Archstone Press

  • Lonely Fun in the NSR

    When I GM, I love playing and running games in the style of the New School Revolution, with simple systems focused on rulings over rules, player skill over character skill, quick character creation, etc. My main group of players, however, couldn’t get invested in the NSR games I tried to introduce to them, and always…

  • We’re Federated!

    Just a short update to let you all know that the Archstone Press blog is now available on the Fediverse! This means you can follow our blog from any federated social media, such as Mastodon. To follow the entire blog, you can follow @archstonepress.com. You can also follow our two members individually to view only…

  • Creating Your First Sandbox

    As promised in Running Your First Sandbox, this blog post will provide a demonstration of creating a sandbox using the guidelines outlined in the previous post. The sandbox we will be creating here is very simple, meant to be used for the very first session of a campaign. Our goal will be to create a…

  • Smoke in the Salt Pines

    Our first ever adventure, Smoke in the Salt Pines, is now available on our Patreon and on Itch.io! Thick, dark mist winds between tall black pines. The trees creek and bend overhead, their tops mingling in the breeze and sending shivers across the entire wood. Everywhere are small sounds, hidden in the whisper of the…

  • Descriptive, Not Prescriptive

    In keeping with Brandon’s current topic of sandbox gaming, and in light of our first adventure’s imminent release, I felt it important to volunteer what I have learned about the writing process. For me, sandbox gaming and a prewritten adventure can sometimes seem to be at odds with one another. How can a GM provide…

  • Running Your First Sandbox

    This post is the third in a series of posts on sandbox play in TTRPGs. The first article is on why I love to play sandbox games, and the second is on why I love running them. You don’t need to read them to understand this article, but they do provide some context. Running a…

  • Why Run a Sandbox?

    This post is the second in a series of posts on sandbox play in TTRPGs. The first post, on why I love playing in sandbox games, can be read here, but doesn’t need to be read to understand this one. The past few TTRPG campaigns I’ve run have been sandboxes. I love playing in sandbox…

  • Playing in the Sandbox

    One of the first things I was told when introduced to tabletop roleplaying games was: “you can do anything”. Like many people introduced to TTRPGs over the past decade, I came to tabletop RPGs after many years of playing video game RPGs. To someone who had only ever played video games, the idea of a…

  • Accidentally Making a Game

    The Years of Adventure did not always have a name, let alone all of the systems, character options, appendices, and tools for players and GMs to explore. It began, as many projects in tabletop gaming do, as a means to fill a gap that we identified in our weekly games. Brandon was running a Worlds…

  • Introducing: The Years of Adventure

    The Years of Adventure is a tabletop roleplaying game that takes characters across lifetimes as they learn, adventure, live, rule, and leave a legacy throughout the years. Pivotal moments in this game often come down to seconds and minutes, but the weeks and years leading up to those moments are just as important. In long…