Retro-Stupid: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Wing It

Now that I have a little bit of disposable income, I've decided to take a look at buying a few quality board games. On top of classics like Carcassonne and Dominion, I discovered a new card game called Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre.


The art for this game is the best kind of bonkers - weird Superjail meets Adventure Time fantasy with exploding heads and sentient testicles murdering people. On top of that, it is hella inspiring. It reminds me of the best parts of the Retro-Stupid style of Dungeons & Dragons practiced by a fair amount of people in the RPG blogosphere: anachronistic, tongue-in-cheek, and low-prep craziness. And it got me thinking.

I've been trying to muster potential players for the Vomorhin campaign that I have been preparing, but putting together a house-rule set for Swords & Wizardry, designing a city (which is by far the hardest fantasy setting to create) and work out political alliances and a thematically accurate world has frankly been a pain in the ass. So what would it be like if I just didn't care about how the world was put together?

I texted my friend Ethan about the idea:

8:11 PMme: Wanna play in a retro-stupid as hell D&D campaign? Basic Box style with weird video game-style boss monsters and magic that makes people explode?
Ethan: Yeah, you've been trying to do that a couple times now!

I wanna be an orc

Or an ogre

Smash.

8:12 PM me: Gotcha. I will write an Orc class.