NBOS’ The Keep
A review of NBOS’ Campaign Management Software NBOS, the creators of the Fractal Mapper cartography software and the Inspiration Pad table generator, have entered the realm of electronic campaign management with th[...]Read on >>
Poooooooodcasting! On Darker Days
September 30, 2009 from Mob United
Filed under: Game Design, Mage: the Awakening, RPG Hub, RPG theory, World of Darkness, podcast
I did an enormous podcast interview — almost three hours — with the folks at the Darker Days podcast. Check it out! I think the important bit is where I answer why I like RPGs, but there’s lots of bits [...] Filed under: Game Design, Mage: the Awakening, RPG Hub, RPG theory, World of Darkness, podcast
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Artistic Inspiration: Janne ´Navanna´ Hofstad
I found Janne Hofstad by a Google Image search for art nouveau elf. While this image isn't the one I found I think it's a great inspiration for D&D.This image is titled "Sacred Weeds" and to me invokes the The Wild [...]Read on >>
October Plans
Tomorrow begins October, the eighth month of the Roman Calendar. The Romans had no special association for October beyond Autumn, but we have Halloween, so I think for this month on the Sea of Stars Design Journal we s[...]Read on >>
SPUC #8 – Two Months In and Nothing to Show
I’m in a bit of a writing slump, the result of a combination of the makeup work I’ve mentioned once or twice now, and being a bit discouraged having failed to meet my deadline for Codename Backup Dancer. Cod[...]Read on >>
New Campaign: OD&D Set in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy
The Swords & Wizardry/Microlite74 campaign I've been running since early in the year (some 17 sessions) last Sunday. My players had looked through The Gray Book the previous weekend and told me then that they might want [...]Read on >>
Legend of the Five Rings – The Timeless Wanderer Bushi School
September 30, 2009 from The Emergence Campaign Logs
Filed under: Background, L5R, Legend of the Five Rings, RPG, RPG Hub
Next up we have a player-submitted school for Legend of the Five Rings - albeit with the usual selection of mechanical tweaks and a bit more description.
The Path of the Timeless Wanderer is long – and p[...] Filed under: Background, L5R, Legend of the Five Rings, RPG, RPG Hub
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Chipped-in Wage-Slaves
Over at Pair o' Dice, they mentioned the concept of chipped workers in Shadowrun (and the same could be done in Cyberpunk), people who are slaves to the company they work for. A company that never had to train them, they[...]Read on >>
The God Sarel
Sarel God of Winter, Travel, Honor and Strength. Sarel is the light in the darkness of winter. The symbol of Sarel is two golden wings. all churches of Sarel, no matter the size, keep a small lit candle in their front wi[...]Read on >>
Gaming with Kids: Mouse Guard AP – Session #2 (Spring 1152)
I’m just back from our second session of Mouse Guard and it was a good one (You can read about the first session here). We lost the extra player we had in session #1 (the boy that took on the role of the pregenera[...]Read on >>
Dungeon Locksmith
As the fight for the tower ended, we found ourselves beside a doorway. The doorway was filled with light. Almost sunlight in quality and I was drawn to it. We’d only been underground a few days, but my heart sang a[...]Read on >>
Dragon Age: Origins: Impressions: Blogpost
Dragon Age: Origins is a game that I'd initially only heard of because Penny Arcade was doing comics for them. Penny Arcade has a good track record of pimping shit that I like, so I checked out the Wikipedia entry, and t[...]Read on >>
Gamer Movie Review: Top 10 Medieval/Fantasy Movies of All Time
It's been a while since I updated this section. While making a list of what movies I wanted to do reviews of I thought it would be a good idea to created a Top 10 list of Gamer Movies for various genres. First up is t[...]Read on >>
Dungeon Master’s Guide 2
Few days ago, I got my hands on Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 and I have to admit, that in my opinion, it is the best 4th edition release besides the actual Player’s Handbook. In fact, the book is a lot more useful than t[...]Read on >>
Meadowbrook Needs You! — Win Dice!
Back in June, I created a town called “Meadowbrook”. This month, I’m sponsoring a contest based on that town. All you have to do is create a NPC — an inhabitant of Meadowbrook — using the in[...]Read on >>
Tekeli-Li: fun, but muddled and sloppy
A couple weekends ago I played a card game called Tekeli-Li. It's a Cthulhu-themed card game. Or, at least, it's trying to be. And that's the problem for me, it's the Cthulhu theme, but applied really lightly, and withou[...]Read on >>
Random Treaures 9/30 [Links]
This week I have some elements that would make a Victorian Gothic game and even has good modern supernatural possibilities. First you need a setting. This post about a 1934 article in the LA Time is a perfect springboard[...]Read on >>
Traveller – The Wanderer
Here’s a small starship that was originally assigned to a group of special agents. In that campaign the characters were all presumed to be 1) on active duty, 2) trained psionics using a notably extended psionics [...]Read on >>
Books for Halloween 2009
I am an avid reader and naturally gravitate towards horror books at this time of year. What follows are some of my all time favorite books that get me in the Halloween spirit. Most of which are great for coming up with i[...]Read on >>
Campaign Restart
Tonight marks the restart of our long running 3.5 D&D campaign (3 years and counting!) after an absence of 3 months! Although that 3 month break didn’t exactly work out as I’d intended, it was good to pl[...]Read on >>
Revenant Spiders
Revenant Spiders are created by powerful necromancers to punish or torment their foes. The creatures are created by a necromantic ritual, whose rites are a tightly held secret. Simply discovering the ritual exists is a S[...]Read on >>
The God Findal
Findal known as the God of the Pilgrims, The Travelar, The Timekeeper and also known as the Watcher of the Valley. Few outside the Land of Jerren actively follow Findal. He is most popular in the City of Alidor and among[...]Read on >>
Making Your 5×5 Campaign Plan Into A Grid
Maybe it's the gamer in me but when I first read the post title "The 5x5 Method" I immediately visualized a grid. When I read Dave's post, I got that feeling but it seemed more like a tree than a grid with branches flowi[...]Read on >>
It’s a Dirty, Dirty, World: Part 9
Well kids, we're starting the final stretch of my list of 4E Heroic diseases. I've not really received a lot of feedback, so that probably means either my blog isn't being read (this would not be surprising), or everyon[...]Read on >>
We Play Dark Ages OSRIC – Twenty sessions!
I can't tell you how cool it is that we've made it through twenty sessions! When I first started this campaign as an experiment to implement something along the lines of Ben Robbin's West Marches game, I had no idea what[...]Read on >>
Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional
Just wanted to take a moment to plug a new PDF written by one of my favorite peeps in the gaming industry, Jess Hartley. Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional is a nice, brief run down of the Dos and Don’t[...]Read on >>
Gaming in a New City: 03
Chapter 3: Finding Synergy So in spite of everything I said in Chapter 2, when I arrived in Albuquerque I only found one board game group that meets regularly and seems stable. That may not seem like a lot, but it’[...]Read on >>
Little Fears: Nightmare Edition
OOOOOO......Halloween is coming and so is a new edition of Litle Fears.Little Fears is game where you play children confronting the evils and monsters that adults can't see. This is the newest edition and so far it look[...]Read on >>
On Hiatus for the Week.
Hey guys, I’ll be taking a short break from posting regularly from today until Friday. Things have been sorta strange here lately, what with Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) submerging Metro Manila in raging 20 foot flood[...]Read on >>
im still here
Sorry for the lack of posts as of late, ive been out of commission due to pack pains. I just wanted to let everyone know im still here and have plenty of blogging left in me. After a few healing surges and a extended res[...]Read on >>
Dangerous Encounter: The Treasure of Dri’in Hill – Part 1
To introduce this encounter, the Mutant Lord should plant the rumor of an Ancient treasure at nearby “Dri’in Hill.” Some suggested ways of planting the seed: One of the characters finds a map pinned to the inside l[...]Read on >>
OD&D Rogues revisted
A while ago I presented a task system for D&D along with some Rogue classes to go along with it. I think it is a perfectly fine system but for my commerical project I want to work with D&D not supplant it. So aft[...]Read on >>
Interested in some Dark Space High Fantasy Play By Post Gaming?
Earlier this month I began brewing a new setting to run a play by post game in. Well, the framework has finally been finished this past weekend and I've created an overview of the game which I've titled:The Descendants o[...]Read on >>
Blog Carnival: Mistakes, Me? Never!
Man have I been lazy! I haven’t gotten anything done, but I did need a break from everything, just to recharge my batteries. I’ll get back to my humanoid project soon, but I did want to hurry up and add my two cents [...]Read on >>
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
As the DM you have an important role. You control the action, pacing, drama, intrigue and excitement that exists during your gaming sessions. This role is an important responsibility, that if misused will result in play[...]Read on >>
Kobold ambush remixed
After reading Justin Alexander’s remix of Keep on the Shadowfell, I decided to follow his lead and remix the kobold ambush encounter. Like Mr. Alexander, I moved it to the ruins of the keep and promoted the kobolds[...]Read on >>
How I run henchmen and hirelings- Part 2
Tim Shorts at the Gothridge Manor blog asks an awesome question while explaining his history with hirelings:I am considering being more responsible and having the henchmen specialize in jobs that assist the players. I've[...]Read on >>
Professional Convention Advice
Inspired by the popularity of her blog articles on how to approach Gen Con as a business opportunity, author and game designer Jess Hartley is offering an expanded treatment of the subject in ebook form. Conventions for [...]Read on >>
Ah….More Delta Green
My love of Delta Green knows no limit! Yes, it looks like March of next year for the new book, but that’s fine. I KNOW it will be fantastic and as always, one of the best RPG supplements written. EVERY book I hav[...]Read on >>
Update
I made myself a promise to post at least once a week on what was going on in my life and in my head gaming-wise. I'm a little over a week on this one. And while there is no one holding a gun to my head saying, "Write, da[...]Read on >>
Game Mechani(sm) of the Week #38: Roll and Keep
Legend of the Five Rings has an interesting mechanism for resolving actions.You basically roll a bunch of dice, keep some of them and sum up the face values of the dice you've kept.In that specific game, the pool of dice[...]Read on >>
BHB Review on RPG.net
Sorry all, been a busy couple of weeks.Here is my review and discussion of Bounty Head Bebop on RPG.net.Enjoy![...]Read on >>
Castles & Crusades Adventure Playtest
Monday night Rob and Dwayne started going through my adventure module I'd designed from the C&C rules. I definitely enjoy the 1e feel of the system and the parts they simplify. Still being new to C&C the three [...]Read on >>
Thoughts On The Cleric
For a while now, I’ve had sort of a vague dissatisfaction with the Cleric as it exists in most D&D iterations and spinoffs. I’m not sure if it’s because as it usually ends up being played as my idea of a Paladi[...]Read on >>
Quick Reviews: Legends of the Five Rings
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} b\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} I was first introduced to the Legends of the Five Rings CCG back when it ca[...]Read on >>
[deadEarth] The continuing saga of a mutant that’s gone to the dogs
I just can’t stop rolling up deadEarth characters. The post apocalypse can’t keep a mutant down, man! After my first three failures, yesterday I saw my first playable character, nearly superheroic. So I decid[...]Read on >>
Racism in Gaming
One of the inspiration words in the Stockade's game design challenge is "Gypsy".I haven't really done a gypsy inspired game, but I've considered it a couple of times. I love the unusual cultures of the world and like the[...]Read on >>
Robin D. Laws interview
Recently I started reading Esoterrorists and Trail of Cthulhu again, since I am planning to run a game using the GUMSHOE system. While doing some research on the system, reading playtest reports and listening to actual p[...]Read on >>
Ossuaries
The Age of Enlightenment-focused blog Cabinet of Wonders posted about ossuaries, which are “chest[s], building[s], well[s], or site[s] made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains.” Some[...]Read on >>
Meet the Weefellows
Weefellow# Enc: 1d4 (2d12)AL: NeutralMove: 120'(40')AC: 5HD: 1+1Attacks: 1 (small weapon)Damage: d4Save as: Elf 1Morale: 8Treasure Type: 18/E in lair, individuals 4/S & 5/TStanding no taller than a halfling or goblin[...]Read on >>
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