Category: Uncategorized

March 1, 2020

Attack of the Kind of Friendly Spider-People!

Aranea: Book of the Spider is now available on the DM’s Guild. I’ve been wanting to write this for quite a while, ever since I was working on my 5e conversion and expansion for the classic Castle Amber adventure. The Aranea appeared in one of the earliest encounters of Castle Amber (they’d previously appeared in The Isle of Dread), with...

February 16, 2020

Starting Over

From 2006 to 2012 or so, I regularly wrote a tabletop RPG blog called Neitherworld Stories. As a blog, it didn’t have the most defined of niches—I wrote a good bit about game mechanics and theory, but I also discussed plot ideas and things that occurred in the various games I was involved in. I played a wide variety of...

March 19, 2013

A Single Google Search for All the RPG Inspiration Pictures You Need

One of my new gaming buddies recently asked for advice about finding inspirational pictures for RPGs. He’d been mostly looking at video game concept art (which is a pretty good idea in itself). Responses were pretty typical. Google searches. Deviantart. Whatever. I suggested that he start from some pieces of art that he likes, find out the artist, and look...

August 8, 2012

Gyre, the Fractured City: An Introduction

Some of the twelve worlds are nearly indistinguishable from our own. Others are barren wastelands, sylvan paradises, or dystopian nightmares. They may be ruled by magic or by technology or by sheer greed and ambition. Between the worlds, lies Gyre. The great cycle brings each of the worlds in line with Gyre. When a world is aligned, the gates of...

May 30, 2012

Thoughts on hit points and misplaced abstraction

Hit points are an abstraction of a combination of physical durability, tenacity, skill, luck, narrative importance, and… well… probably a few other things. Damage, however, typically scales directly with the size/power of the weapon used. There’s a disconnect here. At first level, I can maybe take a hit or two from an ax… but probably not more than that. At...

April 28, 2012

Roleplaying in the Secret History of…

The mystical secret history genre (think Tim Powers) is ripe for roleplaying. Unknown Armies sits squarely in this space, and many modern-setting games are compatible. They work because people largely share a sense of history and historical importance. If I say “the lost survivor of the Titanic” or “the sketchbook of Aquinas” or “the last words of  Eva Braun,” there...

February 21, 2012

Reversing Initiative: A Modest Proposal

Here’s an idea for tweaking initiative in Pathfinder and other games that use d20-style system. It is loosely based on some ideas from Exalted. The system there had some neat ideas, but it was far too complicated. The system here is simplified quite a bit and requires minimal deviation from the basic d20 ruleset: Each participant rolls a d20, as...

February 12, 2012

Pushing your Luck

Let’s revisit a topic that I brought up five years ago. I’ve never liked that luck tends to be handled in RPGs by a reroll. The other day, while driving into Baltimore, I think I realized why: a reroll is a test of skill. This is largely system-agnostic, but I’ll describe it in d20ish terms. Let’s say my character is...

January 9, 2012

A game designed for web based play?

When RPGs were created there were some assumptions that were made. They’d be played around a table. Players would have paper and writing implements. You’d be playing with people you know.These weren’t outlandish assumptions. They probably weren’t even conscious. These assumptions led to some very basic game design decisions. Players could roll dice as a randomizer – everyone around the table could...

January 4, 2012

The Dwarves of Kor

In the new game I’m running, Dwarves are weird. Before the refugees settled in Kor, they had no idea how weird. First off, the dwarves who headed to the surface were all young. Dwarves in Kor will live nearly a thousand years. Typically, dwarves spend their young adulthood either in the military, in an apprenticeship, or as an entrepreneur. Adventurers...