DIY RPG: Zak Smith

Reading around the various blogs I can find, it turns out that there are some seriously fun creative people doing all sorts of good things out there. They seem mostly to have started with what might be called the OSR, but actually a much better group name has been suggested by the artists and writer Zak Smith among others - DIY RPG. Mostly, these are independent designers who start with D&D and then work their way outwards from there, and Zak is one of the most inventive of the bunch. He and his gaming group took a massive amount of internet flak over several years, for no reason that I can understand, and that seems petty and vindictive to me.

The post I am making now isn't only a way to support what he has been doing, but also to bring his work to the attention of anyone who might be reading this blog of mine. My main intention has been to use this as a way of cataloguing my play sessions for myself, and anyone else who likes reading it can see what we are doing. However, now that I am getting more into the groove again, I'm finding a lot of material out there that looks really good, so I am occasionally going to riff off that with posts like the present one. So here are several reasons to look at Zak's work:

1: his ideas for what matters when evaluating a city for role-playing. This is a really good checklist of what makes for imaginative play in an urban game environment. It's also the basis for his own work on Vornheim:

2: an article blog entry on The Caverns of Thracia that shows what Zak thinks should be the components of a good dungeon. The entry is entitled Why Caverns of Thracia is The Best Published Dungeon And Shouldn't Be. He certainly puts effort into it himself:


3: a list of FREE! inventive scenarios and other materials here.

4: a list of random tables.

5: some random generators.

6: how to add images of locations/creatures/people/whatever to a map or drawing.

7: a one-page dungeon location.

8: a post about the one-page dungeon contest that includes an example.

9: hex crawl locations for a desert place.

10: a posting inspired by someone coming up with a subway-style map of the roads of the Roman Empire.

11: a reasonably recent list (at time of posting) of other folks doing inventive things.

I wish had half this amount of creative energy, and I am well jealous of Zak's artistic talent. And yes, I did read through everything on his blog!

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