BY MICHAEL PACHECO

I got new Dice Age dice! You know what that means.

I’m not a big video gamer, but I keep tabs on video games innovations. One of which is the randomness of the guns in Boarderlands. For those of you that don’t play it, Boarderlands doesn’t have a catalog of weapons like other shooters. Guns are generated with random rates of fire, damage, accuracy, damage types, and extra features. The first thing I though [...]

I found this video while surfing around on Geeks Are Sexy. It really makes me what to play some D&D, Pathfinder, or maybe Dungeon Crawl Classics. I believe I may have to add a Bear Claw Tavern to my next campaign in honor of this song.

Why are combat encounters so much easier to run than non-combat encounters? Easier to imagine, design, vary, and implement. It isn’t just D&D, either — it’s easy to run combat encounters in systems that don’t support combat.

I think part of the problem exists at the level where more effort has gone into creating fighting styles and monsters to overcome than any other situation.

I think if logic, rhetoric, and philosophical debate were all as interesting to people as beating up a menagerie of fantastical monsters, there’d be as many different systems for exploiting logical fallacies as there are variant polearms.

But there’s [...]

'H.P. Lovecraft: Fear Of The Unknown' is a documentary made in 2008. It traces the path of Lovecraft's life and work, about how each influenced the other, and the legacy that was created from that. It's also interesting because of the various people who add to this discussion - Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, and Guillermo del Toro, amongst others. Worth a look!

One of the biggest boons in AD&D to player characters, were the followers. By 7th through 9th level most Classes started gaining followers. The rules for followers were found in the AD&D Dungeon Master Guide, pg.16. A group of Player … Continue reading → Related posts:

1. Random DND online Generators – Code Only
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4. Imperial Guard (new style) Storm Troopers

A few weeks back at game night Adam and Dan were talking excitedly about the upcoming Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode. Rich, having never seen the show asked some questions […]

Day 10 - Craziest Thing You've Seen Happen (To a Party/Character/Your Player's/Etc.)
The craziest thing I've seen happen to a character involved a 3.5 Ninja (who loved all of his gear and gadgets) and a gelatinous cube. My friend Devan was playing the ninja. We were in some underground complex (the same one that contained my favorite trap I do believe). There was a cliff that lead to a pool of water below. Devan wanted to do a cool acrobatic dive into the water (while the rest of the party wanted to climb down). He made his acrobatics check, rolled [...]

The party at session start:

1. Arwa (Weasly) - Wizard's guard freed from charm
2. Arg - Half-orc
3. Gnarly- Druid
4. Christopher - priest of Mithra
5. Maximus - Magic User
6. Capt. Vanir 
7. SkwankyHalfling Warrior
8. Handof - soldier
9. Wolf - Viking
10. Nafre - soldier
11. Thovin-Cleric
12. Brik - Black Church Acolyte 

Having navigated the mysterious chess board room, the war-weary party continued down a passageway which took them to a bubbling fountain of what appeared to be clear water. Examining the water but wary of all the other deadly traps throughout this complex, it was decided to avoid drinking the water (although Skwanky the halfling was already splashing around in it) and continue down the hallway.

A member of my old gaming group went through a difficult operation yesterday (successfully, by all reports!). To help her out, I wrote down some Hospital Survival Tips. I thought I'd post them over at my Other Blog in case anyone else needed them

Looking for inspiration for your post-apocalypse RPG campaign? This list of 19 books has lots of ideas. Some of them you will definitely heard of, others not so much.

What is interesting about the list is the preponderance of zombie apocalypse novels. There seems to have been a marked shift over the last ten years away from nuclear, plague and environmental disaster novels. Personally I think zombies should be classed as horror, not post-apocalyptic fiction as it is the believability of the disaster which was critical to my appreciation of the post-apoc novel.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28914673@N02/7692776892

The 6d6 RPG is available [...]

Season's greetings, folks! I'm going to be showing some snowy Elmore illos for the next few weeks. Brrr, that young lass in the image above makes me cold just looking at her! She needs to cover up a bit more, she'll catch her death! ;-)  Anyway, life is very [...]

The Bridge airs tonight at 8pm on Channel 4 (in the UK).

Roger just posted a complete Version 1.0 of his 52 Pages Rules RPG for character levels 1-3. I've been following this for a while as he posted pages in progress to his blog. He has some neat little rules in there, but what I like most about this project is the design. No lengthy paragraphs of description here; everything is concise in quick blurbs and iconography. It's easy to understand and would be quick to reference at the table.

Yeah, Halford 3 IS a Christmas album. The only real problem with it is that he doesn’t cover “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause”.

This Month's Blog Carnival is hosted by the Casting Shadows blog and the theme is 'Taking Charge.'
Taking Charge. A wonderful theme for the month. One of the most engaging aspects of table-top role-playing games has to be the way most games facilitate and empower the players to actively take charge of their destinies, to step up and take charge in the greater world around them.

I considered writing about something a lot of us old-timers wheeze and grumble about; the so-called 'End Game,' which back in ye olden times was basically still just part of the game. Building [...]

We posted our first podcast on January 13th 2011, it is nearing the three year mark for the podcast. There have been some bumps along the way but it has been a fantastic ride and I can’t wait to see where it takes us next, however we must take a break. […]

GoingLast Takes and Extended Rest GoingLast

Earlier this week I mentioned between classes that I’d really like to play an RPG again. And as luck has it, my friends all got quite excited about the idea. Only two of them have actually played any games before, but all the others are also quite enthusiastic and so I know have 6 players already and a good chance that this game will keep going for two or three years. The kind of opportunity every small-time GM would wish for.

I’ve decited to ditch Pathfinder and instead go with Castles & Crusades, which is much easier to learn, faster to [...]

Following up on my post from yesterday regarding location properties for developing a regional adventuring ecosystem — I wanted to talk a little bit about each of the following — mines, caves, and quarries. And canyons, for alliteration.

Actually, canyons are good for another reason.

Oblivion and Skyrim naturally feature all three as fairly generic adventuring locations, ranging from the more natural caverns, to hollowed-out areas of earth of both the above-ground (quarry) and the below-ground (mine) varieties.

A canyon then, could be seen as a natural equivalent to a quarry. Oh, though technically mines can be either above- or below-ground. Whatever. Moving [...]

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From August 27, 2012, Dungeon's Master once again presents:What's In Your Backpack? A Healthy Dose of Reality.

When it comes to fantasy role-playing there are a lot of things you have to just accept in order for the game to function. Magic exists. Dragons exist. Elves exist. I have no problems with any of these things. They may be fantastic but they're familiar and acceptable. But when it comes to the amount of gear a typical adventurer can carry in his backpack [...]

In light of the December 2013 Blog Carnival,I’m going to say some words on taking charge. I apologize in advance if I end up soap-boxing, because this is a topic I’m pretty passionate about.The principle value of a table-top RPG is the joint story telling it offers, this cannot happen if the players do not speak up.

In a table-top rpg we’re usually playing daring adventurers. These are people who have chosen the most ambitious and dangerous of careers. They will be, almost to a man, the most decisive and action-oriented people you have ever met. They are not the sort [...]

For the Creative Mountain Games 12th Anniversary Sale, all items are 50% off!  See more here!

Like all heroes and villains in the movies they have theme music.

What would your theme song be for your current character?  Or if you prefer, what would the theme song be when you DM?

And it works really well! Indie rock band Loon Lake from Melbourne, Australia dons armour and latex orc masks in order to bash it out on a battlefield. The LARP ‘Swordcraft‘ is in Melbourne as well and is a typical fantasy sword-bashing mayhem. Looks like a lot of fun! I …

Storyscape (Slabtown Games)

Slabtown Games. Wieder einmal steht eine Tischrollenspiel(r)evoltion vor der Tr.Das Entwicklerteam, dem auch der bekannte Rollenspielautor Robin D. Laws angehrt, wird inrund fnf Tagen einen Kickstarter lancieren, um ihre “innovative Verknpfung” des klassischenPen & Paper-Rollenspielsmit Tablets und PCs zu finanzieren.

“The technology of tabletop roleplaying hasn’t changed since 1974. It’s time for an upgrade.”
- Slabtown Games slogan

Das Konzept von Storyscape erinnert an die Vermarktungsstrategien von iTunes und Google Play.Hinter den Schlagworten Create- Play – Buy – Sell verbirgt sich ein universellesRollenspielsystem, welches auf die konsquenteNutzung von Tablets (Android/iOS)undPCs (Windows/Mac) setzt.Spielleiter und Spieler verwenden idealerweise jeweilsein eigenes Gert, wenngleich [...]

AxlsallesBesides Dungeon Master of course.

10) You bastard (or other popular insults)

9) Referee, Moderator, Narrator and other dull system neutral terms

8) Screen Monkey

7) Keeper of Arcane Law

6) Holmeister, for all your Human Occupied Landfill needs

5) Chill master

4) Labyrinth Lord

3) Suzerain

2) Dungeon Boss

1) Agonarch

If you liked this week of posts on Hack & Slash, take a moment to check out my Patreon campaign. For less than a cup of coffee a month, it's your opportunity to give back to creators you [...]

"Bitten" is the breakout novel from author Kelley Armstrong. It deals with Elena Michaels, the only female werewolf.

With Bitten Kelley began a 13 novel epic story of many lives and different types of supernaturals collectively known as "The Women of the Underworld".  The last novel of the series came out this last year and it was a very satisfying end to the series.

It is also the name of the new SyFy Channel's new series based on the book.



It stars Laura Vandervoort, in what might be the best bit of casting ever, [...]

"Biten" is the breakout novel from author Kelley Armstrong. It deals with Eleana, the only female werewolf.
With Biten Kelley began a 13 novel epic story of many lives and different types of supernaturals collectively known as "The Women of the Underworld".  The last novel of the series came out this last year and it was a very satisfying end to the series.

It is also the name of the new SyFy Channel's new series based on the book.


It stars Laura Vandervoort, in what might be the best bit of casting ever, as Eleana.

Two rough-hewn passages lead into the walls of the old black-walled quarry at Cairn Dubh. Over the ages the spaces beyond have been used as tombs, a stockade, storage, animal lairs, a base of operations during wartime, and who knows what else.

Of course, when the adventurers’ eyes set upon Cairn Dubh for the first time, the history of the site means little, only what evils have moved into it…

The Caves of Cairn Dubh

The Caves of Cairn Dubh was drawn in a single draft using a 0.7mm gel pen in a 4 x 6 inch plain paper booklet. It was then scanned, contrast-enhanced and filtered in photoshop.

This is actually the very last map drawn in that particular mapping book. With this scan I have scanned every usable map in the book. It now goes into retirement on my shelf, hopefully to be joined by more books as the years pass.

The Great Martian War (2013) - An interesting, if flawed, faux documentary on the History Channel (no more ridiculous than the numerous alien contact and UFO 'documentaries' the channel runs) marking the centenary of the start of The Great Martian War.

Using a mix of old black and white footage (doctored with special effects and created scenes) capturing the Martian invasion on the front lines and the home front, archival footage (primarily from the '70s and '80s) of interviews with surviving witnesses and contemporary interviews with historians, the documentary chronicled the four years of the war and then its aftermath.

Taking HG Wells' War Of The Worlds as its core inspiration, the Martian invaders were inevitably felled by germs unique to Earth, but The Great Martian War put a clever spin on this and extrapolated unforeseen side-effects on the human population.

The invaders first arrived in [...]

Heute gibt es auf Welt Online einen lesenswerten Artikel zu einem amerikanischen Mythos, der Lost Colony. Hierbei handelt es sich um die "Cittie of Raleigh" auf Roanoke Island, die erste englische Kolonie auf amerikanischem Boden, welche 1585 gegrndet wurde. Nach zahlreichen Schwierigkeiten wurde die Kolonie zeitweise aufgegeben, dann erneut besiedelt und beherbergte 1587 schlielich 90 Mnner,

Just a couple of quick notes.

First Up, over on GOG.com for about the next 24 hours you can get Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics for free. I'm going to be honest, and let you know that I've never actually played any of these games, but they look cool, they come highly recommended, and the price is right.


When a game includes scenes like this, how can you go wrong?

Second, the D&D Next playtest is coming to a close on the 15th. I got the following e-mail today:

As this monumental year [...]

A novel solution: what's the best advice you've borrowed from a totally different field?

"Yes, and..."

Role Playing games are a collaborative effort, and it's important for that to work that everyone is in the same chapter, even if they're not on the same page. In that spirit, it's helpful to remember the improv rule to say "yes and" or "yes but" whenever possible, rather than defaulting to "no".

"The cavern is split by a deep ravine."

"Can I use my 10' pole to vault across?"

"Yes... but the pole might break and you [...]

Over on The Rust Battle Axe the author says “Megadungeons were all the rage in the tabletop RPG blogsphere back in 2008-2009. There are plenty of posts on megadungeon dating back to the period.”

I still haven’t run a Megadungeon, even though I have bought several: Stonehell, Rappan Athuk (twice), Castle Whiterock, Tomb of Abysthor, … I feel like I would like big dungeons. When I prep for my games, however, that’s not how it works.

If you look at my Swiss Referee Style Manual you’ll note that it is practically without advice for dungeon adventures. That’s because my dungeons are small. Usually they are one page dungeons. How come? When I prepare a game, I usually start from the answers I got at the end of the last session. I almost always end by asking: “So, what are we going to do next time?”

I write down the relevant non-player characters: people to meet, people to oppose, people with jobs to hand out, with quests that need resolving. I usually end up with one to four characters.

The bad guys are usually in a defensible position so I prepare *spells, minions, rooms, a map*... a one page dungeon, a ship deck plan or a village with a few important buildings (in which case I won’t prepare floor plans for the buildings). I usually end up with four or five buildings or ten to twenty rooms, a sketch of a map.

I think of complications. This is usually something that works in layers. Every two or three days I have a lame idea that I mentally add to the adventure. After two weeks, however, five lame ideas make a cool complication. I usually don’t think of a solution. The gargoyles want the player characters to leave, consider themselves to be /bermenschen/... The elves are petriefied [...]

I like creating stuff, being creative and let the imagination run wild. So when i saw that skillshare has a free Typography cource i jumped at it! you can join in at this link: http://skl.sh/1db25hk it will give you a discount of $10 for another cource and me $10 credit for another cource. or just join on your own at: http://www.skillshare.com/classes/design/Typography-That-Works-Typographic-Composition-and-Fonts/1694217981/project-guide I can’t wait to get started Gork ya later! Artwork: http://openclipart.org/detail/189438/christmas-by-buggi-189438

When I checked my blog this morning, WordPress reminded me that I should upgrade to version 3.8. After doing so I noticed that a new theme called “Twenty Fourteen” has been released as well. It’s the new default theme for WordPress and looks pretty sweet if you ask me. So [...]

Need ? Roll a d and check below to see what you get!

Title D20 x 1 Alakroos'erd 2 Dipinid'oj 3 Duagzaerlin 4 Elkree 5 Erthomph 6 Irahc'Nymomph 7 Micarralafein 8 Quaromph 9 Quildriirndorl 10 Rhyllochar 11 Rikree 12 Rizdinn-Wruzdiirn 13 Rizvayas'zar 14 Sharolgdriirn 15 Sszaxle 16 Tluthaserin 17 Tluthraen 18 Wruzaonar-Rhylryn 19 Xunraen-Neerorvir 20 Zekolinin

Need more like this? Then get “100 Dark Elf Names – Male“

Horns are usually trouble.  At best adorning simple animal or capricious fey.  More often, the weapon of monster, mutant or infernal being.  Yet that won't stop them being converted... Click the title if you want to know more...

Welcome back! Today in honor of the second movie release of my favorite story, the Hobbit (Desolation of Smaug) I have an interesting discussion that ties into my current Greyhawk campaign, a hex crawl in Suss Forest. If there is any spoilers I apologize, but come on, it's the Hobbit!

But first, speaking of hex crawls, there is an awesome article over at Wizards by James Wyatt on that subject. He goes into great detail on comparing hex scales to maps both fantasy and real world. It's rather interesting, take a look.

Added to this topic, over at [...]

Join the gang this week as we discuss what we picked up for the Steam Autumn Sale and introduce our new rating system. Penrod goes from happy to rage in record time in Gotham City Imposters. David puts his sleuthing skills to test in L.A. Noire. Kyle justifies his purchase of Gone Home. Aaron finally [...]

Challenging your PCs is great, but what if you challenge them in a way that the Players can’t cope with? Do you resolve it by die roll or do you try to find other ways to do it?

The same goes for world setting information. Do you penalize the PCs for not knowing things they should know about the setting, but the players do not?

Well, we have a ton of advice about how to handle those two situations. Things you can use to help keep your game moving, even in the face of plot stopping failures.

And there is a rant. A [...]

 In tonight's game the PC's unloaded their ATV's  from their star ship and began the task of exploring a bit of their host clan's summer house. This house was actually a converted temple palace that in ages past connected to the vast Martain mega dungeon canal system.
They discovered after reading heiroglyph covered walls in the lower portations about a rail car system that ran deep through the planet conncting various areas.
More recent glpyhs suggested that an Entropic war broke out sometime in the past two hundred years and many of the citystates retreated underground and had [...]

Hinter dem 13ten Trchen verbirgt sich die Arkham Gazette, welche aufmerksame Innsmouth Tribune bereits aus der Vorstellung im vergangenen Monat kennen. Aber diese Lovecraft Country-zentrierte Zeitschrift gefllt mir einfach zu gut, um sie hier nicht noch einmal dem etwas greren Publikum des Adventskalenders ans Herz zu legen. Bislang sind von der Arkham Gazette eine 51 seitige Null-Nummer

The one that got away?I think most of the RPG Blogoverse - at least the OSRish types - have heard about this, but just in case . . .

Charles Akins over at the Dyvers blog has been assembling a big-ass gaming blog list called the The Great Blog Roll Call.  It's great for people, like me, who are miserable failures at keeping up with their own blog rolls.  He's got nifty little blurbs about each blog and links. Okay, these blurbs are actually good sized and indicate he's actually read the blogs in question.

FYI, 'Dyvers' appears to [...]

Tonight’s adventure was fairly quick, partly because the player that runs a marine character didn’t show up — meaning a large portion of the action happened offscreen. In this, the players assault the mutineer-controlledAstral Queen.The last post talked about the deal that the PC commander had cut with one of the mutiny leaders, a Colonel Seii, and convinced him to aid in the raid of the prison barge by removing Tom Zarek from play, and how two other PCs — the vice president and a deputy marshal — had been captured.

The evening launched straight into the set-up. A raptor jamsAstral [...]

"There are fairy stories
to be written for adults.
Stories that are still
in a green state."

Andre Breton

Part 12 of a comparison of Holmes' manuscript with the published Basic Set rulebook. Turn to page 17 of your 'Blue Book' and follow along...

CLERICAL SPELLS

The introductory paragraph is the same in the manuscript and the first printing of the rulebook. Later printings, however, add a sentence at the end, "Second level spells are not available to clerics at below fourth level, and are included for use with non-player characters and scrolls", clarifying why they are in a rulebook that only covers character levels 1-3.

One source for this section is Greyhawk, page 8, [...]

Der Kickstarter fr die Cthulhu Britannica London Boxhat am letzten Tag noch einmal krftig Gas gegeben. In den letzten zehn Stunden haben 60 neue Backer noch einmal 7425 in die Kasse gesplt und damit sieben weitere Stretch Goals geknackt. Damit kommen zu dem sowieso schon beeindruckenden Portfolio noch Postkarten von Jason Durall, Paula Dempsey, Lawrence Whitaker, Pete Nash und Dave Morris

Later on today one of the gaming groups I am lucky enough to be a part of is going to meet up to discuss what game we're doing next. One of the four GMs in the group, the one who normally runs that night, has a lot of demands on his time right now and so we're going to be swapping out GMs and doing at least a short run game before seeing where we go from there. This isn't my, or even this group's, first rodeo when it comes to these and they normally work out well. Today, I [...]