The Anatomy Of Evil: What Makes a Good Villain?

I’ve been watching some of my old Stargate: SG1 episodes during the last week, and (as often happens) some of the commentary (in the season 9 extras) sparked an interesting question. The discussion was about the r[...]
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The Winter War

Lord Crase (center, mounted) leads his skeletal force into battle.After the Freelands of Mirrym campaign wrapped up, I wanted to play a military-style game that emphasized a lot of miniatures and terrain. In a sense, th[...]
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Loot And Encumbrance

In the process of writing an RPG that at its core wants to support dungeon-looting play more than is usual, the idea of encumbrance plays an important part. In older editions of D&D, the particulars of how you are go[...]
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The Freelands of Mirrym

I used to game with a group of guys who were rock solid in every way. Friendly, intelligent, funny and always willing to make time to play. I left San Diego to work inland and was without a gaming group or even friends [...]
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Ning’s Cave: Catching Up, Part 1

Wow.  I’m really behind on keeping up with Lankhmar sightings across the ‘net.  I need to catch up, and I don’t want any of these items to slip by.  Perhaps Ning’s twisty passages will allow fo[...]
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So I Hear You Like Deathwatch Campaigns?

Some people have expressed curiosity about my upcoming Warhammer 40k campaign. Right now I’m planning a Deathwatch online campaign, which is unfortunate because Deathwatch isn’t out yet save for the early gen[...]
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I Need Some Unique Action Point Counters

OK, readers, I need some help. I’m working on a campaign with a game that uses Action Points. You know, award them to players for various things, and in return they can spend them in the course of play for bonuses an[...]
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Essential Elements of a DND Campaign

Building a campaign can be tough and sometimes we forget and leave some of the important things out, so I’m going to take you into my world as we start from the bottom, and build up. As some of us know, a campaign [...]
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Andaliel Archeological Survey Brief: Common Spirits In Eden I

By Karin Apuleius As a member of a sanctioned Andalian Archeological Survey team you are tasked with delving into the most foul and terrifying, exotic and awe-inspiring, tumultuous and sometimes even beautiful places in [...]
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The Epic Game: Can It Still Be Run?

For a while now, I’ve been working on a big campaign. Like really, amazingly, tremendously big. I’m doing a lot of front-loading work on it—it isn’t a total “sandbox” game, but it’s been a pleasure workin[...]
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Point Buy For Dark Heresy

It seems to me that Rogue Trader’s point buy characteristics generation could easily be applied to Dark Heresy characters as well. All you have to do is find the starting characteristic based on your home world (pa[...]
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What Is Your GM Action?

Lately while being eternally disconcerted by things, I’ve also been plagued by bouts of curiosity. While I don’t tend to like getting into subjects of classifying types or subsets of players or GMs or (god fo[...]
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Setting And Enforcing Campaign Limitations

Good morning! First, if you haven't voted in the poll to the right of the page there, please take a minute to do so. As I said, think of it as helping me either win or lose a drinking bet.Today I want to discuss a bit [...]
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Challenges of using Runequest Glorantha adventures in a Nehwon setting

In the latest of my Nehwon Campaigns I used an adventure campaign called 'Troubled Waters' from the Runequest 'River of Cradles' supplement. In this post I'll talk about how I adapted this adventure for Nehwon.[...]
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Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps

It’s time for another of my occasional Lessons From The West Wing. This draws heavily on concepts put forward in a single episode, Episode 16 of Season 2, “Somebody’s Going To Emergency, Somebody’[...]
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101 Clever D&D Traps and Trap Ideas

Looking for ideas for some Dungeons and Dragons traps your players will love? We're compiling a list of 101 clever D&D trap ideas right here.[...]
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The Great Tree: Arcane Study III

Student Life Beginning students of esoteric magic live in accommodations within the large campuses of the arcane colleges. The Points of Light academy in Oomash, for example, is a repurposed fortress quite prominently vi[...]
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A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power

This article deals in subjects that are sensitive issues to a lot of people. Everything contained within is written from a roleplaying context and no judgements are intended regarding the validity of any individual pers[...]
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Google Wave Seems Kaput

In what is a very sad bit of news for me as a huge fan of the platform, Google has posted today that the end of Google Wave is near as user adoption is not what they wanted. It’s understandable … Continue rea[...]
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Lifestyle And Economy III: Cities

There are very few large cities on the surface of Adel. Each of the Seven Nations has a capital city that is their grandest and most treasured, but the remainder of their territory is mostly villages and then towns. Each[...]
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Threats To Eden I: The Sorians

The Spirits of Eden campaign setting is a more civilized and safe fantasy campaign world than usual, but not entirely so. Not every road is safe, not every wild conquered. From the seemingly random whims of capricious sp[...]
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Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies

Okay, so for the first time since we started this online magazine/blog, one of us has missed getting a post up. Johnn struck problems with his planned post at the last possible moment, and then tried to rewrite it but mi[...]
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The Great Tree: Arcane Study In Eden II

Becoming A Student The Arcane student in Eden is a very uncommon sight. There are two sources of young magic users in Eden. The first are magic colleges. There are two large, successful colleges in Eden with their own re[...]
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Fantasy Economic Sourcebooks

I wrote a review before of Grain Into Gold, a book I found useful, engrossing and startlingly easy to use. Despite nearly failing Introduction To Macroeconomics in college (ironically I feared it would destroy my journal[...]
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Common Culture: Dress In Eden

The world of the Spirits of Eden can be rather different than the standard medieval-European fantasy setting in regards to common culture. Particularly the styles of dress differ greatly. The vast majority of the people [...]
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The Races of Eden Series Is Done!

There’s always been a short article on the new races in Eden in the Campaign Setting section. However, until now, there’s never been a complete series of in-depth articles about the origins, physiology, perso[...]
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Races of Eden: Anpe

Of the accepted group of mortal races in Adel, it is said that only one can take to the skies, and this is the nature of the Anpe. These energetic creatures are uncommon as far as Eden’s races go but … Contin[...]
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When The GM Becomes The Player

This Friday, I get to take a step back from my normal role of Game Master and actually just play. One of the guys in our group is running the Tri-Tac Games classic Stalking The Night Fantastic (1st ed, I believe). Augme[...]
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Unique scrolls in fantasy RPGs

I never was too keen on generic magic items, to the point that I ended up running a low-magic fantasy campaign specifically to get away from them. Ring of invisibility, bracers of defense, wand of paralysis...it all stru[...]
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Athas Chronicles #3: A Shock in the Desert

Momentum is starting to grow for Encounters at my local store.  We started out at three, and this time we get five!  We’ve got a group of regulars who are starting to show up to each session, which is awesome.  [...]
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Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together

Why have different languages in an RPG? How can they be used to enhance a story? And what’s wrong with Universal Translators, anyway? I have a question about using languages in fantasy RPGs. There are numerous[...]
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Online game recruiting

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve started an online D&D Fourth Edition game, complete with recruiting players online (as opposed to my current game that started with an in-person game and morphed online due [...]
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3 Popular Campaign Types

Ok, lets talk about campaign types. There are 3 basic types of campaigns that I have seen DM’s run. The Epic “Destruction of the known Universe, and you’re the only people capable of doing anything about it” camp[...]
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X-COM Armageddon Campaign

Yesterday I posted some introductory fiction for an upcoming play-by-post campaign of mine on Myth-Weavers.com. This campaign will be drawing inspiration (and name) from some of my favorite video games of all time, the X[...]
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Some Campaign Introductory Fiction

I’m gearing up to run a NAA D6 campaign over on Myth-Weavers.com since a friend of mine is technologically cursed and is unable to utilize Google Wave (which is steadily becoming my preferred medium to run play-by-[...]
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Athas Chronicles #2: Can You Read?

I didn’t prep much for the first Encounters session because I didn’t know what to expect.  Prepping for this game, I try to give a little more.  Besides building the board with my Dungeon tiles, I setup my [...]
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Zagyg and the Cheap DM – A Guide to Free Resources for Running a Greyhawk Campaign

So, continuing with our series, can we garner enough free resources from the web, to allow us to run a more or less canonical Greyhawk campaign? Without resorting to piracy or ebay? Hell yes! Thanks to the many dedicate[...]
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Prof. Tolkien and the Cheap DM – Online Resources for Putting Together a Middle-Earth Campaign

I never got into Rolemaster. My gaming friends and I, were quite happy with AD&D, thank you very much. Today, I wish I had started exploring what I.C.E. had to offer. If I had done so, I would no doubt now own some [...]
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An Indicative Remark

Sometimes I think I’m a very terrible DM and sometimes I’m reminded it is probably mostly in my head and that I am at least passable albeit eccentric at it. I’m really hyper-critical of myself and I fin[...]
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“Conan and the Cheap DM” Revisited – A Few More Free Resources for Running Hyboria

In my original post, Conan and the Cheap DM – A Guide to Free Resources for Running a Hyborian Campaign, I gathered and spewed forth all the free Conan material I had found, which I thought would be useful for DM’s[...]
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Deathwatch: Final Sanction

My friends know that I’m a guy who just isn’t into roleplaying the typical western hero type we all know from action movies and games made in America. E.g. bald or crew-cut gruff marine types who teach us tha[...]
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Races of Eden: Rhonnu

Not all of Eden’s races are entirely pleasant to be around. Spirits come in many shapes, sizes and ideologies. While the Rhonnu are not strictly evil beings, they are tinged with an aura of distrust, mischief, arro[...]
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Utilizing Maps In The Game

I’m not a fan of tactical grid combat, but I do like maps as a visualization tool. Particularly I’ve been thinking about dungeon mapping and particularly this tool by Inkwell Ideas. I have always liked the id[...]
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General World/Campaign Creation Tips

So, I was glancing around the web the other day, pondering what to write when I realized people write about world building constantly, campaign creation etc. So I thought, I’d go through a similar thing with my own spi[...]
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The Critical Threshold: A brief debate on the Merits of Extreme Results

This is not the post that I expected to make this week. I simply ran out of time and could not finish either the article I had intended to post this week [about time travel] or the one for next week [the long-awaited fo[...]
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The DM Should Utilize Help From Peasants

As a DM we often get overwhelmed with all the extra jobs and things we have to take care of, and it causes a lot of us to “burn out”, or the game runs dry and players make negative comments. These are all elements th[...]
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City to Dungeon

The recent (although I swore I saw this photo long ago*) big hole in Guatemala and Purple Worm Post got me a thinking.I'm partial to huge fantasy cities.  Places like Ptolus, Alexandria or Constantinople analogs, CS[...]
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Broken Spokes Finally Leaves the Station

I am trepidatious. Tomorrow evening we are scheduled to start this Broken Spokes campaign that we initially made characters for . . . well, at least three months ago. Embarrassing as it sounds, it’s been three soli[...]
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Rerun: Spirits of Eden Tips For D&D 4e

In the past, I had a huge article on how to run Spirits of Eden campaigns. Since that article, I decided to de-couple the setting from D&D 4e. As you saw, the fluff articles all moved to one side, and … Continu[...]
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Races of Eden: Ainyu

Some of Eden’s common races have much more to them than can be seen at first glance. The Ainyu are in the company of other mortal races, but they are Spirits in reality, their lifespans stretching much further then[...]
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