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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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My First Published Legend of the Five Rings Fiction

Is up at at the Legend of the Five Rings page!   Though wish they would have warned me, as I had to have it pointed out by one of my friends. You can visit the fiction directly here, mine is the third part (Monastery A[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Gouqua’s Bamboo Spear

Sir Oglethan cursed and reigned in his mount as he found the path through the forest blocked by a palisade of sharpened stakes.  “Again!  Where do these rebel find the time to construct these barriers!?  We were[...]
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Points of Resonance

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of getting places to resonate with the people in a world and thus through them with the audience, even before anyone actually sets foot there, and talked about what sorts of facto[...]
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A Resonance of Place

One of the things I’ve always loved about a good world-building is a sense of place: the idea that after a little while, hearing a place name alone will bring in all the echoes of what the place actually means to t[...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – the Luck of Rognan Gosh

Tapping the worn coin hanging from a cord around his neck.  “For luck,” he whispered and slide his picks into the lock of the baron’s bedroom.  A few moments later he was rewarded with a soft click an[...]
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Changing Game-Changing Communication

Yesterday, I talked about the kinds of communication within a group that can be in their own right game-changing, things that if added to a world can make for a level of coordination between characters that wouldn’[...]
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Sandbox Dilemmas: The best laid plans of mice and DMs…

As I’ve probably mentioned before in a couple dozen blogs, I run a 4E campaign down in Toledo, Ohio for some of my old college buddies on a bi-weekly schedule.  I’ve technically been running a campaign for them now [...]
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Communication Game-Changers

“The major conceptual difference between medieval/historical games and modern/future games is not the weaponry. It’s the ability to split up and still stay in communication.” —Darths and Droids, 13 November [...]
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Tuesday Magic Item – Marnix’s Quill

While the sound of quill writing on parchment was not an unfamiliar sound, watching the pen write without a person to direct itwas a little unsettling.  “Ignore it, Poul,” said my host, “it will be don[...]
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The Undead in the 17th Century – Zombies

A fitting topic for a dead blog, right?The undead mostly blow in D&D. This comes from the fact that all the undead tropes are familiar to players, both in style and mechanics. So no one is afraid of the undead and ev[...]
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