Category: Social science world-building

  • Cut off the head and the body will fight everyone else

    A classic aspect of fantasy adventure RPGs is faction play. One assumption of faction play is that factions will follow the logic of balance theory, in which the factions fall into two sides based on the logic of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the friend of my friend is my friend, and…

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    Networks as dungeon generators

    In my previous post, I showed how we can use social network analysis to interpret dungeon maps. When I posted it to r/osr, u/abenf asked if I could use SNA to generate dungeons. As shown here, the answer is yes. However I want to be candid that dungeon generators are a solved problem so if…

  • Pidgins and Creoles

    Last week, The Alexandrian had a post on Pidgins. The upshot is very similar to the language rules in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which is that the more similar two languages are, the more likely characters can find enough common vocabulary to crudely communicate. For instance, when I visited Norway, I had the sense…

  • Leader types

    One of the classic D&D tropes is that a gang of humanoids often includes “a leader type.” In old editions, this humanoid foreman gets a one-line description as “fights as [humanoid one increment higher by hit dice]” and in 5e they get their own page in Leomund’s Condominium of Antagonists. Back on Earth, it is…

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    Gift economies

    This post is a reaction to someone asking how to run a gift economy on r/osr. The gamist answer is to say just stick with the presumption in Player’s Handbook that there’s a Target in the Keep on the Borderlands. Modern people are very used to markets which is why D&D has always had an…