HeyJaredThe Compleat DM: The Architecture of Play and Pathos
Obsessive dissections of games and imagined worlds from both a mechanical and thematic perspective.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Aug 5, 2026
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The Return of Jeffro Johnson (opens the original)
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It was maybe two years ago that I discovered Jeffro Johnson and the BROSR. It was a strange time for me. I had the conceit of a DM who had seen it and done it and who now was obligated to write about it. I’ve reflected a lot on my time over the last month and a half, where I may have been at both one of the lowest points in my personal life and also in the hobby; my AD&D group, dissolved. No real centre point around which to pivot my writing. Just experiment after fruitless experiment, moving ba
Brawnstorm: Factions and Time (opens the original)
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Bouncing between UMBROS play and Brawnstorm’s design has actually been really helpful to the process of both. I say that because I have a tendency when exploring new concepts like I am in running Braunstein to want to add or remove things during the active campaign. That’s not good. It’s better to remain more consistent and adjust than it is to start changing the nature of it constantly. It has put me in a troublesome spot more than once.Instead what I am learning from UMBROS goes into Brawnstor
Brawnstorm: An Age Undreamed (opens the original)
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As we move into UMBROS week 3, we have through our experience identified the wheat and chaff of Braunstein. (Hint: the chaff is big unwieldy mass battles and boring resource farming.) We have developed our own personal theories on this, and how to solve these problems. UMBROS then has acted as a kind of staging area for what will follow. It has been a wonderful space for quickly identifying mistakes, systematization of process in order to run the game more smoothly, and even how to create a sust
Braunstorming: Considerations for a 2nd Age of UMBROS (opens the original)
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UMBROS: If You Build It, Ferigno Will Steal It (opens the original)
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This is the tale of an idiot who sits on a computer more than he wants too, which is any amount of time at all unless it was made before 1985, and is trying to run the most interesting game in the world. Because AD&D is interesting enough when you do not know how to play it, or how people generally understand how it is played, but it is far more interesting when you take it on not only as an adventure roleplaying game with grand strategy elements, but also with a heavy fog of war over the sociop
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