The Hidden Cure of Teziir

Characters: Cheynar, Illdric, JadeBlade, Janora, Torvic NPCs: Theo Miltan Synopsis: At the Smelted Horse, Janora gathers together several transplants of the Adventurers Guild of Threshold. The ranger has used her [...]
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The Westgate Extraction – The Tower

Characters: Alyssic, Aramir, Forkbeard, Sentalial, Trizoon,NPCs: NoneSynopsis: With the office level silent, the Defenders of the Dragon Coast stand in the Tower of Westgate facing two flights of stairs. There is some m[...]
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Genegrafting, Genetic Engineering, and Anthropomorphics in d20, Part IV

   Our next group includes a variety of insectivores, including the various anteaters, the aardvark, numbat, echidna, and pangolin, the hedgehog, and the armadillo. Most of these creatures have basic passive defenses i[...]
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The View from My Chair: Who owns the Universe?

My attention was directed to this video today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoc3roT81nU This got me thinking, when it comes to the Universe created by one individual but loved by a very large group of fans, who actually[...]
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Stock Characters In Your RPGs

My NPCs never die. This is not to say that they are invincible. They can surely be reduced to 0 HP and never seen again in that particular game. But that only gives them new life, a life beyond the confines of any single[...]
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World Hex Template

Global maps, hex-style Long story short, I got to thinking about rendering a global map in hexes, using the hex templates I already created. If you’re interested in hexing out your campaign world and are only mildl[...]
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The Devil is in the Details: Slaves of Shkeen

Mr. Maliszewski has thrown down the gauntlet:John Laviolette, over at The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, has even suggested that the old school renaissance would be wise to offer up more examples of tables and systems in this[...]
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The Devil’s in the Details: Kobolds

Picking up on the gauntlet that James Maliszewski threw down and Michael Curtis has already answered twice I offer my own Kesher-eqsue table for the lovable Kobold. d20 (Roll 3 times or pick 3) Many Kobolds… [...]
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[meta] Ace in the Hole Do-Over

Angel was sick this past week and her character is integral for the next scene in Perdition’s prison, so we decided to do something you can’t do in real life: Do-Over! In gameplay last week, we wer[...]
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Promoting racial diversity in RPGs

Mythical and magical races are a staple of fantasy fiction, both as heroes and enemies, so it only makes sense that fantasy roleplaying games (RPGs) would include race options for players to use in building their charact[...]
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Wold Building Research Mind Dump

I broke my own home brew rules. I've gone back to the basics and tried again. This time a little bit more detailed. As I've always got game in the brain here is some of my tinkerings.Transportation and Logistics TL. The [...]
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The truth about the Pizza

Well there is no truth. Rusty Battle Axe has the story here.The simple fact the map had a 30 to 20 year old pizza stain on it when I scanned it.This is how it looked to me.This is how it looked to them.Pizza the food tha[...]
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Genegrafting, Genetic Engineering, and Anthropomorphics in d20, Part III

   The mustelids and mephitidae include the badgers, otters, weasels, skunks, ferrets, minks, sables, stoats, martens, ermines, and many more. For our purposes it also includes meerkats and mongooses, which are actuall[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Belt of Defiance (“Bruising Belt”)

Something a bit strange here, but still combat-themed, playing on the difference between damage types in D20/Pathfinder to make a magic item that help keep someone alive, in a slightly painful way: Belt of Defiance (“B[...]
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Destined sample character: Drilla the Rat

Here's a sample starting character for Destined and my first draft at a very simple character sheet. Drilla is a bit of a hard character to pigeonhole. She has a bit of magic, but with her low Spellcasting (and noting am[...]
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Places Under the Dying Sun: The Black Ziggurat (and How to Get There)

[in response to the wonderful idea brought forward by Blair over at Planet Algol and with all respect to Clark Ashton Smith]If you wander the the Grand Souk of Hajal, you may find the stall of a blind Desert Man, so anci[...]
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1d3 Humans

Last night I was flipping through the Rules Cyclopedia to find the random encounter reaction chart.  It's probably the most important rule I never used.  While I was there and thinking about it I flipped the pa[...]
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the ebon zikkuract

Ancient when the world was still young, the zikkuract was a weathered step pyramid made of black basalt blocks hewn by hands far greater than those of mere humans.  A simple ziggurat of it's... Click the title if y[...]
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Characterization Exercise: Assigning a Familiar

One of my favorite fantasy elements is the familiar, the little creature connected to the character who serves as one part magic assistant, one part convenient foil, one part doer of small jobs and occasional source[...]
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New Feat – Pankration (Martial Art)

The Ancient Greeks practiced various forms of unarmed combat, wresting, early boxing and the vicious style known as Pankration.  Pankration is built around grappling leading to takedown, joint locks (and breaks) and cho[...]
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Black Rose, Part 2

Continuing on one of the things I need to figure out is how Ravenloft and Aldea come together.  This is a two parter really.  I need to figure out game-wise how the fit; is Aldea pulled into Ravenloft, is Raven[...]
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My son’s first map

My youngest is 5 years old. I was helping his older brother put together a school project and he wanted to do a project too. One of leftover was a big sheet of yellow posterboard. So he took and went away to his "project[...]
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The A-Team: A model for RPG campaigns?

Yesterday while watching  an episode of The A-Team on TV, it struck me. Wouldn’t The A-Team make a perfect model for a RPG campaign?  Let’s look at the basic premise, which is summed up pretty good by the voiceover[...]
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It is a mapping weekend.

Various things have caused me to build up a backlog of things to do for my gaming endeavors. So my spare time for the past couple of days have been spent clearing getting stuff done. Two of the project were some maps I [...]
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Ask The GMs: Penetrating the veil of mystery

Why are mysteries so hard? Campaign Mastery was asked, I’m making a Hero System 5.5 campaign for some of my friends. I wanted to do a non-power game that was mystery based. First session went off fine, and I [...]
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Magical Javelins

Sorry this is late, yesterday was taken up with work and then going into Atlanta to see the amazing Al Stewart preform live at Eddie’s Attic and we did not get back until after midnight.   Great performance, grea[...]
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Where do you game at?

When we first started gaming in our current home, I would set up one card table to DM from, one to put my battle-map on and everyone else would sit on the couches and use TV trays. This set-up worked just fine, except it[...]
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I blame Wolfgang Baur!

Who is responsible for all of the following AWESOME? Personally, I blame Wolfgang Baur and his crew over at Kobold Quarterly. Now, allow me to explain. Yesterday, our friends over at Super Genius Games (SGG) announced a [...]
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Ancient Enemies Cthulhutech Preview

Some Cthulhutech coverage on the blog for everybody. Ancient Enemies is the upcoming sourcebook detailing the Eldritch Society and Chrysalis Corporation, the protagonist and antagonist sides of the shadow war side of the[...]
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Live The Dream: Building a Career in the Games Industry – Marcelo Figueroa – GamesU 2009

Marcelo Figueroa is a 17 year veteran of the games industry. In that time, he has held just about every position in field. Retail sales clerk, demo team member, author, game designer, talent agent and national sales mana[...]
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The Characterisation Puzzle: The Thumbnail Method

This is technique number 1 for getting inside your character’s heads. It’s something I was taught in a Graphic Design course that I completed back in 1992 – so here we are 18 years later, and it’[...]
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A Few of My Favorite Things Man Should Not Know

As spring approaches, I find myself beginning to entertain thoughts of madness and despair - different from the thoughts of madness and despair that the passing of the winter holidays brings, that is. No, this time of ye[...]
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Screwing with your players

Since October, at least once a month, at least one of the two cars in my household has had some issue.  Two dead batteries, a dead alternator, a minor (no one was hurt) accident due to ice that required the replacem[...]
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Stealing Ideas: Percy Jackson & The Olympians

I just finished reading the Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan.  I didn’t even know these books existed until I saw a preview for the first movie.  I greatly enjoy “children’s” series; especi[...]
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Sir Arden Hardane

   Here we have the background for one of the early, playtest, Eclipse characters – in this case a young nobleman from a vaguely Arthurian world who possessed a modest (and quite acceptable) healing talent –[...]
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Cosmology of Eden: Adel

The world of Eden is surrounded by fantastical locations above and below. The planes of existence that interact with Eden and Eden itself are all habitable and ready to be explored. The following provides a somewhat more[...]
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Black Rose, Part 1

I had no idea people would like this one so much.  I mean to me it seems a no-brainer.   Let me roll back a bit and talk about why I think so.I love Ravenloft.  It was *my* world for all of 2nd Ed.  I[...]
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The Awakening…

A few weeks back, I had (once again) attempted to start up a play-by-email campaign with some guys I know. I had just read through Underdark, and was really looking forward to running a game in the setting. Trying to ge[...]
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Adventure-Guided Worldbuilding

One way to build a world is to start with a single adventure and build outward. You make it up as you go along, based on elements suggested or implied by the setting. This can be a published adventure, whether or not it&[...]
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Folding Other Games into the Doctor Who RPG

Still harping on that Doctor Who RPG? Of course! I love it! It occurs to me that I could easily fold in material from other games into DW:AITAS if I were looking places and events to send the TARDIS to. Fantasy is pretty[...]
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Come see the Neoncon crew at Gen Con 2010!

I am proud to announce that Neoncon has been selected as part of the first class of Gen Con Marketing Fellows. Congratuations also go out to our fellow classmates, Wolfgang Baur and the crew of Kobold Quarterly. To get a[...]
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Review: Kingdom Builder Generator Pack

Chaotic Shiny is well-known for its many generators, so a product like this is long awaited. While opening up a web browser is not exactly inconvenient, having a bunch of generators in one place is a lot better an option[...]
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And Now For Something Completely Different…

I'll get back to some summary information about Modrons a little later this week. In the meantime, I want you to go here and see this: http://arth.pbworks.com/Player-Character-Profiles As you may have seen on Twitter,[...]
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All Choices and No Decisions

Apologies for the decreasing post rate that this blog has been experiencing as of late. Posts usually emerge when I’ve had all my game planning done, but I’m now experiencing my very first DM’s block! Que horror! [...]
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Races of Eden: The Iomadi

At the twilight of humanity, another race rose to take their place. The Iomadi were the most fertile and prosperous of the new races, and now have the largest population in the world. Most of any crowd one looks at will [...]
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the most important rule I overlook

From page B24 of Moldvay's Basic D&D:MONSTER ACTIONS: Some monsters always act in the same manner (such as zombies, who always attack). However, the reactions of most monsters are not always the same. The DM can alwa[...]
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Magna Cartas

One of the keys to being a successful gamemaster is playing to your strengths. One of the ways to identify those strengths is to list out things that you like in the type of setting you want to run, and things you dislik[...]
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Undead du Jour times Four

Here’s the four undead adventurers I’ve generated for our one-shot game, primed and ready to download as 4th level characters. These were generated in Character Builder but use my own custom character sheet l[...]
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Drow should be Lawful Evil, among other things

I have been thinking about Drow of late.  We are going through some of the classic modules and I really am looking forward to doing the GDQ series again.  Now I have every faith in DM to make it interesting and[...]
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Character Sheet-style Resume for the Geeky Job Hunter

Times are tough, there’s a lot of people out there looking for work.  Even those of us with skills and abilities that are capable of great feats are barely getting by.  So, I thought I would show you this great c[...]
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