Written Sketches

I recently started using Day One, a journaling app that’s sleek and fun and has a popup feature whereby the app tells you, “Okay, write something.” I’ve been using it mostly for sketching — a pa[...]
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EN World Review – Review of They Shall Be Paid In Coin of the Realm by Taurus Twelve

Happy Humpday, fellow gamers!  We’re halfway to the weekend, and this week cannot get over soon enough to please me.  I’ve got not only my regular local Friday night game this week, but also my bi-monthly D&D [...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Dragonpoint

Our contact was furtive, more so that usual for a dealing in black market magical weapon, which said something.  One he was certain that we were unobserved and he had lit a ward candle.  “Let me see the money,[...]
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Inspiration Viewing – A Bad Day at Black Rock

A Bad Day at Black Rock is fascinating movie set in 1946 in the small, isolated California town of Black Rock.  The train stops and a man gets off, a stranger to the town.  This is notable as this is the first time the[...]
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New Monster – Deep Miner

DEEP MINER A sickly green glow lights the corridor as an emaciated specter of a dwarven miner emerges from the wall.  The wreckage of a dwarven soul mutters to himself, his eyes unfocused until he sees the gold ring on [...]
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The Art of the Small—Fluff here! Get your hot crunchy fluff here!

…this info…invit[es] the DM to seed his adventures with references, clues, and mysteries pertaining to the party […], or for players at the table to press for the meanings and leanings behind such... [[ This is a [...]
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Arkham Horror begats Call of Cthulhu

Being down three players last night (Dan Dan the Power Game Man is overseas for awhile, Little Ben has to take a month or two off suddenly, and Big Ben had a cold), we decided to finally play Paul’s copy of Arkham Horr[...]
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EN World Review – The Breaking of Forstor Nagar by Rite Publishing

Greetings good Readers and fellow D&D gamers! Today is the first day of the DDXP convention down in Indiana this weekend, and I understand that some of us have had a chance to try their hand at D&D Next.  In f[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Venturer’s Friend at Court

First crafted by the bard Rufus Friend of the Commons for a delegation of simple villagers to the court of the King; a keen-eyed dwarven venturer sniffed out the magic behind the commoners’ excellent manners and co[...]
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World Building and the Campaign: How Far into the weeds?

So, I have a gaming group and I'm digging the whole DMing thing again.  As I've mentioned, we are running through a heavily modified version of Keep on the Borderlands using OSRIC.  So far, we've explored a bit[...]
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New Brittanis Campaign Video!

This time, I've kicked things up a notch. I decided to do a full Campaign Trailer, including plot elements for the game, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Take a look! In the video you'll find elements of the Brittanis-sp[...]
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How to Create a Bureaucracy

By Gareth Hodges The Aaargh factor Technically, a bureaucracy is designed to help a government or large group deliver services in a timely, efficient and effective manner. Traditionally however, they are viewed as mocker[...]
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Perfect Locations: Marring Perfection

(Do I even need to tell you what prompted this post?) When last seen, the broken walls of the old buildings had shimmered in the starlight, haunted by the soft strings and fluting of the lone musician; now the musician i[...]
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Perfect Locations: Who’s There?

My participation in RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations continues! Light levels in a scene may be one of the most subtle ways of creating the mood for the perfect version of a location, but they’re not the most [...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Traitor’s Ring

Lorad Montcrief, once Lord of the Gray Rock, now Governor-General of the entire province as a reward for his treachery.  A hated man by many and all wonder how he managed to avoid the curses and bans that should strike [...]
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Perfect Locations: Seeing the Light

This series was written for RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations. When I used yesterday’s post to introduce the idea of the perfect version of a location, one of the mood-contributing factors I discussed was ligh[...]
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Perfect Locations

This one’s back to writing for RPG Blog Carnival. I love the way it makes me think about aspects of the theme I wouldn’t have looked into. One of the things that a lot of people forget about making locations,[...]
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Fantastic Location – the Snowfall of Irasosia

The Snowfall of Irasosia The river Iir winds through the lands of Irasosia until it reaches the Heights of Winter as it tumbles over the lip, it freezes into snowflake, floating down the hundred or so feet as beautiful c[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Charm: Paper Armor

The priestess walked slowly down the line of nervous villagers, each clutching a simple tool that they hoped to use as an effective weapon. Stopping in front of each, she placed a charm against each villagers chest and i[...]
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New Spell – Carapace of Insects

The last words of the spell were more of a sequence of clicking sounds than words and within seconds, the sorcerer’s body was swarmed by insects.  Moments later, the cover became living armor as the interlocked layers[...]
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Hex Mapping Part 5 Addendum: Moral Landscapes

Getting back into the swing of blogging, I've been going back through my posts about hex-mapping. Part 5, where I discuss placing the terrain features that exist between mountains and coastline, brought to mind a conver[...]
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Brittanis Iconics: Berek of Mordengaard

[This post is part of a series. I've always loved Paizo's iconic characters-- the "default" pre-generated characters for their Pathfinder world of Golarion. So I'm doing the same for Brittanis. Characters who embody th[...]
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Constructing New Timelines

Sometimes, we find ourselves needing a new course of events. It might be for a counterfactual exercise, a chance to use new people in a pre-existing world (or to replay the same world with the same people but different c[...]
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More Elves of the Sea of Stars

On Friday, I looked at the Elves of the Sea of Stars and their politics.  Today, we will look at them a bit more in Pathfinder mechanics. In general, the mechanics for the elves as as written for Pathfinder with the fol[...]
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Elves of the Sea of Stars

Elves (Earthkine) The Elves almost died out as a race following the Sundering, they are deeply tied to the world and many fell sick or died when the world shattered.  With the loss of their divine patrons there was litt[...]
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Ravyn Freewrites: Location? Location!

More for RPG Blog Carnival, or at least inspired by it. This is my brain on poetic when mixing having just finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms with knowing location design is on the topic list in the very near future.[...]
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Fantastic Location Essentials

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is on fantastic locations. When I first saw the topic, before I read the post, I’d been kind of worried that it would be about the found only in fantasies sort of fantastic, rat[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Mathilda’s Shield

She straightened her helmet, shook the blood from her sword and turned back towards the gate.  “Get the people to safety,” she said, “I will buy you as much time as I can.” “Wait . . .̶[...]
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Reprise: Do Gods Need Religion?

I originally wrote this for an early RPG Blog Carnival on the subject of gods and religion. It all came down to one question: were the two necessarily mutually dependent? I’ve always been partial to chicken-and-egg que[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Stone Golem Potion

The first wave of the dwarven soldiers was like an irresistible tide, while they moved slowly, even for dwarves their heavy armor seemed impenetrable to our weapons.  It was only once we were able to bring the ballista [...]
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Game Theory – Moral Dilemmas: Arranged Marriages

I was watching the video of Emilie Autumn‘s Marry Me (mildly NSFW for language) and it brought this issue to mind as a possible source of conflict, challenge and adventure. While marriage does not usually figure as[...]
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Pattern Potion Code

The potions provided by the agents of the Pattern are in vials made of some hard resin usually of a neutral, tan color.  Each is marked with an inset design that indicates its purpose: Ant – Strength (bull’s[...]
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Designing Fantasy Cities: Residents

This article builds off the concepts presented in Designing Fantasy Cities: Purpose. When we talk about who lives in a town or city, the first thing that often comes to mind is race. This isn’t a bad thing, as that of[...]
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Campaign Stat Block – Pattern Seekers (Pathfinder)

Inspired by the Planejammer Chronicles‘ Campaign Stat Block for framing a campaign, I made my own (comments welcome).  And here is a filled version for the Pattern Seekers campaign: Sea of Stars – Pattern Se[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Flying Tiger Sword

The Lost Empress sought allies from far and wide to aid her in her quest to regain her throne from the Jonquil Usurper and his running dog lackeys, among those who joined her banner were the mercenaries of the Brave Tig[...]
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Krampus Curse

As Berin Kinsman has already done the Krampus as a Pathfinder monster, for the Krampus Carnival, I will have to do a curse. The Mayor of the small town was known for his exceeding indulgence of his children, letting them[...]
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“Why” and How It Can Improve Your Game

Willful suspension of disbelief is a concept that comes up a lot when talking about fiction. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s the idea that you sometimes have to stop your mind from saying “That’s ridiculo[...]
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Newish Monster – Osquip (Stellar)

The Rat Lord, god of vermin, mice and rats, fled through his home maze.  Behind him he could hear the dragons tearing through his traps and defenses as though they were toys.  His lair was mean to challenge and confoun[...]
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Sci Fi fashion goes full circle

If there is one truly weird fact I have learned from Science Fiction films and books is that fashion eventually comes full circle. That is to say, it gets to a certain point beyond military or blue collar worker jumpsuit[...]
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The Architect DM: Building a DM Library

I believe that most DMs have only run a single campaign world, whether it was one big campaign that has been continued through various ages, or they've only managed to run one satisfactory campaign. The tendency for a DM[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Snowstone

As the Orthanian Knights maneuvered around the hill fort, its walls damaged from days of fighting.  The rebels of the newly conquered territories had risen up but their weapons and bravery were rarely a match for the di[...]
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Kicking off Campaigns by Keeping Players in the Dark

Joe Bloch's recent thought provoking article on Greyhawk Grognard suggests that the question facing DMs when starting a new campaign is one of information flow.  This may be true in sandbox campaigns but I often fin[...]
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RPG Mapping Tools Part 4 – Planet and Star Maps

In this part I zoom out even further and take a look at planetary system maps and star maps.  Which conventionally use the hex grid I looked at in Part 3: Region Maps.Regina Subsector Jump MapSTARMAPSThe definitive [...]
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The Architect DM: Designing with Precedents

It has been a few weeks since my last Architect DM post, but I've been brainstorming a handful of different posts and this one came to the forefront as something I want to discuss. My last post introduced some of my gene[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Guard Goblin

Bodro pricked his finger and smeared blood on the broach he wore.  “Come forth, Furbody,” he commanded and the goblin sprang into being.  Bodro offer him a piece of sweetmeat.  “Furbody,  I need you[...]
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Playing with your Inner Villain

Just about a week or so ago, I took part in and “won” my first NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.  Winning the contest is easy: simply start a novel on any topic on November 1st and complete and complete 50[...]
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Fluffy Crunch

I’ve been reading a lot of BattleTech books recently, and it struck me that there is a huge difference in how recent Dungeons & Dragons and BattleTech books present their rules and mechanics despite both be[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Scarf of Warmth

The young man squeezed through the door to the tavern, made difficult by the drift of snow outside.  He stamped his feet to knock the snow from his boots.  “Right cold one today,” he said to the room in gen[...]
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Guilds of Dual – Basic Guild Concepts for Fantasy Roleplaying Games

Worshipful Company of Feltmakers of LondonI recently read a couple of interesting articles on Trollish Delver and Grognardling discussing the use of Guilds which inspired me to go revisit the guilds for my own FRPG campa[...]
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Things You Might Want To Know When Mediating a Feud

Two sides, both alike in… something, anyway… is an automatic recipe for drama: just ask Shakespeare! Between the inconveniences they cause and the general waste of life and potential they represent, blood feu[...]
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