News from Around the Net: 3-FEB-2012

February!?! Where’d January go? Geesh! Here in Colorado, the snow started to fly last night and we are in the first real winter storm in 2012. What does that mean for yours truly? Not much really… I work from[...]
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A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs

The latest iteration of my superhero campaign has just gotten underway. Being set (mostly) on an alternate-history Earth, it holds a number of elements that may be of interest to readers, especially if I explain the thin[...]
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No Assembly Required: Wobet

Welcome to the January 2012 Edition of No Assembly Required, a monthly column that provides DMs with a ready-to-use monster for a Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition campaign. The monster can... Read more »[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 8: Publish

Finish your game. Finish your game. Finish your game. Stop procrastinating and finish it. The act of creation can be exciting and a struggle but if you don't finish it, you'll never know if it was any fun to play. Publis[...]
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Book Review: Unusual Suspects: Guide to an Interrogation Session by Robert Oglodzinski from Library of Ancient Scroll

When I started working with Robert Oglodzinski a few months ago, I reviewed Walls Can Talk, which collects a few “legends and adventure ideas” for fantasy and horror games. The layout, done by Michael Wolf (S[...]
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Supplement Review: Caves & Caverns (PFRPG) by Creighton Broadhurst and David Posener from Raging Swan Press

Just about every fantasy campaign I’ve ever played in has involved a cave system or cavern at one time or another. And though I’m a fan of dungeons, I really like it when there’s more of a natural eleme[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: To Punish and Enslave (or “Being Lawful”)

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. - Albert Einstein One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who wi[...]
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Deviant Friday – Marcio Takara Edition

Marcio Takara has a way with tiny - I've featured his tiny superheroes before as being great for folks looking for cheap paper miniatures of superheroes for their RPGs. He's also pretty slick with larger fare, with a cle[...]
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News from Around the Net: 27-JAN-12

Hope everyone has had a good week! Mine has been interesting… We’ve been dealing with getting some water damage assessed and fixed in our house after a small overflow in an upstairs bathroom resulted in a fam[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: What Makes a Location Fantastic (RPG Blog Carnival)

Once in a while a question crops up via a RPG Blog Carnival topic that makes me scratch my head and ponder for a bit. And yes, before you ask, most Gassy Gnolls are predominantly pondering people. We like to ponder just [...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 7: Testing

Your game needs to be tested before it’s devoured by the general public. Testing ranges from simple mechanics tests all the way through to a full blow campaign play test. If you do not have a group to test with and can[...]
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Get Your Motor Running

I watched the science fiction anime Redline from Madhouse Studios last night,and it got me thinking about the “crazy road race” genre. You know, things like Cannonball Run (1981), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: The Rules of Chaos

Last week I spoke about playing good and evil characters but promised that I’d follow up with my thoughts on playing lawful and chaotic PCs. When I started to think about it, I decided to break this post into two p[...]
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Railroading All Gamers Can Enjoy

Hell on Wheels on AMC tells the story of a mobile camp accompanying the construction of the first intercontinental railroad. It has the usual assortment of characters and professions one would expect in any boo[...]
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News from Around the Net: 20-JAN-12

Welcome to the gaming news roundup for the week of 20-JAN-2012! This week was “one of those” weeks with work, so I’m gleeful that it’s Friday! Yay! The debate continued this week about “D�[...]
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The Mother of All Size Charts

Cobbled this up over the last couple of days using the silhouettes created by Telecanter.Click to see full size and enjoy!EDIT: Made some adjustments to the chart, and I added a storm giant and gelatinous cube. I was way[...]
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Give the Hollywood Lawyers What They Want …

... and stop talking about Hollywood's intellectual property.Instead, you can give all that free publicity to me! Come on - NOD, Pars Fortuna, Mystery Men!, Mutant Truckers, 1800-American Empires, Blood and Treasure[...]
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OSR Conservation / Best Thing I’ve Seen Today

1. OSR CONSERVATION If you haven't already, you might want to check out the OSR Conservation project. Basically, folks like me can upload some of the gaming stuff we've created to make sure it is preserved even if we dis[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 6: Organisation

In this Chapter, you'll learn how to organise your free RPG. Organisation is very important because a poorly organised game can be confusing and will put people off playing it. An RPG is both read and referred to. It nee[...]
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Book Review: The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker and Others from Open Design

Games. We all play them. It’s what makes us “gamers,” right? Whether you enjoy the occasional card, board, or roleplaying game, the one constant for me has been the “fun factor.” If I’[...]
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small gods of trash

My wife was reading some blog postings over my shoulder last night and she misread a post and suddenly asked with incredulity, “small gods of trash?!?” And after I realized that is was a simple misread, I tho[...]
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Deviant Saturday – Manarama Edition

Manarama does lots of great work in a loose, free, fun style. Now, I've been notified by some readers that embedding the images via DeviantArt is a problem in some mobile devices. For that, I apologize. However, I want t[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: What makes evil *really* evil?

Welcome back my dear readers! Recently I grabbed my old 1st Edition Warhammer book, jumped over a few pages and found the alignment section because one of my friends asked what type of characters I like to play. My answe[...]
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News from Around the Net: 13-JAN-12 (Triskaidekaphobic Edition)

Welcome to the first triskaidekaphobic edition of GKR’s News frrom Around the Net for 2012… (Apparently there are three in 2012, two in 2013, and one in 2014. Since we’re on a downward trend let’s[...]
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From the Attic: Why D&D is the way it is; Levels and Hit Dice.

During the rampup to the next edition of D&D, I figure it would be useful to look at how D&D changed over the different editions. Today I look at the origins of levels and what they meant. Levels started with the[...]
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Thor Dee-Lite!

A few months back I posted about backing Jeff Dee's project of re-producing his old TSR art that was apparently thrown away (God, to back in time to that day and dumpster dive!). A couple weeks ago I got this spiffy sign[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men with Nine Kids (New Year, New Game)

The “New Year, New Game” efforts from the great folks at Gnome Stew and DriveThruRPG suggests something we should do as gamers anyway – try new games. Though not every game is for everybody, by trying n[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 5: System

The mechanics of your game provide the players with tactical and strategic choices. They will spend resources, take risks, win and lose. The mechanics must mesh with the concept of the game and support the setting. The f[...]
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Big Announcement in the World of Fantasy RPGs!

I got the dragon art I commissioned a few weeks ago for one of the alternate blue dragons I published last year - indigo, to be precise. The artist is Marta S., and I think her dragon profiles are stunning. Check it out.[...]
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Deviant Fri … Saturday – Francis Manapul Edition

Today, we'll be looking at some nice superhero art (plus a little more) from Francis Manapul. Check out his entire gallery for more!Shuster Awards Poster Final by ~manapul on deviantARTWonder Woman 600 by ~manapul on dev[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: The Dwarf, The Elf, and The Onion

Welcome to the New Year dear readers! I hope 2012 will bring you more great game sessions and plenty of inspiration for new campaigns. Along those lines, hold on tight as we head into a new adventure… This time I w[...]
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News from Around the Net: 6-JAN-12

That’s right, it’s 2012… The year we see if the Mayans were right or if they were too cheap to buy a new calendar at the office supply store. Hopefully everyone had a happy and safe New Years’ cel[...]
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Take the Subway to the Wizard’s Sanctum

You may have heard this one: A homeless newsboy in a nameless city follows a mysterious stranger into a subway station.  The stranger leads the boy aboard "a strange subway car, with headlights gleaming li[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 4: Setting

In this Chapter, you will learn how to write an unique setting; what to include and how to avoid common pitfalls. The setting is the imaginary world that will act upon the characters and that the characters will change w[...]
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Game Review: The One Ring: Adventurer’s Book by Francesco Nepitello from Cubicle 7 – Part 5

One of my New Years’ resolutions for 2012 is to finish up my ongoing review of The One Ring, so I’m going to push forward with my part-by-parcel review today and focus on “Part 5 – Adventuring Mec[...]
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A SAN Check for New Year’s Eve (and a bit more)

Most disturbing video of 2011? Perhaps ...Weird Al aside, just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made 2011 a good year for me. I spend my days researching the Las Vegas commercial real estate market and[...]
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News from Around the Net: 30-DEC-11

“It’s the end of the year as we know it and I feel fine…” (apologies to Michael Stipe and the rest of REM for paraphrasing the lyrics to “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I[...]
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The Nuances of computer use in a simulated world

In Roleplaying Tips #536, Johnn ran a tips request (reproduced below) asking for tips on how to GM computer hacking. I decided that simply offering a few tips wasn’t quite going to cut it, and that the subject dese[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: The Circle of Trust (or The Power of Odd Jobs and Beginnings)

Have you ever noticed how adventurers always seem to get the glamorous jobs and only rarely get the dirty jobs nobody really wants to do? Let’s take a simple example. A new group of PCs gets hired to kill some rats[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 3: Writing and style

In this Chapter, we will look at the act of writing itself. By the end you will know some habits to keep and pitfalls to avoid. The second part of this chapter focuses on style and details how writing in a particular way[...]
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Product Review: Dungeonmorph Dice and Cards from Inkwell Ideas

When I first heard about the whole geomorph mapping paradigm in early 2011, it was at Dyson Logos’ blog – A Character For Every Game – but I came to discover only recently that they are a very old idea [...]
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The Season Of Optimism

So it is Christmas once again, as happens every year at this time. This is a time of year that means many different things to different people. For some, it is a time of commerciality run rampant; for others, it is a pro[...]
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Christmas in your campaign?

To myself and billions of Christians around the world today marks the day of the birth of the savoir.  Cynics will say that Christmas is only celebrated as the birth of Christ because of the need to compete with the[...]
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Deviant Friday – Recent Favorites

Instead of highlighting a particular DeviantArt artist today, I thought it would be fun to show off some recent favorites of mine from the site.you know you're a pro when... by *nebezial on deviantARTRed Riding Hood by *[...]
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News from Around the Net: 23-DEC-2011

This must be the “It’s nearly Christmas” edition of “Around the Net”! If I haven’t mentioned it enough already, I wish everyone reading a very happy holidays – from Cthulmas and [...]
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Dwarven Names

The recent release of the Hobbit Trailer reminded me that I looked at Tolkien's original source for the names of his Dwarves. I took the old Norse Poem and extracted all the names from it, modified them to fit english be[...]
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The Arena

I am doing some mapping for Tim on Starter Adventures and a miscommunication occurred. He told he wanted a simple arena like the one in Spartacus Blood and Sand. So Dwayne of Gamer's Closet and I looked at some trailers [...]
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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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Game Review: Fantasy Craft by Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin, and Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games – Chapter 3

When I started tackling Fantasy Craft a chapter at a time, I had no clue I’d hit a chapter filled to the brim with 41 pages of spells and spellcraft. When I was working on early books for Moebius Adventures we came[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: Scary Christmas Tales

Today’s post comes from my friend, Aleksander Daukszewicz. He is part of the Polish creative collective Lans Macabre. Those guys are one of most talented groups in the Polish RPG industry. I am proud that they publ[...]
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