Welcome to the Socratic Dungeon!

This is a personal blog first and foremost, one that I am currently employing as both a collection of thoughts regarding tabletop roleplaying game design, and a documentation of my tabletop games and other projects.

About Me

I can’t say I’ve been in this hobby long compared to many other people; however, I’ve certainly spent the latter half of my life quite engaged in the subject matter of TTRPG and game design as a whole. My major spheres of interest are the design philosophy of the OSR (Old School Revival/Renaissance), as well as overlapping interests in Free and Open Source software, and older science fiction and fantasy literature.

I by no means am a professional in the TTRPG scene or in the writing department; however, I aim to steadily get there and hone my craft and skills to the best of my ability.

Game Design Tenets

There is a small but important number of design tenets which I follow to one degree or another.
While not an expert in the OSR, I generally base my tenets on that school of thought.

  1. Rulings over rules
  2. Character creation should be quick and easy
  3. Combat is lethal and has stakes
  4. Depth over complexity
  5. Emergent story over explicit story
  6. Player skill over character ability
  7. Use of procedures, DM tools, and useful tables

I think seven is a good number of core tenets, though this is always bound to change, and I could imagine probably a lot more I follow explicitly or subconsciously—but these represent a solid core foundation.