inspiration Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Neitherworld Stories

October 1, 2007

Rites of Passage

So, last week I was at a conference that focused upon cultural competency with respect to social services. Yeah, it was as exciting as it sounds. The conference was in a hotel (right near O’Hare) that I knew I’d been in before. It took me a little while to realize that it was the home of WindyCon. Anyway, one of...

June 7, 2007

A different kind of city book

I recently picked up Seven Cities, a book in the Penumbra d20 line that Atlas Games produced. I haven’t read the entire thing, but so far I like it. A lot. It has seven cities of various sizes – from thorp to large city. The detail is finer on the smaller towns, of course, but they did something rather smart...

May 31, 2007

PC is for PsyChopath

The other night, I saw the first episode of Dexter, a TV series on Showtime which is based upon the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter. It was really good, but that isn’t the point of this post. Dexter is about a guy (named Dexter. surprise.) who was adopted at a young age after some sort of traumatic incident. He believes himself...

May 2, 2007

NPC tactical guides

So, this morning, Jeff posted some stupid Dracula tricks. I should probably just post this as a comment in his blog, but… ummm… I didn’t. So there. Unless you’ve already read it, that won’t make sense, so let me explain. This past Sunday, Jeff ran Lords of Creation for the C-U Run Club. If you are curious to know what...

April 24, 2007

Run Away

My Monday night gaming group, which I’ve been playing with since I moved to town in 2001, might be coming to an end in the not-too-distant future. One of the three guys I play with is moving to NYC (he’s finishing up his second Ph.D. from the U of I and got a teaching gig). Last night we came to...

March 15, 2007

Real Magic Items: why settle for banal visuals

I’m a little burnt out on Exalted right now, despite (or perhaps, in part, because of) the fact that I am playing in two occasional campaigns. Mostly it is the system that gets me down about it. I love the visuals. It isn’t the anime stuff. I can do without that. Instead, it is the simple fact that interesting visuals...

February 16, 2007

Maxximum Oddity

Last night I re-watched the first few episodes of The Maxx for the first time in probably about a decade. It was every bit as strange as I remembered it being. Possibly more so. There are probably some deep observations I could make paralleling The Maxx and RPGs, talking about escape into fantasy worlds and heroic self-images and such. Instead,...

February 12, 2007

The Peace of Winter

Once again, I missed Winter War. Really, the big gaming draw for me was Jeff’s Encounter Critical game – but that filled up on Friday. The other big draw was dealers and the auction, but I wasn’t feeling like being around a crowd… and I really don’t need an excuse to drop a ton of money on gaming stuff. It...

January 25, 2007

Brainwriting a Campaign

Today I was in a training all morning. One of the things we covered were some team-based brainstorming techniques. I’d been familiar with the idea of brainwriting before, but this morning I thought of using it for group campaign design. Here’s the basic (slightly edited for my purpose) idea. You begin with a grid/table (a spreadsheet works). Across the top...

February 22, 2006

Mini-Book Review: Paladin of Souls

I recently finished reading Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold. It won the 2004 Hugo for best novel. It is a sequel to the 2001 Hugo-nominated Curse of Chalion, which I haven’t read, which purportedly features a different protagonist and largely non-overlapping cast of characters, and which was not at all necessary as a prerequisite to enjoying Paladin of...

Tag: inspiration