash against that madness feels refreshing.

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Spreadsheets are Great

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

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Always Say the Target Number

A player rolls the dice, and the table watches the result, like a roulette ball bouncing about. Rothgar has a +4 to make the jump, but the chasm demands a Target Number (TN) of 12.

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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. In case you haven’t heard the idea - Gygax demanded that every day which passes in the real-world, one day passes in the game. The troupe starts and ends their games somewhere safe, like a tavern in town.

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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.

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I Want Realistic Dragons

Weighing into an ancient (or at least senile) fantasy debate, I’d like to go back a step. The debate usually goes like this:

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