Exploding dice: Make combat faster and more exciting with this one simple house rule

Word up my dice squirrels. Todays tip is short and sweet, like a caramel coated Gimli son of Gloin.

A common complaint about crunchy tactical combat games like 5e and Pathfinder is that battles can become a slog.

There are a number of things that you can do about this, such as using more interesting situations for combat encounters, lowering everyone's HP, unbalancing the encounters, and telegraphing monster attacks. But I also have a neat little house rule I use that's really simple to incorporate.

Damage dice explode, for everyone

When you roll the highest number in a given dice for damage or healing, you get to roll another dice of equal value. This stacks, meaning every time you roll max damage, you roll another die, potentially indefinitely.

This adds an element of unpredictability to combats, and it's a more satisfying critical hit than the traditional natural 20 approach. It also means that it's technically possible, though very unlikely to one shot something big and hairy, with unlimited possible exploding dice.

In fact, we also use the traditional house rule that a natural 20 equates to max damage, this compliments my rule because max damage neatly triggers the exploding dice house rule too.

Nothing beats the moment a player rolls an exploding die, then another, then another - the whole table erupts. And just when they think they've peaked, BOOM, another max roll! No one stays in their seat when that happens. But of course, the dice gods giveth and taketh away. The first time a goblin crits and it suddenly snowballs into a knock down? That’s when the real fear sets in.

There's another benefit too, it further differentiates the weapons in a satisfying way. Big weapons with bigger dice do more damage on average, but smaller weapons like a dagger are more swingy because they have more chance of an explosion, not only is this really thematic and satisfying, it also keeps these smaller weapons very relevant.

Conclusion

And that's it, I did tell you it was simple! Give it a go, I think you'll love the effect, and be sure to tell me how it went!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

 

What 'Return of the Jedi' Teaches Us About OSR Game Balance

“Master Luke, you're standing on the…”

“I will not give up my favourite decoration” Jabba interjects in booming Huttese “I like Captain Solo where he is…”

With lightning speed, the force flares through Luke’s outstretched fingers, ripping the blaster from the guards holster into his grasp.

But not quick enough to beat the wet thump of Jabba’s fist slamming down upon the booby trapped floor, sending Luke tumbling into the Rancor’s pit, whilst loosing impotent laser bolts into the ceiling with a loud pew pew!

Ahoy m’hearties, today's post is a lesson on game balance brought to us by 1983’s Return of the Jedi in the way that Luke battles and defeats Jabba’s pet Rancor (pfft, spoilers!). What’s that you say? Last weeks post was about game balance too? Well, yeah, loosely, but it’s my blog and I go where the wind takes me, damnit!

OK, let’s get this show on the road. I want to talk about two versions of the Luke vs Rancor encounter in the context of a TTRPG, in an imaginary one, the entire encounter has all been perfectly balanced. The result is that without any need to think outside his character sheet, Luke and the Rancor square up against each other, going blow for blow, taking it in turns to roll to hit and damage until Luke wins, having used all his spell slots. There's simply no requirement here for Luke to think creatively about the situation.

Let’s just admit it, shall we? We’ve all experienced this fight before at the table, and it was boring for everyone involved.

I know some of you are going to say that there’s nothing stopping players being creative and spicing it up, but the point I want to underline here is that there’s nothing forcing them too either.

Spoilers for Return of the Jedi!

In the true version however, there's no balance - Luke is in a situation that is practically hopeless… yet he triumphs.

Now, ya’ll just settle yourselves down a moment, because I'm going to skip ahead to the part just after the Rancor savagely eats the Gamorean Guard. This moment highlights the deadliness of the encounter to Luke, he knows there's no chance of a fair fight…

Luke:- I grab a large bone off the ground to defend myself with.

GM:- Confronted by this enormous slavering beast, the bone feels pathetic in your grip. The Rancor reaches down and grapples you, lifting you up with one powerful taloned hand that wraps around your waist. You can smell the stench of rotten flesh as you're elevated towards its gaping maw.

Luke:- As it brings me level to it's face, I want to force the bone into its mouth, wedging it open.

GM:- The Rancor roars in frustration, flailing, it drops you to the ground.

Luke:- Is there anywhere I can hide?

GM:- There's a crevasse in the cave wall that you can squeeze into, but you'll be trapped.

Luke:- I roll into it.

GM:- OK, and from your new vantage peering between the Rancor’s legs, you can see a metal door with an electronic lock next to it. It looks like an exit! Before you can act though, with a sickening crunch the bone in the Rancor’s mouth snaps. Bending down, it reaches a clawed hand towards you.

Luke:- Is there anything down here with me I can use to hit the hand with?

GM:- There are some hand sized rocks, and bits of rubble.

Luke:- I grab a rock and smash it down on the Rancor’s finger.

GM:- The Rancor pulls it's hand away in pain, throwing it's head back in rage and let's out a roar.

Luke:- Great, I roll out from the crevasse, and whilst the Rancor is roaring, I want to run between it's legs towards that door and punch the switch to get out.

GM:- Great plan, you sprint across the cave and hit the door release, unfortunately it opens to reveal a secondary gate, metal and grated, the jeering presence of the Rancor trainers beyond push you back. Meanwhile, the Rancor is making it’s way over, crouching beneath the portcullis as it lumbers towards you.

Luke:- How does that portcullis work? Could it crush the Rancor?

GM:- Definitely! You see it’s controls on the wall some 15’ away.

Luke:- Whilst the Rancor is under the portcullis, I grab another rock and use the Force to throw it at that switch.

GM:- Great, roll to hit with advantage…

What Should we Learn from this?

There’s lessons here for GM and player alike:

Firstly, if we accept that balanced encounters lean into being predictable (IE the players expect that they’re “meant” to win) then it’s also clear that this can reduce the interaction of the encounter to simply engaging with the base mechanics of the game. How many times have you heard a player just say “I want to hit him with my sword…” when this is the bulk of an encounter - you know that there’s magic missing.

Secondly, if your players have no expectation of balanced encounters, they will be forced to creatively engage with the situation to ensure survival. The GM should be very open to this creativity, and be prepared to bypass strict mechanisms and favour rulings over rules.

Thirdly, as a player, you should ask tonnes of questions, knowledge is king, so don't be afraid to prompt the narrative that you want to hear from the GM. This behaviour turns passive players into active proponents of the games narrative direction.

Fourthly, As GM, do your best to describe the scene honestly, but don't try to solve the problem for the players. Instead, you should be rooting for the player, give them every chance to succeed with each feasible suggestion they present.

As my fellow blogger, Arthur Brill, writes in The Fields We Know in his post on game balance with (it must be said) far more eloquence and gravitas than I could command:

“Much more important than worrying about creating "balanced" encounters is designing encounters in such a way that players have the ability to size up the difficulty of a potential fight so they know whether to engage or to find another approach. (Run away, diplomacy, stealth, surprise, etc...)

. . .

Information trumps power. Van Helsing (the book character, not the movie version) does not defeat Dracula because he is more powerful than him. He defeats Dracula because he understands both the vampire's power and weakness.”

Thanks Arthur.

This philosophy is what lays at the heart of great OSR gameplay. The thrill comes from player ingenuity, not predetermined balance.

Conclusion

OK, I can hear you screaming that you’ve got the point. I promise, I’ll stop writing about game balance for a bit, next week I’ll write about a cool homebrew I use. Honest.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

 

Deadly, Not Frustrating: Keeping OSR TTRPGs Fun & Fair

A common reason I hear for folks being turned off from OSR games is their perceived or real deadliness. Most folks getting into the TTRPG hobby these days are the children of Matt Mercer, and following Critical Role as their primary example, so it’s natural they're sold on the idea that TTRPGs are supposed to be a long interactive story with traditional structure, and deep and satisfying character arcs.

When they hear about OSR games and start to understand their deadliness, they get to thinking: “How can I get invested into the story of a character if they die so frequently? This sounds terrible”.

I'm not going to try to tell them that they're wrong, that would be ridiculous, their fun is as legitimate as anyone’s. But I do want to see if I can open a new door for them.

So that got me to thinking, can the OSR come meet this new generation of players in the middle, to make sure that the game is not frustrating and remains a fair and enjoyable experience for them?

Of course it can. I have thoughts on the matter.

How Players Can stay alive in the OSR

My first suggestion is to the players

From the perspective of an OSR player looking in, games like 5e prescribe your characters a set of abilities and optimised choices. The gameplay focuses on providing balanced encounters, and the rules come with a plethora of elements (open Death Save rolls) and abilities (Healing Word) to ensure that player death is highly improbable. The designers want you to buy their long, and event driven story campaigns, and those can easily fall apart narratively if characters start dying.

Contrasting this, the OSR swings the opposite way. Generally speaking any notion of balance or pre-game solutionising is thrown out the window, and cheap ranged spells that you can fire off to heal people and get them back on their feet whilst still performing your main action are typically non existent. These games tend to lean more towards sandbox style play, which means that character death doesn’t have to be woven awkwardly into some pre existing story, because there is no pre existing story.

So the first thing you have to do as a new OSR player is adjust your playstyle. The answer to whatever encounter is in front of you is not on your character sheet. Instead the onus is now on you to use your personal ingenuity to try to shift the dynamics of whatever threat is in front of you, to push the odds in your favour before you engage.

What do I mean? I mean pay close attention to the descriptions given out by the GM, ask questions, fully engage your imagination and start dreaming up wild solutions, ask questions, make a point of being an active participant in the games narrative - ask more questions! Seriously, ask your GM about the situation to gain better understanding, suggest possible additional elements in the world that you can use to form part of your solution.

A good GM should be gratefully receptive to this - they should be rooting for you after all, and when you ask questions it gives the GM opportunity to fill in the gaps of your knowledge!

Of course, it should go without saying - if all else fails, be prepared to run away and fight another day.

Best GM practices To Ensure a Fair Game

Telegraph danger

Be liberal with information, even meta information about the dangers ahead. This will avoid those foul tasting “gotcha moments”. Remember, you are the player character’s eyes and ears in this world, it is unfair to expect the players themselves to be able to act in their best interest if they are unaware of of things that their characters would be very aware of.

For example, everyone in town knows about the dangers of the swamp at night, so the townsfolk stay clear. When you are explaining this to the players, why not show them the swamp random encounter table so they understand exactly what can happen? It would be common knowledge that the swamp was full of giant crocodiles and that there are ghostly lights in the water that try to lure you into peril. Also, lets not forget about the rumours of a nasty old lady who sets traps and kidnaps lost folks too.

Kill your darlings

You know that encounter that you think is going to be epic and you've been really looking forward to bringing it to the table? You need to be able to take joy in allowing the players to come up with ways to circumvent it entirely. Encourage this line of thinking, and when you sense that they’re trying to do this, make sure you equip your players with everything they would know in order to complete their strategy.

The best way to stay alive in the OSR is to play smart. Smart players don’t pick fights when the odds are against them, instead they find another way. Let them, that’s your side of the deal.

Also, keep that encounter on the back burner. The players may have circumvented it this time, but there’s probably going to be another opportunity to recycle it later on. Of course, you should let them avoid it again if they can!

Mothership: Telegraph monster attacks

I wrote a piece a couple of months back. Ostensibly it was about Mothership combat, but there’s this nifty GM style that the game promotes which really helps. Applied more generally to the OSR, it would look like this:

When a combat encounter is potentially devastating, at the start of every round of that combat, tell the players quite openly what the monster is going to attempt to do.

Firstly, this removes any gotcha’s, which is a good thing. Secondly, this creates an exciting feeling of existential dread and panic in the players, knowing what fate lays just ahead of them. Thirdly, it gives the players opportunity to play smart and change the future. Circumvent it, dodge it, whatever verb you like :)

Honestly, this lands a hell of a lot better than the anti climax of just smashing your players into dust out of nowhere.

GOZR: Death or Debasement

Did you catch my piece on GOZR perchance? It’s another OSR game, but it has a rather clever rule. JV West calls it “Death or Debasement”, and when your character would die, you as a player get to make a choice:

1. Death. You can accept that the character has died and get a bonus to the stats of your next character.

2. Debasement. You can say that your character survived on 1HP, however his stats have been permanently degraded in some way that does not break verisimilitude.

It’s cool, because as a player, only you know if you’re ready to draw a line under a characters career or not, and this empowers you to do so. However, it’s not a free pass, taking a hit to stats is a narratively satisfying major setback. Possibly even more so than death would be.

If I was to port this to something like Shadowdark, I might say that the consequence for Debasement is that you drop a level. That feels good to me, but you could go with all sorts, so figure it out with your players.

Conclusion

Alrighty, that’ll do pig. Let me know if I’ve managed to convince you. Also, lemme know if you think of anything else I’ve missed. If it’s good, I’ll add it to this article.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

 

The Rusted Colossus: 01 | Concept, Structure, and WIP Cover Art

Oh hi there, fancy seeing you here…

I’m deep in the guts of my latest project: The Rusted Colossus, a GOZR one-shot adventure. Planning to publish it—probably as a zine, definitely as a PDF.

I figured that some of you folks might be interested in self publishing your own content too, so I’m gonna do a little irregular series on the journey documenting all my missteps for educational and entertainment purposes.

Also, if you have experience of this, please get in touch if you have any advice!

Concept

I knew upfront that I wanted to do a one shot, and design it with GOZR in mind. I really like GOZR, but I do think it’s popularity suffers from a lack of published adventures which is something I can help with, and in terms of project size — doing a one shot seems much more achievable than trying to design an Event Based Campaign or a Sandbox (Besides, GOZR itself has a pretty good sandbox generation kit in it’s own rules that’s ready to go).

Armed with this knowledge, I brainstormed a few quick ideas brazenly inspired by a lifetime of consumed nerd culture and came up with 5 basic concepts:

1. The Shattered Gozspire – A broken tower of ancient Gozr technology pulses with unstable energy.

2. Flesh Carnival of the Ooze King – A living fairground of writhing meat and grotesque amusements.

3. The Wyrm That Burrows the Sky – A sky-eating mega-worm carves a tunnel through reality.

4. The Rusted Colossus – A giant, dead machine-being lies half-buried in the wastes.

5. The Halls of the Forgotten Gozr – A tomb-city of long-lost Gozr elders, now ghostly echoes.

Of these, the Rusted Colossus spoke to me the most, I love me a big robot, I do. I could picture this giant mech from the before times being uncovered by the shifting sands of the Ghost Dunes, with the pilot still alive but twisted inside. Why is the Mech there? Who is the pilot? What does he want? Juicy.

Structure

A dungeon is the perfect setting for a one-shot. But in TTRPG terms, a "dungeon" doesn’t have to be stone walls and torch-lit corridors. It’s just a closed adventure space that says, “This is where the action happens”.

But what type of dungeon? Well, it’s a one shot, so I don’t want anything large, or complicated that would hinder the completion of the adventure in one session. That rules out a Megadungeon then!

I decided to do a bit of research and ended up reminding myself of the Five Room Dungeon by roleplayingtips as well discovering the Dungeon Checklist by Goblin Punch. Both of which have helped me to think about how the dungeon breaks down into creamy chunks. I’ll start covering the specifics of those in a later post, but for now, the overview:

Five Room Dungeon

The 5RD says that your one shot dungeon should contain five rooms (o, rly?!) and should follow the narrative story structure of the hero’s journey, with each room representing a step on that path:

1. A Guardian - The reason no one already cleared this dungeon out. Often a combat, but not neccesarily.

2. A Puzzle

3. A Setback - Usually a trick or a trap that forces a strategic adjustment

4. The climax - Typically your BBEG, but not necessarily a combat.

5. A Reward, or Plot Twist

You don’t have to approach these in this set order, and you don’t have to approach these as a linear path either. Nor do you have to treat these 5 rooms as literally 5 rooms, rather as five zones? Does that make sense?

Dungeon Checklist

Goblin Punch’s checklist here is pretty detailed, so I’d encourage you to check it out yourself for deep details. Here it is, cross examined against the 5RD framework:

1. Something to steal - This straddles the idea of “a reward” from the 5rd.

2. Something to be killed - The “guardian” from 5RD, and any other baddies would seem to fit this.

3. Something to kill you - A difficult combat encounter or trap, I think this is covered by the BBEG in “the climax” and potentially the “plot twist”.

4. Different paths - Interesting one for a 5RD, the idea is that the players experience the full five zones, so I’ll need to consider how to make the path the PCs take have actual consequences.

5. Someone to talk to - I think this could be covered twice, with the “guardian” and “the climax” with the BBEG, with both allowing combat to be avoided.

6. Something to experiment with - This would work with the “puzzle” room.

7. Something the players probably won’t find - This exists outside the 5RD structure I think, but I do quite like the idea of tucking a hidden secret in there that only the most cunning players will find for some extra reward.

The Front Cover

Wow, that was some hard thinking. Who’s up for some pretty pictures?

My vision for the front cover is to provide support to the adventure hook, so an illustration from the POV of the PCs with the Colossus looming over them from the distance, half covered by the Ghost Dunes. I love JV West’s evocative verse at the start of GOZR too, and I had to do something similar, handwritten and raw.

One problem though: I’m not a particularly gifted artist, but it’s not for a lack of enthusiasm or enjoyment :) My process here was to sketch out some stuff in pencil drawing from references, like carefully posed toy robots, and Battletech and Gundam art for details. Unfortunately my neuro-spicey super powers do not extend to being able to see and hold mentally generated images in my minds eye with sustainable clarity, which definitely puts a crimp on my artistic aspirations!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, make sketches from references for the individual elements on different pieces of paper, pen over them with black POSCAs, then scan them into my PC. From there, pull them into a super old version of photoshop as individual layers, adjust the thresholds to restrict the image to pure black and white, delete the white and add the colour. Things like the hand-written text can be coloured, stroked, drop shadowed, resized, and repositioned too which is super helpful.

These are my penned over sketches:

And here’s a low res couple of photos of my monitor showing how the front cover is looking right now. I’m trying to decide if the Gooz in the foreground should have red or white highlights. I’m leaning towards red, what do you think?

The other thing I did was reach out to JV West and ask him about his 3rd party license for GOZR, which he’s kindly directed me towards. Following the terms of the license lets me put that cool little badge in the bottom corner of the work, and lends the work a degree of credibility.

Also, I think it’s polite right? To let the original creator know what you’re doing and get their blessing?

Conclusion

Phew, long one this. Sorry about that, I normally like to keep it concise. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, you’d be doing me a massive favour if you could share this post on your socials - see if we can build up a bit of hype, and keep me motivated to continue through engagement!

I’ll be posting another one of these as and when I’ve got something to report, so the posting schedule will exist outside the usual weekly cadence of posts.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this and want to make sure that you don’t miss any future updates, maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

 

Tension on a Timer: How Progress Clocks Keep Your Game Exciting

Word up my homes.

Today we’re going to talk about “Progress Clocks”. I think these were first introduced by John Harper with Blades in the Dark. (Correction 2025-03-12 I'm reliably informed that they were introduced first in Apocalypse World!) They weren’t the first solution to the particular problems they address, but I do think that they’re perhaps the most elegant.

You’ll understand in a bit.

Why Use a Progress Clock?

You’ve all felt that, right? That anticlimactic feeling that comes from presenting your players this mountain to climb, only for them to simply roll Athletics and pass. “Well done, you’re at the top, well that was dull”. Extreme example I know, but I’m trying to illustrate a point here :)

Experienced GMs might have other techniques for circumventing this problem, but Progress Clocks are for turning a single mechanical success or failure event into something that matches its theme. They’re for showing players exactly what the stakes are, and for managing their expectations regarding how they’re currently performing.

They prevent a couple of failed rolls from completely derailing the players’ current plan.

How does a Progress Clock work?

You draw a circle, and you divide it into a number of pizza slices. 3-6 slices is common, but you can go higher or lower to taste.

You then label that circle with the event that WILL happen once the clock is filled in, and you put it out in front of the players so that they understand what’s at stake.

Then as relevant in game activities take place, you colour in those pizza slices, representing the final event drawing closer. Depending on the sheer influence of the activity that has happened, you may wish to fill in more than one slice. You should also be open to the idea of filling in the entire clock in one go if the situation justifies it (or even disregarding the clock entirely) - You might have thought that something is quite big and complex and worthy of 8 slices, but your players might come up with something that deals with it in one swoop. You’ll know when it happens, don’t impede this.

I should note, it’s not just in game activity that might fill a clock, it might literally represent the passage of time itself.

When do you use a Progress Clock?

You know when you’re running a game and the players want to do something, you might call for a check, and if they succeed, happy days? Well, Progress Clocks are for when the action is too big or significant that it’s success or failure should fall down to a single mechanical event like a dice roll.

Likewise, imagine your players trying to break someone out of jail and there’s this really cool stealth session. Unfortunately they just failed a stealth roll and tripped over in front of a guard, so now the guards are alerted to their presence, and unless you the entire place to come down upon them over a simple misstep, you’ve got to tie yourself in narrative knots trying to justify why the first guard hasn’t just raised the alarm.

Or imagine if your players are trying to accomplish something before this other thing that they cannot affect happens. You might have two clocks here, one for the players progress and one for the other event.

What are the Types of Progress Clock?

Ticking Bomb (or even it’s inverse)

The Ticking Bomb Progress Clock represents how long until something terrible happens. In that time, they need to find a way to circumvent the problem or to prepare for it. This is the classic heist Progress Clock, representing how many mess ups PCs can make before the guards are alerted - in the meantime the PCs want to be in and out.

Competing

Competing Progress Clocks are used to show the progress of two separate events that do not influence each other. For example, the PCs might be trying to evacuate the village in the valley before the Dam breaks. The PCs might advance their clock by sounding the alarms, and guiding people across the bridge, and the Dam’s clock might advance as you roll a check to see if the crack in the damn wall is growing.

Tug of War

Possibly the most complicated to explain, there are two possible event outcomes, and you don’t start these clocks empty. Tug of War Progress Clocks represent two outcomes that DO influence each other. So if the PCs were running away from a monster, as the PCs succeeded in their checks they might fill the clock, and as they fail, then the clock empties. The outcomes in this case would be either a successful escape, or the Monster catching up to them.

Multiple

Not technically a type of clock, but there’s no reason why you can’t have a string of clocks together to accomplish a bigger thing. For example, if we go back to that heist example - The big picture might be “steal the gemstone” but you might present the players with the following clocks (again, allowing them to circumvent any that they reasonably find a work around for):

1. Deal with the guards

2. Make a route inside

3. Get past the traps

4. Evade the security investigating the alarm

5. Get back to the hideout

Conclusion

Nice, hopefully that makes sense to you. If you could use more information, checkout Sly Flourish’s video for extra guidance, or reach out to me on Bluesky.

By the way, I’m currently making a one shot adventure for GOZR called The Rusted Colossus, about a giant old mech that’s been uncovered in the desert. I’m planning on referencing this post, so that if people need pointers on Progress Clocks, they’ve got them. If you’ve come from there - this is time travel. Hello future people! I hope my adventure came out well :)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.