Me in 10 seconds
My name is Samuel Doebler James. I make games, play games, perform music. INTJ. 1w9.
What do I write about?
Role-playing games and story games! I’ve had quite a bit of experience running them for youngsters. Oddly, my top posts are about death, deathlessness, and violence in games for kids. I’m known for talking about stopwatch duels, open table games, diegetic advancement, helmets, trait drafts, scene-based adventures, and open strategy games. I think there’s a better way to do advantage and that perception and knowledge rolls smell bad.
I consider myself part of the Matrix Game, NSR, OSR, and FKR spaces. Whatever focuses on the world the most.
The Cauldron is the best forum for long-form discussion that sticks around more than Discord. It’s posts go directly to my RPG feed, so I’m reading what comes through often.
Check out the Index for a large categorized list of popular posts.
There are RPG bloggers that I read as well. The blogroll on the bottom-right is randomized, so just click one and see how deep that particular rabbit hole goes.
Email!
I read everything you send me. Here’s where you can reach me in long-form. Then also follow the blog via email, the last free frontier of the internet.
Check the tags on the right side of this page for whatever grabs your interest by topic. Or scroll down more to view posts by month and year. And here are my 10 most recent articles:
How do we start in the Realm? (A Mythic Bastionland luck roll to unlock the open table)
I’ve been running Mythic Bastionland as an open table game. Each session, I put out a call for players from a pool of eight to see who has availability to jump on Discord for two hours and roleplay as knights of the Realm. If I have even one player, we play. The stable of knights has grown with new players and shrunk with unfortunate endings. But the range of ages, glory, possessions, and connections is vast among the player characters. You have young ones starting out alongside old knights, some successful, some not so much. All together for an adventure…
Tell me more…What sets Mythic Bastionland apart..
This is a collection of thoughts around Mythic Bastionland. I like talking about this game. I like addressing players by their knight title instead of the name they made up. Titles have weight. Titles are slick. It’s cool too when an NPC has an evocative title that becomes their name. “That guy” or “old woman” it becomes “the woodsman” or “shawled crone”. You’re already doing this: the Seers don’t have names, do they? Part of the referee’s job is to obfuscate what comes from which myth and what is “normal set dressing.” I had something happen in nearly every hex,…
Tell me more…Mythic Vagabonds: A Campaign Framework for 4+ Players
There was a poll a few months back on the Mythic Bastionland asking how many player characters is optimal for a long-running game. And of the 27 responses, the results were pretty stark: As stated by one user: “That’s a strong consensus.” There’s a few reasons for this: But what if they weren’t heroes, but little better than squires? And what if they weren’t powerful enough to trounce every combat even if there are six of them? And what if you’re running in-person or don’t have qualms about being online with 4-6 players? Glad you asked. But here’s a solution.…
Tell me more…The Troubled Downs in Woland – A Collaborative Realm
This post is part of an ongoing collaborative Realm for Mythic Bastionland. If the Luck Roll blog is going to pull from the FKR’s “every book is a source book”, then I shall follow suit… I guess we’re getting a hexflower based on A. A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh.” I told William I wanted a sanctum and so chose the farthest hexflower from the action, but still connected to an already developed hexflower to build on established ideas. This project is VERY sparse on setting/tone/content guardrails, so having to at least connect my ideas to another’s gets me started. That meant hexflower…
Tell me more…Eliminating Session Zero with Nine Words and Swearing
Structural PC group cohesion problems BEGONE! I really like the Oath from Mythic Bastionland: These are the statements the PC knights live and die by. It’s how they move through the world. The group has instant pursuits. Do any one of these things next and something interesting is basically guaranteed to happen. It’s the equivalent of all that session-zero-nonsense (“Are we a team? What’s our goal? What do we DO?”) boiled down in three statements (of three words each, the artistry here makes me cry tears of joy). What’s your alignment? THE OATH. Why are we together? THE OATH. What…
Tell me more…Mythic Bastionland – Wait, am I illiterate?
High scripts = domain documents, ritual instructions, holy scripturesUsers of high scripts: heralds, sages, priests Low scripts = trade orders, posted signs, most writingsUsers of low scripts: merchants, guides, rulers When attempting to read for the first time, roll d6: When asking a seer for help reading, roll d6: Because what’re Medieval Times without a little illiteracy? These tables also harken back to Electric Bastionland where Luck Tables were also tiered as Rare/Uncommon/Common. Just another way to write them. Find more Mythic Bastionland greatness on the Syllabus! Looking to add recurring NPC plot threads? Check out Mythic Denizens!
Tell me more…Mythic Bastionland: Overloading the Wilderness Roll
If you should apply anything from this article, you must, like me, apologize for adding cruft to Chris’s elegant design. Shame, shame! Apologies also if you read this and find that the best idea or resource was buried somewhere in the body of the blogpost. I kept it long so as to not deliver several small sandwiches but one OVERSIZED SCOOBY-SANDWICH that’s obviously inspired by Necropraxis’s Hazard System and the Overloaded Encounter Die. Also also, I’m not your mom, but you should run Mythic Bastionland as-written before this foundational level of tinkering. And with that, let’s tinker. As it stands,…
Tell me more…Mythic Bastionland – Harvesting
When extracting goods from a corpse, plant, or quarry with sufficient tools, roll d6 to see how it goes: GOODS Find more Mythic Bastionland greatness on the Syllabus! Looking to add recurring NPC plot threads? Check out Mythic Denizens!
Tell me more…Mythic Bastionland: Knighting Ceremony
This is a simple procedure for a squire to swear the Oath and become a knight. It requires a seer to lead the ceremony and at least one witness must be present. The squire kneels as the seer gravely states each line of the oath with a small ritual to accompany it. “SEEK THE MYTHS” 1 – The oil jar falls to the ground. A bad omen. 2-3 – Some oil spills to the ground. Ambiguous. 4-6 – Oil falls into the eyes of squire. A good omen. “HONOR THE SEERS” “PROTECT THE REALM” The squire responds: “BY THESE I…
Tell me more…Everything you wanted to know about story games in 17k words, 8 actual plays, and one history video
…If you’ve heard them called social matrix games from this blog and other places, that’s fine too. Basically, I’m over bifurcating my brain to make posts for two separate audiences: the OSR/NSR/adventure game types (here) and the storygame/theater kid/writers/storyteller types (on substack). I’m both of those camps, and that “split” is something I’ve done TO MYSELF. So the quick announcement is that I’ve collapsed the substack from Story Games Sojourn to just Dreaming Dragonslayer, changing the URL and names to do so. Apologies for links that are now dead as a result. The podcast name also changed to just Dreaming…
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DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER