The Sacred Oaths
The humble Serf, as well as Husbands and Wives, to entrepreneurial Peasant and Yeomen, to loyal Retainers and Vassals, the Knights, Lords, Dukes and Princes... all these people have one thing in common: Promises.I have s[...]Read on >>
Beyond Sanctuary: Getting Started
With my Old School Premise and a batch of freshly created characters, I am now almost ready to begin the adventure. All that remains is to add a few more setting details and gather my play materials. When playing a solo [...]Read on >>
[Let's Study - C:tL] Seemings & Kiths
I was originally planning to discuss Pledge crafting for today, but I figure I’ll hold off until I’m done going over all the other character creation concepts as to not skip over anything important. —- [...]Read on >>
BRP Version of Stross’s ‘Laundry’ coming soon!
It looks like Cubicle 7 will be producing a role-playing game version of Charlie Stross's 'Laundry' setting, as described in The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. I very much enjoyed The Atrocity Archives (I ha[...]Read on >>
‘Escapist’ interview behind ‘The Truth About 4th Ed’
Here at DireKraken, we represent a selection of D&D players that have chosen not to play 4th Edition. We have a fairly good spectrum of opinions about it, ranging from ‘acceptable alternative system’ to[...]Read on >>
Traveller Rule 1: Adventure
Show of hands – how many of you have seen a documentary featuring the life of an average truck driver that you would consider “epic?” As a young GM, I found myself running up against this very problem. No[...]Read on >>
Getcher Steampunk On
The other day DriveThru RPG had an amazing GM Day sale. If you didn’t take part of it, shame on you! I was able to buy several awesome steampunk books to use for ideas in my current Clockworks game. I was able to pi[...]Read on >>
Are You Ready to Join the Cabal?
Before tonight, I thought one of GURPS Cabal’s biggest drawbacks, to a person like myself, who likes to run games in locales he knows personally — namely, New England and northern America — was its enti[...]Read on >>
It’s Called Tabletop Gaming Not “Rebooting My Laptop” Gaming
Watching my fellow players and their fixation with technology in the past months has got me thinking quite a bit about the place of technology at the gaming table. They use their iPhones to store their character stats, r[...]Read on >>
When the Stars are Right.
When the stars are right, my players rock! You see, we had a pretty good session this last weekend. It's been well over 20 years since we'd played Call of Cthulhu and I'd never run the game, but it has quickly become o[...]Read on >>
The coolest sounding RPG book I’ve heard of in a while
Lucha Libre HERO! I can’t imagine ever getting around to running this but I like the fact that I live in a word where it can exist. (via Ken Hite) [...]Read on >>
War Campaign musing
I've joined Arm Chair Generals forums to work through some of my campaign problems.One of them, I'm stuck on is military readiness. Using GURPS mass combat, plotting the precise human resource is very hard and difficult [...]Read on >>
[Thundarr Thursday] Notorious NPCs: Sheriff Korb
Sheriff Korb 5th Level Pure HumanSTR: 16 --- INT: 9DEX: 12 --- WIL: 13CON: 14 --- CHA: 11HPs: 78 --- AC: 8Mutations: noneSheriff Korb is the sheriff and de facto ruler of what remains of the Ancient city of Atlanta - now[...]Read on >>
[Let's Study - C:tL] The Court of Winter
Sun Tzu one wrote, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” And none of the other Changeling courts embody this method of victory more than those of the Winter Court. To the Court of So[...]Read on >>
Beyond Sanctuary: Valdora Balinsdottir
The sixth and final character in my Beyond Sanctuary Mythic GME Old School Sandbox game. This one turned out to be quite a bit less "old school" then the rest. Valdora Balinsdottir Attractive Dwarven woman [...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
For Those Of You Playing Along At Home
The question’s been raised as to precisely which books I’ll be using for our upcoming Traveller campaign. The following are what’s being counted on as of now.Traveller Core Rulebook OR Pocket Rulebook (Mongoose Pub[...]Read on >>
Good news for all Iron Kingdom fans!
I almost overlooked yesterday’s post at Purple Pawn. But then I scrolled back and read the headline again: “It’s Alive: The Iron Kingdoms RPG Lives!" I have to admit I had to rub my eyes and reread everything, [...]Read on >>
Tower Bridge Is Fallin’ Down, Fallin’ Down, Fallin’ Down…
Last night's Top Secret S.I. session nearly ended in total disaster - with the possible destruction of a major London landmark. But I'm getting ahead of myself.Picking up from the end of the previous episode, which saw N[...]Read on >>
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 [...]Read on >>
Beyond Sanctuary: Kandara Tanum
The fifth character in my Beyond Sanctuary Mythic GME Old School Sandbox game. Fortunately, she is a mage (I was getting a little worried that I wouldn't roll a magic-user). Kandara Tanum Attractive human woman of da[...]Read on >>
Savage Menagerie: Crabhemoth
No. Enc.: 1d2(1d4)Alignment: NeutralMovement: 120' (40'); Swimming: 120' (40') Armor Class: 2Hit Dice: 9Attacks: 3 (claw/claw/tendril)Damage: 3d6+3/3d6+3/holdSave: L3Morale: 7Hoard Class: NoneA Crabhemoth (pronounced cra[...]Read on >>
The Random Esoteric (ahem) “MUTANT” Generator
After seeing an entry at the Green Skeleton Gaming Guild blog expounding the mutagenic goodness of The Random Esoteric Creature Generator by James Raggi IV and published by Goodman Games, I knew I had to get my hands on [...]Read on >>
[Let's Study - C:tL] The Court of Autumn
The Court of Autumn is one of the more interesting Courts since it seems to have multiple layers to them. Known also as the Court of Fear, Autumn Changelings take yet another aspect of coping after Trauma that’s[...]Read on >>
The Old Girl: Vehicles as Characters in Your Game
"She's not old, she's in her prime." I'm not going to lie to you gentle readers, I'm an inveterate gearhead. I love machines of all kinds, but vehicles especially turn my crank, as it were. Anything from a 50cc min[...]Read on >>
Cult of Leithris (map)
One time, on a trip to the southernmost parts of the country, Billobi came upon a band of soldiers in the middle of the green Ogrebelly forest. They wore grey outfits and carried short swords, and had a large emblem on t[...]Read on >>
Link Advice #6
[...]Read on >>
My Traveller Character Generation Rules
To my mind, there are few purer joys in gaming than creating Traveller characters.Below is my draft for my Traveller character generation rules for our upcoming Imperial Navy campaign. I think doing it this way should cr[...]Read on >>
Get the “World of Darkness” rulebook for free this week
I just found out that the World of Darkness rulebook is available for free on RPGNow in celebration of “Read an E-Book Week”. This 224-paged PDF is the core rulebook for all “new” World of Darkness settings like [...]Read on >>
The Haikubot – New Mutant Future Race/Class
To give credit where credit is due, the original idea for this came from a new player who contacted me and wanted to play a robot. The twist was, instead of rolling for mutations he wanted to have the ability to influenc[...]Read on >>
Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 3
Here we have another player log submission for the Star Wars game. As always, such submissions are worth bonus experience points. – in this case, of course, for Kira Keldav. We returned to the planet of [...]Read on >>
A Much Belated Runepunk Review
I finally had the chance to pick a copy of Runepunk from Reality Blurs and its pretty good. In case you don’t know they’re the folks who gave us such Savage greats as Realms of Cthulhu and the upcoming Agents[...]Read on >>
Beyond Sanctuary: Liamas Appledore
The fourth character in my Beyond Sanctuary Mythic GME Old School Sandbox game. Liamas Appledore Young Halfling male with unruly red hair and sideburns; typically wears leather armor and always has a smile on his f[...]Read on >>
Geomorph #19
Today's geomorph features a variety of corner transitions. Note the stacked rooms in the north-east and the temple (with spooky altar) in the south-east.[...]Read on >>
"The Immaculate Weeping Amputation" and Artifact Swords
There's always someone talking about making magic items "unique(er)," which is a commendable goal. I'm rereading Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series and I've been really jazzed on all the hubbub concerning the perf[...]Read on >>
Lost Vegas #2 (A Call of Cthulhu Campaign)
Episode 2: Love’s Lonely Children (Part 2) (an adaption of the Richard Watts scenario of the same name.) Wherein the investigators discover the unspeakable horror responsible for the murder Cast Joe …… Jame[...]Read on >>
[Let's Study - C:tL] The Court of Summer
Whereas the Court of Spring revels in desire, the Court of Summer has an entirely different coping strategy to what has hurt them. They seek to hurt them back. The Court of Wrath looks to gather strength in all its form[...]Read on >>
5 Traveller Rules
The first rule is: design games like adventures. It might sound simplistic but novice and long-time Game Masters alike have stared across the table wondering why their players seem bored. This is actually quite common[...]Read on >>
Savage Menagerie: Jaguirrel
No. Enc.: 1d10 (3d10)Alignment: NeutralMovement: 120' (40') Armor Class: 8Hit Dice: 1Attacks: 1 (bite)Damage: 1d8 (potential 2d10 additional)Save: L1Morale: 8Hoard Class: NoneA Jaguirrel (pronounced jag-whirl) is a small[...]Read on >>
Weekend Breakdown
Blimey, I had a busy weekend of gaming and gaming-related activity. In particular order — that is, chronologically sorted and neatly placed in nested lists — this weekend, I: Carb and protein and fat and oil[...]Read on >>
Black Rose, Part 2
March 8, 2010 from The Other Side
Filed under: Character, Other Systems, Play, RPG Hub, World Building
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[...] Filed under: Character, Other Systems, Play, RPG Hub, World Building
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Another Peek At Chaos Earth: First Responders
Obscurest. Reverence. Ever.I still can't help but fiddle with First Responders, even though it is completed and submitted. I have you a first sneak preview a little over a week ago. Here's another one. I have three words[...]Read on >>
The Week In Geek (extra portion)…
A tasty extra serving of your weekly round-up of geeky news you might have otherwise missed...(1) Osprey Does Zombies: Well-known military history publishers Osprey is releasing a "zombie-special" in time for Halloween t[...]Read on >>
Clorencian Times From My Clockworks Game
Good day all. I’ve decided to continue with this little project of every so often doing a Clorencian Times piece for my players in our current Clockworks game. I want these to add a little bit of flavor to the world[...]Read on >>
Operation Omniscience
This article contains content for Geheimkrieg, Nevermet Press’ alternate World War II pulp setting. Our content is community driven so we want feedback from you. Please leave a comment here, write about it on your [...]Read on >>
Enter Traveller
I can count on one hand the number of Total Party Kills I've had as a Game Master over the years. Friday night, I almost added one to that number.I won't go into all the gory details, save it to say the group rolled two[...]Read on >>
Dungeonslayers: Forgeworks
Finally the first official supplement for the Dungeonslayers game has been translated into English. Forgeworks by Christian Kennig is a 4-paged PDF containing new weapons, armor, and magic items for his free roleplaying [...]Read on >>
Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 09
March 8, 2010 from Happy Jacks RPG Podcast
Filed under: DnD4e, Podcast Episode, Podcasts, RPG Hub, Reviews, Savage Worlds, podcast
Stu, Stork and Tappy discuss listener email, a few qualities of great players, DnD4e Martial Power 2 and Player’s Handbook 3.
Featured song: The Man Who Doesn’t Like Beer, by the Poxy Boggards, featured on Li[...] Filed under: DnD4e, Podcast Episode, Podcasts, RPG Hub, Reviews, Savage Worlds, podcast
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[Let's Study - C:tL] The Court of Spring
The Court of Spring is the most outwardly optimistic of the Changeling Courts, as they revel in their liberation from the Gentry. They represent those who cope with trauma by celebrating, living in the now to banish t[...]Read on >>
Fantasy Wargaming
As I mentioned in my previous post, I found a copy of Fantasy Wargaming at Half Price Books last week. This brought back personal memories for me, but also represents a slice of gaming history that I’d like to write [...]Read on >>
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