Mark Rolls Dice

Hi, there. I’m Mark Damon Hughes, gamer and game designer.

You may know me from my old RPG site and reviews at kuoi, and there’s a ton of resources there. My old games: Phobos, DUDE, and GPA. My reviews, detailed and sometimes soul-crushing. Archives of various things. A billion links to obscure RPGs. All of these things will be kept there for now, I may move them over eventually, or not.

I’m going to be doing my new gaming blogging and writing from here. In very short order, I’ll have my next RPG up, and I’ll talk about that in a bit.

I’m also a big fan of old-school gaming. I started gaming with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set edited by Eric J. Holmes, and I still think that’s a damn good game. I can’t stand the bloated rules and spurious logic of AD&D and later D&D 3E and 4E, but the original game has simple rules, player and DM freedom to do and create whatever they want, and a consistent tone of foolish/heroic/treacherous adventurers causing trouble, stealing, and clawing their way to the top or to an early grave.

Now when I want old-school fantasy gaming, I use Swords & Wizardry for swords & sorcery, Conan in Red Nails, Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser stalking the streets of Lankhmar, Elric of Melniboné cutting down foes like sheathes of wheat with Stormbringer.

For comedy or one-shots, I still use Tunnels & Trolls 5.5E with Ken’s house rules, or even just the condensed rules. Fast and simple and fun. Download the Free RPG Day 2007 book, “Goblin Lake” for a taste!

For fantasy horror, for H.P. Lovecraft and Solomon Kane and Clark Ashton Smith, with a heavy metal soundtrack, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) is amazing, it uses the rules and concepts of Basic D&D to make something radically different and terrifying.

I read, get ideas from, and sometimes review other games, new and old. Likely subjects soon are Dragon Warriors and Mongoose Runequest II.

I love when people bookmark my sites or subscribe by RSS. I like email and read everything you send me, though my response rate is slow and erratic, but interesting ideas will get a post response. Tell me what you liked or didn’t, and I do appreciate it. For now, I will… tolerate… comments. I love feedback and discussion, but please be responsible with the comments box. I have the Banhammer of the Dwarfen Gods +3, and I’m not afraid to squish someone with it.

Thanks for visiting, and I’ll be updating soon.