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Some ideas are starting to percolate for the planetary romance game. As I mentioned, I'm borrowing from some old D&D ideas that never got used. One of them was a world where I flipped the usual species setup. Instead of predominantly human civilization with primitive tribes of orcs and goblins on the fringes, I had an orc/goblin nation with humans ( Read more... )

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Like I said a few posts ago, I really want to run some AD&D, and I want to use the World of Greyhawk setting. I'm wavering between using the Saltmarsh trilogy and something more traditionally dungeon-crawly, but either way I figure the Sheldomar region makes a good setting ( Read more... )

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Postscript: I started writing this over a week ago, and it took much longer than I expected. I've been having a hard time deciding what to include. I've decided to just stop with what I've got so far, and anyone who has more questions are invited to ask them in the comments.

I covered the basics of the romantic fantasy genre in my previous post; ( Read more... )

This is relevant to my interests. The author briefly and concisely covers classic conundrums like why thieves are supposedly so bad at thief skills, what happens when a non-thief attempts to climb something, etc. Some of it I'd already found on my own, but some of it is new and useful ( Read more... )

During the runup to last week's Dungeons & Dragons game, it briefly looked like pyrephox might not be able to run her 4E one-shot. As a replacement johnlh suggested I run my shiny new 5E starter game, but it only came with five pregen characters, and there was the possibility of a sixth player. So I proposed running basic D&D instead. B/X chargen is simple and ( Read more... )

I came upon an interesting article on dungeon map design, and what makes a good or bad map. According to the author, a good map will have two key ingredients. First, multiple routes, with some hint of whal lies down each path, to give players meaningful choices to make. Second, hidden areas and secrets, to give players the pleasure of discovering ( Read more... )

Celestial Illuminations, my Dark Heresy play-by-post game, reached the six-month mark today. PBP games tend to burn out quickly once the initial rush of enthusiasm fades, so having one go the distance is actually an achievement.