Intro: Grain of Destiny

Many DIY-RPG¹ blogs have a house rules page or document that outlines the world that creator runs games in, the tone of the games they run, or the mechanics employed in their games. Sometimes this is nothing more than another blog post—although it may still contain brilliant while other times it is a more formal endeavor that resembles something closer to a complete game. This is my house rules document and it’ll likely start to resemble the former as it comes together.

Grain of Destiny is an idea I’ve been mulling over for the better part of two years. I’ve always enjoyed designing worlds and I’ve often tinkered with rules but, as I became acquainted with the OSR and the more general DIY-RPG community that it spawned, gave me permission to think a little bigger. I want to create an interesting fictional world, fit to host grand adventures, with rules that reinforce the fiction and capture the aspects of the hobby that I want to explore with players.

In practice, a lot of material will first be presented in the blog which houses content that falls somewhere between stream-of-thought and planned essays on tabletop gaming and related areas of interest. As I think through that content, and hopefully collect some feedback on it from the community, it will likely see additional blog posts that refine or even rethink what I’ve already published. This project will be used to house the most current set of ideas in a collection more closely resembling a rule book or reference manual of sorts. Posts can be updated, but I want to keep updated minimal and leave original content in place in some way so that existing discussion of those posts continues to make sense. The project makes it more easy for anyone who cares to follow along to see the current state of the game. It will be a duplication of effort to some degree, but one I think it worthwhile.