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Ben Torell

@bentorell.com

Tabletop enthusiast and general giga-nerd. TTRPG blog: https://gordianblade.com/ Itch Store: https://gordianblade.itch.io/

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31.07.2023
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Latest posts by Ben Torell @bentorell.com

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The 46er - February 2026 It's been a great month for blogging! The Bloggies are in full swing, with voting about to begin. There's been many great posts - I've curated a selection of...

It's the middle of February, so that means it's time for another edition of my newsletter, featuring a roundup of interesting OSR blog posts, a look at what I've been reading, and what video games and RPGs I've spent my time on this month.

table46.bearblog.dev/the-46er-feb...

#rpg #osr #nsr #posr

16.02.2026 03:02 ๐Ÿ‘ 12 ๐Ÿ” 6 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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If You Haven't Tried Group-Based Initiative, You're Missing Out Man, Chrono Trigger is rad as hell. I'm not a JRPG connoisseur, but it's definitely my favorite of the genre by far. Nothing from my childhood will ever be cooler than seeing the characters in that ga...

As a follow-up to my previous #TTRPG blog post about forecasting enemy intents, I go into detail about why and how you should consider running group-based initiative: gordianblade.com/if-you-haven...

28.01.2026 17:29 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Reveal Enemy Intents; Or, How I Run RPG Combats Like Slay The Spire TL;DR: Tell your players what the enemies are about to do, let them respond to those threats with good plans as a group, and deliver on threats that were not mitigated. In the hit 2019 rogue-like dec...

Dusting off the blog to write about forecasting threats in #TTRPG combat and running group-based initiative: gordianblade.com/reveal-enemy...

25.01.2026 04:12 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

Yeah, I've run it before and am very happy with the spins that I've put on things. The base adventure needs some work, but once you do that work it runs great

13.01.2026 14:02 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Ypsilon 14 and Willowby Hall. Sticking to the classics that I know reasonably well to keep the number of variables to a minimum

13.01.2026 13:39 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Looking forward to running Mothership and Shadowdark at Dice + Diversions in Atlanta in a couple of weeks! First time running games at a con so it should be a good time. My games are both sold out!

13.01.2026 13:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
A D&D-style dungeon map drawn on dot-grid paper surrounded by three different Japanese pens used to draw it.

A D&D-style dungeon map drawn on dot-grid paper surrounded by three different Japanese pens used to draw it.

My beautiful wife got me a variety pack of pens from JetPens for Christmas and I'm having fun playing with them today, drawing a familiar-looking map from memory. Pretty happy with how this turned out! Using a gray highlighter for shading is really fun.

11.01.2026 19:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems like there's an underlying assumption that using OBS isn't "real" video production, whereas using a Tricaster is more "real" somehow. And yet, here we see a professional broadcast using OBS. Does that delegitimize the broadcast, or legitimize OBS?

02.12.2025 17:40 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Counterpoint: isn't it cool that a sophisticated tool used by big broadcast production is as widely available to everyone, including Twitch streamers?

02.12.2025 01:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 8 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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LANCER: The Demon of Dogwater Gulch by Gordian Blade A LANCER RPG one-shot adventure module for 3-5 pilots

My #Lancer #ttrpg one-shot adventure, The Demon of Dogwater Gulch, is on sale today for 50% as part of the Itch.io Creator Day sale! Check it out here for an all-time low price: gordianblade.itch.io/the-demon-of...

28.11.2025 18:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 5 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

hundred dollar idea: gachapon machine that gives you new d&d characters

12.10.2025 18:48 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Absolute cinema this morning with Telegram spammers

20.06.2025 14:11 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Printable Trait and Role Cards for FIST: Ultra by Gordian Blade Printable cards for quick and easy FIST: Ultra character creation

Just uploaded a fun #ttrpg side project: Printable Trait and Role cards for FIST: Ultra by @claymorerpgs.bsky.social:

gordianblade.itch.io/fist-ultra-p...

These cards help my players make new characters in a snap, as easy as drawing 1 Role and 2 Trait cards and you're good to go!

10.06.2025 14:01 ๐Ÿ‘ 6 ๐Ÿ” 2 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Ugh Iโ€™m getting so many of these

22.04.2025 19:24 ๐Ÿ‘ 11047 ๐Ÿ” 1751 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 136 ๐Ÿ“Œ 61

To be fair, I feel like a lot of pamphlet adventures treat the inside as a spread across all three panels, or a partial spread across two panels

21.04.2025 20:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

So uhhhhhhh anybody know a good wedding planner around Atlanta

11.04.2025 00:42 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

My vote: Stumpsville for Mausritter. The game has an evocative theme and pitch, a very quick teach, snappy chargen, and Stumpsville is a straightforward, quick adventure that hits all the high notes and leaves open the possibility of future play if people like it.

17.03.2025 14:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

#TTRPG GMs: Suppose you had 2 hours to run an adventure for a group of mostly-new players. What system and adventure do you run?

17.03.2025 13:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 4 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Man I hope we get a full-power starting XI on Sunday, that will be hype as hell

14.03.2025 17:59 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

๐Ÿ‘€๐Ÿ‘€๐Ÿ‘€

14.03.2025 17:58 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Startpage - Private Search Engine. No Tracking. No Search History. Search and browse the internet without being tracked or targeted. Startpage is the world's most private search engine. Use Startpage to protect your personal data.

I've been using StartPage.com lately and have been more impressed with its search results than DuckDuckGo and Brave.

06.03.2025 12:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Ok, doodling on a tablet is very fun...

01.03.2025 12:23 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Macrodata refinement #severance

27.02.2025 20:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 4605 ๐Ÿ” 1290 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 18 ๐Ÿ“Œ 24

Haha, I'm not gonna turn my upse up at it. I have the Affinity suite for now, and plan to use DaVinci Resolve if I need to do more video work. I think the main thing I want to find is a good PDF editor.

28.02.2025 15:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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28.02.2025 15:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I think I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to cancel my Adobe subscription.

28.02.2025 15:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

#OSR #TTRPG Folks: What modules would you say nail both vibes (evocative, imaginative, inspiring) and usability (concise, well-structured, easy to reference)?

I'll start: Valley of Flowers has immaculate tone and is packed with incredible ideas while being well-written and designed. S-tier module!

27.02.2025 15:52 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Algorithms are breaking how we think
Algorithms are breaking how we think YouTube video by Technology Connections

Great video from @techconnectify.bsky.social about pushing back against algorithmic content curation. It's definitely been something I've bee feeling more strongly lately, moving back towards blogs and RSS instead of relying on big tech to do it all for me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJp...

23.02.2025 18:07 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Took a look at SearXng but a lot of the public instances seem slow and incomplete. I'll try StartPage for a bit and see how that goes instead.

23.02.2025 17:23 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Look, I'm super in favor of de-Googling, and I've been using alternative search engines like Duck Duck Go and Brave through Firefox for a while, but... they are still not as good as Google as a search engine. Too many times I have to swap to Google to get a result the others won't give me.

20.02.2025 15:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0