RPG Bloggers

Do Gods Need Religion?

More for RPG Blog Carnival: Religion, this time inspired by thinking about the topic itself and the way people have responded to it. I’ve always been partial to chicken-and-egg questions, particularly within the context of invented worlds. And I always come back to this one: Do gods and...

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More Magical Traditions for Mythic Europe

While the Order of Hermes looks with disdain on other forms, it certainly has no monopoly on magical traditions in Mythic Europe. Hedge Magic is a new Ars Magica 5th Edition sourcebook for those traditions and has just been released in hardcover by Atlas Games. In it are chapters on six different...

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Newbie Dm’s Bestiarum Vocabulum

Ok, so tonight I want to introduce what I hope is a semi-regular feature here at NewbieDM, some home-made monsters. Just as a warning though, I don’t claim to be a great monster designer, nor am I 100% comfortable with the monster making mechanics in the DMG, I’m just doing what I have...

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Newbie Dm’s Bestiarum Vocabulum

The Week In Geek…

A round-up of geeky new that you might have missed...(1) Obama = Geek. Official: Barack Obama's "one of us". The next US President's coolness continues to grow as we find out more about the man - he collects Conan and Spider-Man comics (and he's read e...

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DM Chronicle: Session 5, Alien Feys & Whiskered Pirates, Part 1

Previously in Chatty’s Game: Our Heroes battled a pirate Scholar and her Dragon Pet only to see her escape at the last second before defeat. Alone against a city of angry Ape Men, they almost managed to turn them to their cause only to be defeated by a crazed zealot and his retinue of elite...

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Review: Martial Power

I’d been looking forward to Martial Power, the fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement for martial characters, for some time. Happily, Amazon got it to me a day early, so I’m able to review it. Does it meet expectations? I obviously haven’t been able to play with the...

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[RPG Carnival] Gods in Space Opera?

It’s my first entry into the RPG Carnival, and in line with this month’s topic of Religion, let’s take a look at the role that religions and gods take in a Space Opera setting. All Part of the Genre: While Sci-Fi occasionally might give the impression that it’s a godless,...

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Weapon vs. what?

This here post is a reply to "Weapon vs. AC" over at Grognardia. I wanted to show some charts I wanted to talk about, so I'm posting here rather than commenting there. First, let's take a look at the Man-to-Man melee chart from Chainmail: This chart predates the concept of characters having...

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D&D Latest Releases

Released by Wizards today… Martial Power - Excerpts: The Epic Fighter, Daring Acrobat, Beastmaster Ranger, Bravura Presence, Flamebrow Commander, The Aerialist Rogue, Feral Spirit, The Paragon Fighter Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons - Excerpts: Brown Dragon, Frostforged Wyrm, Bone...

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Bugbear du Jour: Noorda of the Blackened Wastes

The dark eyes flickered underneath the cowl, a flash of red like a slash of blood across the shadowy folds. Across the table the Dwarven Cleric reflexively touched his axe, a deep seated racial animosity coming to the surface. The bugbear’s lips twitched into a sharp-toothed...

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RPG Carnival IV: Religion

Mad Brew tackles the topic of Religion for the fourth installment of the RPG Blog Carnival. He delves into creating pantheons and constructs a tribute to the Crs'Tchen Debacle of Dragon Magazine [Retold by The Core Mechanic].

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Building Character: Jarvis Ebner

Occupation: Bookstore owner Legal Status: U.S. Citizen with no criminal record Marital Status: Unmarried Age: 33 Place of Birth: Scranton, Pennsylvania Description: Jarvis is pale, underweight and of average height. His light brown hair is thin and receding prematurely. His brown, rheumy eyes are...

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The B.A.D.D. Files, part 2

Today's text file from the B.A.D.D. Files is the sad story of Darren Molitor in B.A.D.D.'s words and his own.

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Kidz: Rules revision

I’ve spent the last three days hammering away at the v3.0 rules for Kidz and I’m pretty happy where it’s going. Although it’s based upon the PDQ game system, I’ve done quite a bit of tweaking of the rules to make it fit the tropes and feel of the “Meddlesome...

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A Steady Game

I am SO happy that I have a group that is usually very steady as to when we game. It’s something that I’ve tried to keep going sense I started gaming back in the 80s. My 1st group gamed every Saturday for over 4 years. Missing only a VERY few times. If someone couldn’t show, [...]

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Weekend Update– 17Nov2008

Leaf On The Wind strikes again! Hello all. Last week was a very productive week for me, in terms of gaming. I finished off the last few pages of the Spycraft 2.0 rulebook. A very crunchy game indeed. I am not doing anything with it for the next week, as I am [...]

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Impressions: Deadlands Reloaded

One of the problems with convention games is that you only get to sample a small slice of a game. In addition to the time constraints, some of the more complicated aspects of a system may get left out to facilitate new players. This is something I could have gone for in the Werewolf game [...]

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Creatures of Gensokyo I: Lake of Fog

Today I’m presenting a series of fourth edition D&D monsters from the mystical land of Gensokyo. This realm forms the setting to the Touhou Project, a series of shoot-em-ups by Japanese amateur developers Team Shanghai Alice. The series has drawn a cult following both in Japan and...

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Critters Fixed…and a few more besides.

So...I made a few changes to the last set of NPC's and monsters, and have added a few more members of the 20 Silvers Gang. Please steal them, and use in good health : ) Thanks to Gregor and Graham for helping me to see the forest for the trees. As always, feedback is appreciated. My goal for the...

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Because the King Wears Green Boxers!

In response to my last post, fire snake aries asks:It sounds like you're really good at improvising and adapting the area and what its inhabitants do depending upon what happens. I try to do that, but it's tough! I always seem to find myself thinking, ...

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Castle Whiterock on sale at Paizo

As I mentioned in my last post, Castle Whiterock is on sale at Paizo for 50% off as part of Goodman Games’s endless “the end is near” sale. If anything is tempting me this holiday season, it’s this, because $50 is just an insane deal for this box set, which truly is the...

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Gametable Tutorial: Map Organization

I’m sure everyone has a wish list of features they’d love to see added to Gametable. This post`ll tell you how to workaround what I feel is the most important one. I try to keep the bulk of my map elements (dungeons, towns, roads) all on one map. It doesn’t necessarily have to be...

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DM’s Corner – Running Combat Encounters

Salutations and hello my fine Dungeon Mastering companions, and to you players and unaffiliated readers out there as well! As we all know with the holiday season in full swing, it’s a busy time of year for everyone. And as the assault on Northrend has just begun, it’s especially busy for certain...

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Deep Discounts at RPG Overstock

RPG Overstock has some pretty awesome deals on lots of games. And it’s not only RPGs. They also have a large selection of Euro games, board games, war games, card games, minis, and other stuff. Worth a visit.

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My HEX-y Love Affair

So, we discussed... and decided we'd give HEX (Hollow Earth Expedition) a whirl.

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Gaming with Insignificant Others

Not long ago my husband and I spent some time blogging about gaming with significant others. Then after we spent some time talking about it in our podcast I decided to write a blog from the other end of the spectrum; Gaming with Insignificant others. Now, I’m not really speaking of people...

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Random Beastie Maker

As you may know, I put together a little script for my random generator program that can create unique critters for roleplaying games. I posted one of those up in the blog entry here "Random Monster Generation and the Feathered Monrer" and since then I...

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Stacking 4e D&D Powers

So here’s a quick question for all the 4e rules lawyers out there. I’m generating a 1st level Bugbear Fighter/Rogue for a campaign. This gives him Sneak Attack once per encounter, and Predatory Eye too, once per encounter. Any by-the-rules reason why he can’t use them both at the...

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Monotheistic religions in roleplaying

Usually most roleplaying game backgrounds feature polytheistic religions like the classic D&D pantheon. You have several gods that are responsible for certain domains like war, trade, luck, you name it. Monotheistic religions resembling real life religions are usually avoided in high-fantasy...

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