Very Belatedly, The Monster Overhaul Is The Best Damned ‘Monster Manual’ I’ve Read

By JimmiWazEre

Really quite hungry, but otherwise opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR: Looking for the best monster manual for TTRPGs? The Monster Overhaul delivers 200+ creatures, logical organisation, and improv-focused tools that make running games faster (betterer, strongerer) and more dynamic.

This post contains affiliate links

What is The Monster Overhaul?

Well obviously, it’s “a practical bestiary by Skerples” of course, it says so on the front cover, see the image below if you don’t believe me :)

In case you don’t know, Skerples (a pseudonym, their real name unknown - Although, I’d like to think it’s something like ‘Max Danger’) is a bit of a rockstar in so much as we have them in the OSR blogging community. Kind of like a Banksy, for nerds.

Coming on the scene in the back end of the tweenies with the successful Coins and Scrolls blog, Skerples is responsible for community favourites such as the introductory OSR dungeon; the Tomb of the Serpent Kings and the somewhat gloriously whimsical Monster Menu-All: Eating the AD&D Monster Manual.

“Skerples wanted this book to exist, and it didn’t exist, and therefore had to create it” - Kickstarter

Geared towards value as an in-game tabletop resource, The Monster Overhaul (TMO) is a TTRPG bestiary that contains 200+ creatures, 20+ maps, traditional D&D style line art, and about a bazillion random tables of improv friendly prompts.

It was launched as a Kickstarter in 2022 with the help of Editor; Dai Shugars and a small team of artists including Dyson Logos & Lucas Roussel (and many more), and then delivered in 2023.

Naturally, I’m late to the party with my review coming in a solid 2 years after the fact. That means this blog post is neither evergreen, timely, nor an attempt to make an emotional connection with the audience. Good work there Jimbo - blogging 101 master… Don’t worry folks - I’m gambling on a late surge of interest which will rocket this post to the top of every single Google search. Wish me luck.

OK, this review isn’t sponsored in any way either, I bought the book myself. Twice technically, because I’m an idiot. Sigh, let’s get on with it shall we?

What’s It Trying To Do Differently

I see TMO as a clear reaction to the popular mid/late-tweenies 5e school of thought, whereupon a surge in new people into the hobby lead to the inability to correct en masse an oft held assumption among GMs to view creatures as little more than bags of hit points to simply be balanced against player characters for them to fight. “Fairly”.

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Instead, this book wants to flip the script and give creatures breadth and depth to their behaviour and motivation, to help train GMs to replace the idea of a “combat encounter” with the more liberating idea of a “generic encounter” - in other words, not all encounters with creatures need to be conflicts, or if they do, then they certainly don’t all need to be combats, or if they do, they certainly don’t need to be balanced!

Additionally, it’s clear that TMO wants to address the issue of TTRPG books being mostly full walls of top to bottom long form text, and nigh on impossible to use effectively whilst under pressure at the game table. If you’ve read my guide on how I prep notes for an adventure, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

So, What Works Well

All the information in TMO is presented concisely, which is great when you’re at the table trying to find something out on the fly. If you’re anything like me - then you cease to be able to function efficiently when presented with lengthy prose to parse under pressure. Skerples (AKA Max Danger, by me exclusively) obviously recognises this and has made sure that each monster write up is lean and to the point, functional, and respects the urgency of the moment. That’s… liberating.

Additionally, each creature gets a set of bespoke prompts delivered in a tabular format which allows the GM to quickly add some extra flavour to a vanilla monster (terrible metaphor - I bloody love vanilla), in turn presenting the players with an array of hooks and roleplay opportunities to explore as solutions… you know, as opposed to simply presenting the same bland goblin we’ve seen a hundred times before, thus setting the expectation of another combat.

Such flavour might include names, attitudes, motivations, where their home is, modus operandis, catchphrases, favourite riddles - the list goes on and is bespoke for each creature, with more options provided for more worthy creatures.

Without saying the same thing over and over again in a slightly different way, this; 🡱 is the money, right here. If you only wanted the main reasons to pick this book up, they’re in the former three paragraphs. Reread them if you have to - I’ll wait. If they don’t sell you on it, then nothing else will.

You want to know more? OK, well the book is organised by the logical category (habitats, seasons, game genre) that you would find the monsters in - so what, right? This is another clever way of saving your time at the table. Imagine, your players are in a dungeon and you need to make up an encounter on the fly - Now the most relevant ingredients of that encounter are all next to each other in the book and you don’t have to go page flipping.

Not that the book makes page flipping hard though - with a handy ribbon bookmark to keep your page, and sturdy stitch binding, I’m confident that my copy of TMO is going to last for years despite the regular use.

Why It Might Not Be For Everyone

This book is great, but I wouldn’t be doing you any favours if I didn’t highlight some of the reasons that it might not be right for you. So here we go:

1. It ain’t cheap by a long shot. I mean, sure, you pay for quality - and I’m certain that Skerples can’t afford a loss leader business strategy, but we’re talking £50 for the hardback book. Even the corporate overlords at WOTC are only charging about £35 for their latest monster manual wheeze. The PDF isn’t much cheaper either: £22 squidlyroos! That said though, would I rather have something cheap, or good? For me - it’s totally worth it. Twice in fact.

2. If you’re running something with heroic style characters like Pathfinder or D&D 5e, then this book is still great for you for all the improv prompts and stuff, but you are gonna need a separate resource for your monster stats - well, either that or the ability to convert them satisfactorily on the fly.

3. The book is the same sort of size as a WOTC book. It’s mahoosive. Sure that means it’s packed full of value and creamy marrowbone jelly, but it also means it’s quite unwieldy to have this beast hidden behind your GM screen among your dice, notes, and stash of Universal Monster Tokens.

4. The artwork inside is all very old school, black and white lines - I think this is very, very cool in general, but some of the art isn’t for me, maybe not for you either. Additionally, if you’re wanting full colour spreads, this isn’t that.

5. Reeeeally nitpicking now, but I wasn’t kidding when I said those pages were chock-a-block full of stuff. I’m… not normal (ha!), when I see that much stuff on a page it can be quite disorienting. That’s not to say that I didn’t get used to it though, but it’s something to be aware of which could be an issue for some folk, let’s call it a lack of whitespace!

What Other Reviewers say

My own conclusion is coming below, but in the meantime, whilst you might think that it’s a novel approach to include content from other creators in my review, my stance is that if information is power, then my dudes, I want you to be powerful. Let me know in the comments at the end of the review if you appreciated the links to these videos, or if you think I should leave them out next time.

Conclusion

I really like this book! It’s an evocative, actionable toolbox for GMs, and so much more than a mere monster manual.

If you want to pick it up, I have an affiliate PDF link for Drive Thru RPG (The Monster Overhaul) and physical copies affiliate links for Compose Dream Games (UK) and (North America). These should give you plenty of options, and if you use them then it means I’ll get a small kickback on the sale at no extra cost to you. Go on, treat us both ;)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.

Do You Call For Too Many Rolls?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL/DR - We like dice, they're cool, we spend a lot of money on fancy ones and we like rolling them. All that's a given. But as Game Masters we need to break the bad habit of calling for dice rolls for every little thing that our players try to do, because failed trivial actions break verisimilitude.

Introduction

As I originally conceive this, I'm currently on a flight to Amsterdam to see GreenDay live with Mrs. WazEre and I'm watching a downloaded actual play of Alien RPG to pass the time.

Or at least I was, but a particular cardinal GM sin was repeated one time too many and I felt compelled to mount my soap box…

You see, the GM kept asking for dice rolls for mundane things, like opening a door, or looking at a security card to see what's on it.

You might be thinking 'so what?!', well dear reader…

Inappropriate and excessive rolling is problematic because when the dice Gods inevitably laugh in your face, the GM is left struggling to come up with a reason for the fail.

When there's no good reason for failing an action that maintains verisimilitude, the resulting attempted explanation inevitably feels forced and awkward.

Compounding this issue, when they see something that seems otherwise simple, fail like this, the other players will start asking if they can try. You can either come up with justifications why they cannot, or allow them to roll also, but when fate curls another one out on your head from a great height, and this new character fails their roll too - Well, now the problem is exacerbated.

Why are all these characters unable to identify if this is a library card or a birthday card, and to whom it’s made out?!

We’ve created a major issue for the players sense of agency. Our dice calls have turned their characters into clowns against their will!

Everyone Is Guilty

I’ve never seen a GM not do this at some point. I used to do this too, and not so long ago that I can’t still keenly remember how uncomfortable it feels to call for a roll and then be left trying to come up with a legitimate consequence for failure. Or maybe success was actually really important for some reason, so after an unnecessary roll where the player scores a 4, I’d try to pretend like 4 was the DC all along.

Yeah, the players catch on to that and it's a cringeworthy moment.

Here’s A Fun Anecdote, That I DEFINITELY Don’t Hold A Grudge About

Going even further back, in my first game as a player, I remember my rogue (DEX = 18) out in front, creeping down some stairs with the party in tow. I was just being cautious and quiet about it, but there was no threat. However, a stealth roll was called and I scored a natural 1.

The GM then fumbled about, grasping for a severe consequence to the crit fail and ruled that I fell down the stairs.

And Just like that, ripped straight out of the moment, there went any semblance I had that my character was a competent thief.

If it’s not obvious already - There’s no need for a rogue thief to roll when creeping, unobserved down a stairwell. That’s an automatic success situation. My rogue thief walks around quietly as his day job - he’s good at it, he probably eats it for breakfast. It’s his entire reason for being.

Ironically, if I had just said I wanted to go down the stairs like the party following me had, the GM wouldn’t have called for a check, but because I said I wanted to go down cautiously, he felt like a sneak roll was required, and the failure, and subsequent desperate explanation led to a situation that turned a cool character into a joke.

Not that I’m still bitter about it or anything ;D

To Roll, Or Not To Roll? That Is The Question

This advice is applicable for every system I've ever played, and some, such as Mothership RPG and Mausritter have explicitly baked it into the rules in one form or another. However it’s often still overlooked.

So here it is, drum roll, please:

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Only call for a roll if there is clear risk or urgency attached to the action. Otherwise just have characters automatically succeed or fail as appropriate - depending on how mundane the task is or if the characters backstory supports their skill in a particular action.

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That reminds me - It's particularly important advice for games where you have to look for McGuffins. Recently, a chap on my socials was upset about his Call of Cthulhu adventure falling apart because his players failed their spot hidden rolls to find important clues, even with the “rule of three” - his game had ground to a halt after they’d failed their checks.

Well, now you know; the solution is to not put important clues behind dice rolls in the first place.

Perhaps Sir Would Like To See Some Examples?

These are some pretty on the nose cases where some similarly paired situations should and shouldn’t require a dice check:

• If the rogue wants to unlock the shed door - he succeeds, because he’s good at this stuff, and no one’s watching, and there’s no time pressure.

• If the rogue wants to unlock the kings bedroom door quickly before the guard circles back around - make a check. Failure means the guard sees you.

• If the marine wants to shoot (with a tranquillizer dart, of course!) a bad guy sleeping at his desk - she succeeds, because she’s passed her basic training and she can fire a gun.

• If the marine wants to shoot a bad guy on patrol and avoid alerting the base - make a roll. Failure means the bullet whips past him so he takes cover and radios for help.

• If the geology professor wants to see if the Necronomicon is in the big pile of books on the messy desk - they can simply determine that because they’ve got eyes and time.

• If that same geology professor wants to find the Necronomicon on the desk whilst the room is on fire - they need to make a roll. Failure means that the desk and everything on it is caught on fire before the Necronomicon is found.

You get it right?

It's a small change but it makes a huge difference to the flow of your game, not to mention that it prevents players from experiencing that sour taste that accompanies being denied something that you just know should have been a given.

A top tip

An excellent mental technique in game is to pause a moment and try to explain the consequences of failure to yourself before calling for the roll.

If you find yourself unable to come up with something that doesn’t feel contrived, don't call for the roll!

Conclusion

What do you think, do you call for too many rolls? Does your GM? Am I just wrong about this? Drop me a comment below and tell me what you think!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters.

6 Games that nail What Rules-Lite TTRPGs Should Be

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL;DR - Rules-lite isn’t the same as rules-incomplete or rules-inconsistent. Don't conflate them.

This post contains affiliate links.

Introduction

I want more people to play Rules-Lite games, but this crusade of mine is hindered by a misconception of what a rules-lite game actually is.

A lot of people hear "rules-lite" and think "lazy" or "half-finished." But that’s missing the point entirely. A great rules-lite RPG isn’t undercooked, it’s efficient, elegant, and focused. Let’s unpack what makes a minimalist system actually good, and why "less" doesn’t mean "worse."

What Is Rules-Lite

A good rules-lite system doesn’t overwhelm you with procedures and crunch for every situation. Instead, the key procedures are covered and it gives you a clear, concise core mechanic. Then it trusts you to apply it flexibly.

It’s just like that old saying:

Give a GM a fish, and they can run a session. Teach a GM to fish, and they can run a campaign.

Or something like that. I don’t know, it's close enough.

What isn’t Rules-Lite?

Let’s be crystal clear, rules-lite is very different from rules that are simply incomplete or inconsistent.

Inconsistent rules happen when a mechanic is explained more than once but the explanations don’t match. This usually signals a rushed edit. One version may or may not have replaced the other, but both made it to print. That’s not planned ambiguity, rather it comes over as just poor proofreading.

Designers: please, if someone flags this, don't try to convince us that you’re providing options. No one's falling for it, just own it and issue a FAQ or errata.

Incomplete rules are when a mechanic is introduced but not fully defined. For example, a game might explain how to hit an enemy in great detail… but never actually explain how damage works. You can’t convince me that this is minimalist design, it's just frustratingly half baked rules - because now we know that there is a specific way that this should be done, but we’ve no idea what it is.

RAI Matters

It all comes down to understanding the Rules as Intended (RAI). If the designer has said enough to give the GM an understanding of the game’s core rules language, then the GM should be confident that they can make a ruling that falls in line with RAI. If not, flesh it out some more.

Gameplay examples are great for this, as are developer commentaries in the sidebar. Designers take note!

Experience matters

I'm a big fan of the rules-lite philosophy, but if you've never run a TTRPG before, there is a danger that you might not have developed that muscle yet which allows you to make rulings up on the spot that feel consistent with the game system. Just bear that in mind before you pick your first game.

That’s not to say that a rules'-lite game shouldn’t be your first, but rather that I just want to make sure that your expectations are managed. It may start difficult, but it will get easier as you go on.

Recommendations

If you’re interested in picking up a good rules-lite game, then I’ve got a short curated list for you of some of my personal favourites. Full disclosure though my dudes, some of these are affiliate links, and if you chose to pick one up using the links provided, then I’ll get a small kickback at no extra cost to you.

Mausritter

Mausritter is a charming, rules-lite fantasy RPG where players take on the roles of brave little mice in a big, dangerous world. Built on Into The Odd, an OSR style framework, it uses simple d20 roll under mechanics and item slots for inventory, making it quick to learn and run. Its elegance lies in its ability to deliver rich, old-school adventure vibes with modern usability and 1990’s Disney cartoon flair.

I played in a duette game of this with my wife at the kitchen table, and she really enjoyed the vibes. With tweaks to the lethality I can see this being really popular with young families too.

Index Card RPG

ICRPG strips tabletop roleplaying down to its essentials with fast, flexible rules that encourage creative problem-solving and dynamic pacing. Everything runs off a single target number per room or scene, making it intuitive and highly adaptable. Its modular design and DIY ethos make it perfect for GMs who like hacking and building custom worlds on the fly.

EZD6

Created by DM Scotty, EZD6 lives up to its name with a system that’s incredibly easy to pick up and play. Most rolls come down to a single d6 against a target number, streamlining gameplay while leaving plenty of room for dramatic moments. It’s especially good for narrative-driven groups who don’t wanted to be limited by predefined abilities on their character sheets, and instead want to freedom to narrate their abilities as they see fit.

One of my players who’d never GM’d before in her life ran a couple of us through a homebrew adventure using this system and it was an absolute blast.

Pirate Borg

Pirate Borg is a brutal, rules-lite game of swashbuckling horror on the high seas. Inspired by Mörk Borg, it mixes fast, deadly mechanics with punk rock layout and evocative setting material. It’s ideal for players who like their pirate adventures with a side of doom, decay, and dark magic, and who don’t mind their characters dying spectacularly.

The squint-and-it’s-historical side of this game has literally made me buy pirate history books and start listening to pirate podcasts. I love all that stuff now, and it takes me back to my childhood - playing Secret of Monkey Island on my big brother’s Amiga. Good times.

GOZR

GOZR is a wild, gonzo sci-fantasy RPG that feels like it escaped from the back of an '80s metal album cover. It runs on a straightforward d20 roll-over system and embraces weirdness at every turn, from its mutant characters to its DIY zine-style aesthetic. It's brilliant for groups who want something fresh, funky, and full of chaotic creativity without a ton of prep.

I also wrote an opinion piece for this game a few months ago which included a free system cheat sheet that I’d worked on with the help of the games designer to get players started sooner. Can’t recommend it enough!

Spellz!

Indie developer, Jake Holmes recently reached out to me on Bluesky with an interesting little one page rules-lite game he was working on called SPELLZ! The game is still in it’s beta testing phase and he’s taking feedback on it it, but for the price of totally free, and for the sake of reading less than a single page - it’s definitely worth a look in if you want to see just how lite the rules can go!

It’s a fast TTRPG where magic is improvised in real time using letter tiles. Players draw tiles and try to form words on the fly — the word they create becomes the spell, and its effect is narrated accordingly. Stronger or stranger words often have bigger effects, and failed spell attempts can backfire spectacularly, with the GM repurposing your discarded letters.

I’ve not played it, but I have given feedback on the rules which was promptly actioned. It looks quick, and perfect for creative groups who enjoy thinking on their feet, might even be a way to introduce TTRPGs to your mum, dad, and nan who’s idea of a tabletop game otherwise begins with crosswords and ends with Scrabble!

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Heya, just a thought, if you want me to take a look at your game and feature it on the site, like SPELLZ! Then drop me a message, lets have a chat!

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Conclusion

The key message here is that if you've been frustrated by rules-incomplete or rules-inconsistent in the past, please don't be put off a rules-lite system because you're assuming it's the same thing. It ain't. If you get overwhelmed by books the size of a university textbook and you want to start small, rules-lite could be for you.

And so endeth the sermon.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter!

This post contains affiliate links.

Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL/DR - Love, love, love the system and the adventure, loath the rulebook or module layouts. Had an absolute blast running it and my players enjoyed it too. Made us hungry to play Destroyer of Worlds next.

This post probably contains spoilers. If you’re thinking about GMing this, then please read on, but if you’re a player - you have been warned.

Oh, and this post also contains affiliate links in case you want to pick up the game.

This is Captain Miller, last surviving crew member of the USCSS Montero. Signing off.

Thus ended last Sunday’s 6 hour long adventure; Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG by Free league.

I want to use this post to share my thoughts about it, and the system in general. I liked it, lots. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that.

A bit of preamble about the 1e Ruleset First

CotG is the starter set adventure, so it seems only fair to assume that most people might be experiencing the core rules for the first time too. Now, built off the Year Zero Engine, I love the core rules of Alien RPG - let me open there, but I do not like the rulebook.

Possibly a good place to start is with the fact that Free league are releasing a new edition* of Alien RPG in September 2025, and they say that they’re doing it to address many of the community issues with the current rulebook.

It’s a smart move because as lovely a ‘thing’ (full of lore and art) that the 1e core rulebook is, and as fundamentally great that the rule system is - the rulebook itself doesn’t appear to have been written with enough effective consideration towards functionality.

*Totally compatible with minimal tweaks required to play it with existing adventures.

How not to Design a rulebook

Let me give you an example. So, on your character sheet, there’s something called “Air”. As GM, you’ll want to know the game mechanics for how Air runs down, and what happens when it runs out. So you’re gonna go to the index and search for “Air” - because if it’s a named stat on the official character sheet, it should be in the index, right?

It’s not there.

You pause, think a moment, and maybe you realise to look under “Consumables” instead, because Air on your sheet is listed under a section titled Consumables. That takes you to page 34. Page 34 mentions that consumables decrease, and for those rules, you’re told to go to page 35.

As for what happens when you run out of air? Page 34 vaguely tells you to “see Chapter 4”.

What, the entire chapter? Or am I now expected to scan through a bunch of pages until I stumble across the answer?

To be fair, the chapter 4 thing is an error with my printed version of the rulebook, it’s actually in chapter 5, but even new revisions don’t tell you that it’s specifically page 110. I scanned through all of chapter 4, and then most of chapter 5 before I found that.

Yes, even reading alone, that was as enjoyable as it sounds.

But all that aside, I’d just had to read hundreds of words presented in long form prose, I’d had to mentally separate the actual rules from the sea of guff about how too much carbon dioxide is dangerous, and not having air is bad for you. That’s exhausting.

As someone familiar with breathing, I don’t need a paragraph telling me that not having air is bad, especially when I’m at the game table. I just want to know how your game handles it mechanically.

How to Design a rulebook

Designers - I love you, you made one of my favourite games, but the rules for air should be searchable by index, on one page, and be concise like this:

• Whenever it makes narrative sense (such as after physical exertion), have players roll a number of d6 equal to their current air supply. For every [1] rolled, reduce their air by 1.

• Once a player’s air hits 0, they must make a Stamina check every round to stay conscious. Starting from the second round, reduce their dice pool by 1 each time.

• If they ever fail a Stamina check, they drop to 0 health and must make a death roll each round until they’re either supplied with air, or they until die from asphyxiation.

Much better. Concise, no waffle, no page flipping. If future editions took this kind of structure to heart, it’d be a huge win.

The Year Zero Engine

I’ve spoken before about the central mechanic before, so I don’t need to repeat that here - but I’m a big fan of the overall elegance of the system. Simple character sheets and flat stats go a long way towards keeping the flow of gameplay going, and Free league have done a really good job with the Year Zero Game Engine here.

I’m also a massive fan of the way Alien RPG avoids GM Conflict of Interest, by having you roll for the monsters actions. After about an hour of building tension, my players were set upon by an Abomination in the hallway. It was a perfect introduction to the terror of the world when the dice gods decided that the Abomination would lunge forward, grip Paige’s character; Davies’ skull and crush it like a swollen pimple.

Life is cheap in Alien, but when you’ve got a healthy backlog of fleshed out NPCs with character sheets, it takes the sting out of character death.

I asked one of my players, Alan, for his perspective after the session:

The system for Alien is fantastic, it has all the details and stats you need but is done in a very concise and simple way that I found very enjoyable, and a massive improvement on the more complex RPG systems out there. At no point was I getting bogged down by stats, or left checking around every inch of my character sheet when the GM asked for a specific roll, and because of this I found I could spend more time getting into the module itself and the role playing parts, giving me a proper chance to get lost in the games world.

For me personally, I struggle with how much crunch games like 5e give you, and whenever we have to pause to check things in manuals it can really cause a funk in the rhythm, there was none of that with this and honestly that’s a massive bonus for me, also you get to roll tons of dice all at once, which is so much fun!!!

Can’t say it fairer than that. Thanks Alan.

My Experience With Chariot of the Gods

Split over three distinct acts, CotG is a one shot, or “cinematic” adventure that took my group about 6-7 hours to finish.

I’m gonna be straight up with you - the key thing that I love about this is module is that after act 1, most of the GM’s hard work is over.

Those first couple of hours you’re setting the scene and ratcheting up the tension. It’s very description heavy, and you’re introducing lots of new events and NPCs.

But then act 2 hits, and the game sort of just starts running itself. You see, all the actors have secret evolving motivations written on cards that you hand out as the game progresses. These motivations often set them at odds against each other, creating situations where the players must compromise, or outright start sabotaging each other.

A good way to think about it is that a GM’s primary role is to toss spanners into the works for players to fix. Indeed, in act 1 you’ll be doing this a good amount. By act 2 however, the players are tossing their own spanners into the works, and at each other, and as GM this frees you up to take much more of a reactive, and backseat roll. It gives you space to breath and scheme, and it means that when you do need to toss a spanner of your own, it can be much more carefully thought out for maximum appropriate impact.

This isn’t an accident - this is the consequence of fantastic adventure writing.

But enough about my thoughts, here’s what Alan had to say:

I found CotG had enough familiarity to what I’ve seen in the movies to make me feel like we were in that world, but with enough originality to it to not make you feel like you’re just playing a run through of what you’ve watched. I also think the game gives enough info that if you were new to the franchise you still wouldn’t feel lost.

My personal favourite part of the game was the objectives you are given with each act that change as the game goes on, often causing conflict between crew members, or in our case a crew member being a secret android that tried to blow us all up! I really couldn’t recommend this enough, really fun, simple to learn and play with plenty of twists to keep you on your toes.

Prep Work

The CotG book is really interestingly laid out. The front of the book essentially provides an overview of the adventure, the seed, and an impression of things to come. The back of the book contains an appendix of the stats for the monsters in the adventure. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

It’s the middle of the book that’s really clever. You see most adventure modules sort of smush area descriptions in together with plot events that happen when you set off certain triggers. Not CtoG.

Here, the book goes over room descriptions one by one, and once that’s done, it goes over the key events (“spanners”) which it leaves up the GM to place as they see fit on a per act basis.

I find this really helpful, because it means that I can get a focused understanding of the key events in the module, all in a concise section of the book, without having to search through two dozen room descriptions to find them.

I have a gripe though

Unfortunately it can’t all be rivers of milk and honey. Similar to the issue of verbosity in the rulebook, CtoG is also needlessly wordy when it comes to room descriptions - which for me at least, pretty much makes running it from the official book impossible.

Check this out:

SCIENCE LAB 1

The lights in this room flicker, and the stench of decay is overwhelming. There is a pile of gnawed bones in the room. The main lab has an enclosed decontamination area on the main examination table—and under the de-con hood is a perfectly preserved metallic urn. A malfunctioning deep cold freezer with a smashed glass door has four more of these urns in it. An ooze has seeped out of them, forming congealed pools on the floor. Strange, black fungal nodes are growing on the urns and in the pools.

BONES: A Medic or Scientist who examines the bones realizes that they are not all human. There are Neomorph and Abomination bones mixed in as well. This room was the nest of an adult Neomorph. If you use the “Hunter and Prey” event, this Neomorph is still around and could attack at any time.

URNS: These, of course, are the Engineer Ampules that contain the black liquid 26 Draconis Strain of Agent A0-3959X.91–15. Ingestion of the pure form of the agent has fatal results (it counts as a Virulence 12 disease). Each urn is a regular item in terms of encumbrance.

FUNGAL NODES: These are in fact Neomorphic Egg Sacs, ready to eject Motes and infect any PC or NPC with exposed orifices of any kind (see page 292 of the core rulebook). A PC examining the room learns that the nodes are underfoot throughout the room, and difficult to avoid. Moving through the room without disturbing the egg sacs requires a MOBILITY roll.

KEY CARD: Sitting half-submerged in a pool of black goo on the floor is the emergency key card access to the MU/TH/UR mainframe room on the Cronus—dropped here by Ava during a scuffle with the Neomorphs. The key card is a Tiny item.

It’s not even the longest room description, and it’s still far too much to expect a GM to read this all at the table. If you read my piece on making good adventure prep notes, you’ll know what work I had to do next in order to turn this mini essay into usable notes at the game table. If not, well, go check that out right now - it’s totally game changing (props to Annie from DIY & Dragons for the method).

Conclusion

Despite my issues with verbosity and layout choices (How dare you make me read, book!), I absolutely love this system and adventure. If you have players that can get on board with a horror setting, and especially if they like the idea of covertly working against each other - then Chariot of the Gods by Free league gets a good ol’ Fonzy thumbs up from me. If you want to pick it up, please use one of my Affiliate links provided (Chariot of the Gods) and I’ll get a small kick back at no extra cost to you!

Have you played Alien RPG yet? Tell me about your experiences in the comment below - I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter!

Either way, catch you laters, alligators.

This post contains affiliate links.

I started a Gaming Blog in Jan 2025. How’s It Going?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Person

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TL;DR: I started a blog in January 2025. It’s been great and occasionally soul-crushing. I’ve learned some things — Us indie creators should stick together.

Intro

Back in January, a mere boy with a dream, I started up Domain of Many Things with next to zero knowledge about creative writing, front end web design, back end website management, SEO, or social media. I did however have a niche in mind where I have a mega passion, and a love of the Alien films and cassette retro aesthetics.

Somewhat inconveniently, I also had some principles! I’m North of 40 and I try to be one of the good guys. I lived through the start of the internet as a teenager, and the wildly optimistic promise that it came with - free at the point of use, democratised information for all, totally unenshittified. I wanted, and still want to offer a community resource that adheres to those values - I’m not here to exploit some easy money out of people.

That means that whilst this is very much a side-hobby with dreams that it might one day pay for itself, I have absolutely no interest in obnoxious banners or popups, no interest in producing zero effort content churned out by LLMs, and no interest in loading my content with vaguely incorporeal SEO terms so that I might please the ever distant and neglectful Internet Lords at Google and friends.

Mostly, I just want to share my ideas and find some meaning in knowing that maybe I brightened someone’s day.

Initial Expectations

Just Lol. On top of a full time day job as a database engineer, I figured that if I turned out one well thought out article a week, the combination of syndicating it on social media, and organic traffic from search engines would give me a decent number of views. Views which I could convert into newsletter subscribers by offering exclusive freebies, and from that self selecting fan base, maybe even earn some affiliate sales to make this thing self sustainable.

As time went on, I’d build a following on social media accounts like BlueSky and Reddit, and form a community that would keep me motivated and inspired, as well as a ready made audience of folks engaging with, liking, and sharing my content.

Let’s review that shall we?

What’s Gone Well

The Website Is An Asset And A Place to Share My Voice

I’m really happy with the website design, especially since I had to learn everything on the fly. Like I’m actually proud of it.

It feels unique and easy to navigate, and thematically nods towards the cool things I enjoy such as retro futurism, pixel graphics, and of course, Alien!

Additionally, I’m pretty happy that the blog has found it’s voice - it feels genuinely me, warts and all - and in a sea of soulless AI generated content and professionalised corporate speak, here’s to hoping I come across as refreshingly human. A little bit of 2002 in your 2025.

I’ve made new connections

I’ve had the huge satisfaction of being able to use this platform as an excuse to speak to game designers I admire, and lend a voice to passion projects that otherwise do not get the attention that they deserve.

I hope that in time I can reach out to other bloggers and build a sub community with those guys - a place to share ideas and support, and make some new mates. That sounds like it would be cool.

Kind Words Have Made My Day

It doesn’t take much, but when a single person takes just a moment to leave me a few kind words about my work, it completely makes my day. I’m not just shouting into the void, I am reaching people.

That’s a great feeling, it costs nothing except kindness, but it fills me with the kind of motivation I need to keep going.

If you’re one of those people that’s said nice things on here, Reddit, Bluesky, or over email - thank you sincerely :)

Month On Month Views

Brace yourself if you didn’t expect super low numbers!!! Buuuut, whilst the graph below shows that I have good months and bad months, my viewership trendline is going in the right direction. That’s probably the most important thing in terms of measuring the health of DMT since everything else is built upon this foundation, so it’s good to know that whilst it may only be rising steadily, it’s still rising.

Mailer of Many Things Subscribers

Mailer of Many Things subs are steadily rising - I love these guys and what their actions say about my work. That they trust me, and enjoy my content enough to make me custodian of their contact details to stay in touch.

These are the folks who’ve slunk (slunked? slinked? …whatever) over to my Subscribers page, left me their email, and then lived happily ever after knowing that they’re never going to miss a post. Be like those guys!

Some major challenges that Younger Naive Me totally did not see coming

Is Google KillING the Indie Web?

Not so long ago, if you’d have Googled “Domain of Many Things“ then this site wouldn’t even be on the first page. Thankfully that seems to have recently changed! However, despite being ‘high’ up the results tree for low volume topics such as “GOZR” and “Mothership RPG”, there’s no sign of this site listing anywhere with a chance of visibility for “D&D House rules” or “TTRPG House rules” - arguably one of the most frequent topics I’ve written about so far.

To give that some meaning, of the 10k visits DMT has had from Jan 25 - mid Jun 25, 9k of them have come from social media referrals, and less than 200 have come from Google and other search engines. Of those 200, a good chunk will be bots, trackers and trawlers.

Add to this the rise of AI-generated summaries on Search Engine Results Pages, which, while arguably consumer-friendly, essentially pull content from sites like mine and present it for free without users ever needing to click on my link. Combined with Google’s algorithm prioritising large, ‘trustworthy’ brands, primarily its own, like Reddit and YouTube - it’s starting to feel like Google is slowly killing the internet as we know it.

I’m still here though, still publishing, daring to dream. I shall not be browbeaten by a sodding search engine owned by a mega-corporation that’s starting to resemble Weyland-Yutani more and more each year. Blogging has had to adapt to find new ways of being seen.

A Nice Little Cathartic Rant About Social Media Trolls!

More tea, vicar?

As you can see, with Google and pals accounting for exactly 1.99% of incoming traffic, all hope of survival comes down to successfully syndicating posts on social media and building from there. (If you know something I don’t, and have a better idea - please get in touch!)

Of the two that I use, Reddit and Bluesky, Bluesky is still in it’s problematic infancy (there’s very little engagement unless you’re famous or established, or find yourself in a popular starter pack) so Reddit’s the key one, but it’s a double-edged sword. I owe it most of my traffic - and sadly also most of my migraines.

You see, Reddit’s great because it has these huge ready-made communities with thousands of likeminded people who’re united behind their interests. Happily for me, that includes subreddits for TTRPG fans.

However, be still my beating heart, because the biggest groups have also got strictly enforced rules on how frequently you are allowed to share links to your own content, usually once per week. Great for deterring spammers and people trying to sell you things, but for people trying to add value in the TTRPG blogosphere - you’ve only got one shot to make your week’s work worthwhile. That’s a lot of pressure.

Side Note - I mean, I get it - there’s a lot of low effort AI slop shovelers out there, but I have literally come across people asking a question that a) I’ve written about, and b) justifies a long form answer, but if I’ve already shared a link once this week, or plan to do so then I’m simply not allowed to point them to my blog.

I want to make this crystal clear - these communities have bootstrapped themselves up to something huge and valuable, and their custodians have every right to protect that. Their rules are in effect - I respect that.

However, I want you to keep this little situational setup in mind, as it neatly brings me to the fundamental problem I have with Reddit - the trolls and haters simply have too much power thanks to the ability to anonymously abuse the downvote system.

OK, so, you remember that weekly post you’re allowed to make, that one that you’re totally reliant upon to deliver traffic to your website for that week, and upon who’s success you depend upon to give you that little motivational dopamine kick? Yeah, that’s the one…

That post can be, and is; regularly killed off at birth by just a small handful of users downvoting your post for no better reason than they disagreed with it, or even more petty - because they’ve got a personal vendetta against posts that fail to meet their own warped definition of acceptable “self promotion”.

Bear in mind, Reddit’s own rules state that downvoting is only supposed to be done in the case of posts that don’t marry up to the community’s niche or low effort posts that add nothing. Certainly not just because you subjectively disagree with a post, or it’s right to even exist.

So let me teach you how to suck eggs. Here’s broadly how I think Reddit works: If a post is upvoted and commented on it becomes more visible, therefore more people will find it and of those, more people will comment. This creates more visibility and the cycle repeats, it’s called going viral. After exactly 48 hours, Reddit itself draws a hard box around this virality and removes the post from the organic results pages in order to make space for new posts to gain traction. It’s the circle of life, baby.

Flip that though, if the very first thing that happens to your post is that some bored hater sees it and downvotes it out of spite, well my buddy, from that point onwards your post is in a death spiral and is likely going to get buried. You can easily identify these unfortunate posts, because after a few hours they’ll have next to no views, no visible upvotes, and only one or two votes in total. It doesn’t take years of playing Cluedo to see that this murder was committed by ‘two haters’, ‘on Reddit at the opportune time’, ‘with the downvote system’.

Those who can’t create, jealously destroy. Maliciously downvoting new posts without a legitimate reason is just about the most harmful and spirit crushing thing that these guys can do to independent creators, and that’s why they love to sit around all day on social media looking for the opportunity to do it.

Think about it - We had one shot to get seen this week, and for a blog like DMT that’s potentially thousands of views that didn’t happen because of the bitter malice of a tiny number of users. Sadly, this turns Reddit syndication into a miserable little game where you have to ‘post and pray’ that the first few interactions react with enough upvotes to counter the highly motivated inevitable bad actors.

Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful when a post survives that crucial first 30 minutes, and even more so if it then goes on to become viral. But it’s in the minority of cases. It’s such a shame, because even with just one post a week, as long as that one post wasn’t arbitrarily strangled off at birth, then passionate independent bloggers like DMT and many others would have a much easier time being able to carve out a following.

Want Indie Sites Like DMT to Flourish? Here’s How You Can Help!

Firstly - Thank you for being here and reading this post. It’s not my usual content, but I figured that folks might be interested in some real talk this week. Time will tell if I was right.

Got a blog yourself? Get in touch - we should have a Discord server or something and unite like when the Power Rangers combine all their droids into one big unstoppable machine! Seriously, I reckon there’s something in this, hit me up.

Here to read? Reach out, drop me an encouraging comment and let me know what you’d like to see next - it’s actually quite challenging to know what kind of content will go down well or not, so if you’ve got some thought’s about what you’d like to read my take on - chuck them below the line!

Follow me on Bluesky and Reddit, and engage with and share my posts - it all helps enormously!

If you really want to be a total boss, sign up to the Mailer of Many Things for monthly updates and some exclusive freebies (like my android app that simplifies managing random encounters at the game table).

Conclusion

Phew. OK, this was a bit of a cathartic exercise and I certainly don’t intend on making this a regular occurrence. I really hope that it’s been an interesting insight for you all into what’s happening behind the scenes, and to all my bloggers in arms, I hope you see this too and know that you’re not alone! Take care and stay safe out there, the internet can be an unforgiving place.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed 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.