Mediums and Messages

Goblin Digest - February 25

Thomas Rowlandson. The Doctor's Dream from The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. 1813.

This month's question: what exactly counts as a GLoGpost? Generally, I am of the mind that definitions like this are only briefly useful - within a single conversation. As soon as they are set in stone they turn into gatekeeping. For the purposes of our conversation, let's say:

As ever, I am trying on categories for a potential GLoGgies 2025. The posts listed are ones that jumped out at me in my end-of-the-month review of my bookmarks and don't include my own work. Posts marked with an asterisk are loose fits for their category.

Edit: I totally forgot that Glorious Dungeon Racing came out this month. I've added it below.

Gameable

A whole GLoGhack! At the risk of being reductive, I'd generalize the tone here as "what if Umberto Eco wrote Dark Souls?" Lovely prose throughout.

A whole setting! Not just a 1:1 adaptation, SaltyGoo has mapped the highlights from BG1 to a Hot Springs Island style hexcrawl, filling out missing details with tasteful inclusions from other Sword Coast sources and supporting them with a detailed encounter generator.

Another whole GLoGhack! This one has comprehensive rules for cars, a sick experience system that cares about placing in races, and some nice GM support tools.

Theory

I am on the record as being critical of a big list of existing mechanics as an approach to theory, but description is interpretation and I respect the scope of this project.

Technically, a functional set of setting rule that are somewhere between Gameable and Fluff, but really I am struck by the remarks on character differentiation and how it ought to play out at the table that lead this post off.

Class

An assassin who once got away with killing someone important. "Luck Points" here are such an deft way of folding story focus into an OSR style environment. The player is encouraged to lean into the desperate; the GM, to give them opportunities to do so.

A poem disguised as an assassin. Beautifully written and inspires me to try to make content to match.

Some of the best GLoG classes to me read as little pieces of speculative fiction. If this person is out there, what does that mean about the world they live in? Like looking into a setting through a keyhole.

Fluffpost

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