WELCOME TO THE DARKPLANE
Great to see you here! I’m Graham Ward, and I’ve got a whole walk-in closet of creative hats I wear. This site is the repository of my thoughts on tabletop roleplaying games and a collection of avenues through which you can explore my work.
HUNDRED DUNGEONS
IS HERE!
The alpha player packet for my new game Hundred Dungeons is out and ready for playtesting. Grab a free copy and let me know what you think!
This sword-and-sorcery 5E hack brings exploration and social interaction back to the fore, and streamlines combat for a better rounded dungeon delving, hexcrawling experience. It’s a little old school, a little new school, and all about enabling creativity.
Subscribe to the newsletter to get TTRPG blog posts, updates on my work, and news about convention appearances and more. You can also follow what I’m doing on Bluesky, Mastadon, or join the Darkplane Grimoire discord server!
I originally made this site to share bits of Darkplane: A Campaign Setting, which funded on Kickstarter in 2015. Since then, the Kickstarter has wrapped up and I’ve begun making a living as a Game Master for hire, designer and editor of roleplaying games like The Last Caravan, and producing TTRPG livestreams on Ghostlight RPGs.


As the GM, your role is to ensure the game cycles smoothly from phase to phase while engaging and rewarding players. The diagram below maps how this gameplay cycle fits the adventure phases together into a looping pattern of discovery, risk, and rewards. Following the guidance in this article can make the difference between an engaging sandbox and an aimless slog.