DAD Design & Worldbuilding Articles
External Substack essays on DAD design, fantasy society, old-school assumptions, worldbuilding pressure, and campaign-scale practical problems.
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Damsels, Adventurers, and Dragons Articles
Fantasy RPG design essays, old-school procedure, and table-facing notes for DAD and The Family RPG System.
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DANDINO and the Skinner Box Character Sheet
A DAD design article about menu-first character construction, splatbook option culture, system mastery, and why world-first play preserves broader player agency.
Your Fantasy Capital Is Not Mathematically Impossible: Population, Magic, and the Hub-and-Spoke Kingdom
A fantasy worldbuilding article about population, capital cities, magic, logistics, and the hub-and-spoke model of premodern kingdoms.
Culture Begins with the Sacred
A grouped series of DAD worldbuilding essays about creating believable fantasy societies from sacred beliefs, institutions, moral order, and inherited culture.
Culture Begins with the Sacred: Building Realistic Human and Demihuman Societies
Part one of a worldbuilding series arguing that believable cultures begin with sacred beliefs, moral order, divine reality, authority, death, and the people’s place in the cosmos.
Culture Begins with the Sacred Part II
Part two of the Culture Begins with the Sacred series, continuing the method for building fantasy societies from theology, sacred history, institutions, and social order.
Culture Begins with the Sacred III - A Map Is Not a Culture
Part three of the Culture Begins with the Sacred series, focused on why geography and maps are not enough to create a culture without belief, sacred order, and institutions.
Wizards of Public Works
A grouped series of DAD worldbuilding essays about magical infrastructure, civic authority, maintenance, sanitation, roads, ports, fortifications, and campaign consequences.
Wizards of Public Works: Civil Engineering and Magical Infrastructure
Part one of the Wizards of Public Works series, explaining why magic changes the amount of labor in civil engineering but does not replace surveying, design, maintenance, authority, or knowledge.
Wizards of Public Works - Part II: Building Roads and Navigable Waterways
Part two of the Wizards of Public Works series, focused on roads, waterways, construction sequence, infrastructure design, and the practical limits of magical civil engineering.
Wizards of Public Works - Part III: Water, Cities, Ports, and Fortifications
Part three of the Wizards of Public Works series, covering waterworks, urban infrastructure, ports, fortifications, and how magical power interacts with civic systems.
Wizards of Public Works - Part IV: Power, Law, Maintenance, and Failure
Part four of the Wizards of Public Works series, examining power, law, maintenance, obligations, institutional control, and how public works fail when systems break down.
Wizards of Public Works - Part V: Civilizations, Consequences, and Campaigns
Part five of the Wizards of Public Works series, connecting magical infrastructure to civilization, campaign consequences, domain play, ruins, and long-term setting history.
Addendum I: When the Chain Breaks
An addendum to Wizards of Public Works about lost knowledge, declining magical infrastructure, broken chains of craft and authority, and why later societies may inherit works they cannot reproduce.
Wizards of Public Works - Addendum II: Practical Magic for Sanitation and Environmental Protection
An addendum to Wizards of Public Works focused on practical magic for sanitation, environmental protection, waste, water, and the civic problems that fantasy settlements must still solve.
Coin Marks, Bullion Marks, Fraud, and…
A DAD design article from Gorgon’s Grimoire discussing coin marks, bullion marks, fraud, and the practical handling of money in fantasy campaign play.
There Is No Balance: Risk, Role, and Encounters in Damsels, Adventurers, and Dragons
A DAD design article from Gorgon’s Grimoire discussing balance, risk, role, and old-school play assumptions.
Why Banking Would Be Local, Not Centralized, and Why That Reinforces the 20-Mile Adventuring Radius
Uses hard-currency economics to explain why fantasy banking would remain local rather than central-bank driven, and why that reinforces a focused twenty-mile adventuring radius.
Treasure, Hard Currency, and the False Inflation Lever
Looks at hard currency, dungeon gold, and fantasy campaign economics without treating treasure like modern fiat money.
Worldbuilding as Historical Constraint: A Practical Method for Creating Playable Worlds
Frames playable worldbuilding as constraint, history, map logic, and consequences at the table.
Advantages of a 20-Mile Radius for Exploration
Explains why a twenty-mile campaign radius gives travel, community, and player decisions useful pressure.
The Trap Problem Is Not Mechanical, It’s Logical
Argues that traps work when their logic fits builders, access, maintenance, and dungeon purpose.
AD&D 2nd Edition: Gygax’s Blueprint, Cook’s Execution
Examines Second Edition’s design lineage through Gygax’s blueprint and David “Zeb” Cook’s execution.
The Mythic Premise: Why Humans Matter
Looks at humans, ambition, advancement, and why human characters matter in fantasy roleplaying.
Damsels, Adventurers, and Dragons Multi-Class Errata
Errata notice for the omitted complete list of permitted multi-class combinations in the Multi-Class rules section.
Permissionless Play and the Myth of Expanded Choice
Discusses DAD’s approach to character actions beyond narrow powers, class features, or permission lists.
Classes and Kits Design Considerations
Defines classes as durable social and practical roles, with kits adding narrower campaign identity.
Adventuring as an Expedition
Treats adventuring as organized expeditions rather than isolated rooms and disconnected challenges.
Dungeon and Ruin Ownership
Looks at law, ruin claims, ownership, and why dungeons exist where authority breaks down.
Deck of Unbridled Destiny Errata
Formal errata notice for the Deck of Unbridled Destiny.
Adventuring as a Recognized Occupation
Explores adventuring as a known occupation in unstable fantasy worlds.
True Neutral and What Does It Really Mean?
Discusses True Neutral, druids, balance, and alignment meaning in DAD’s fantasy framework.
Principles Behind The Family RPG System
Discusses the design principles behind The Family RPG System and its relationship to cleanroom fantasy design.