Category: Uncategorized

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...

April 23, 2007

d20 Monster of the Week

In honor of Earth Day this week, I’m going to give you a double-fey-feature. Unfortunately, work is crazy and I haven’t written them yet. I do, however, know what they’ll be. First, we have the Underhill Lurker. This is your typical boogeyman who lives under a hill. I’m thinking it will be an incorporeal fey who lures victims to its...

April 23, 2007

Gourm Sneak Preview

Enough panic this morning. Here is some content. I’ve alluded to a project that I’ve been working on that involves an adventure. The adventure? The Goblins of Gourm. The project? A goblin-based city-book, The City of Gourm. These aren’t your standard goblins. These goblins: live in a rotating city made of brass and bamboo worship a mechanical god-king pursue an...

April 23, 2007

I am awesome!

…or at least not as lame as I thought. Due, presumably, to schedule changes too numerous to count I did not in fact miss the game yesterday. Yay!

April 23, 2007

I am lame. (and other news)

It appears that I completely flaked out yesterday. There was a C-U Run Club meeting scheduled that I just missed. I could blame it on hectic work and sleep deprivation, but the truth is that I knew that it was scheduled for the end of April. I knew it was the end of April. I just didn’t put those things...

April 20, 2007

OGL Monster of the Week: Headless One

Over at EN World, there was a thread looking for d20 stats for the Headless Horseman. It seems rather odd that none of the gazillion undead that have been created fit the bill, so I went and made one up – I did this as a template rather than as a creature. I’m sure there was a reason why… I’m...

April 19, 2007

Taking stock

Yesterday saw a rather large spike in readership, and I have no idea why. My stats didn’t show any particular pattern. If you stumbled by yesterday for the first time. . . and actually came back, I would love it if you dropped me a comment letting me know where you heard of this blog. For those of you who’ve...

April 17, 2007

Good GM Advice

About half the time, it seems that the roleplaying articles over at Wizards.com are a waste of space. This one, however, is great. It is short and to the point. It focuses on a common problem, recognizes it for what it is, and addresses solutions.

April 17, 2007

“The Great Clomping Foot of Nerdism”

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this lately, and its relevance to rpgs. For those of you afraid of following links, sf writer Mike Harrison has declared worldbuilding to be dull, unnecessary, and futile. My thoughts? First, what he has to say is about writing – and reading – not about roleplaying. He claims (note that I did not...

April 16, 2007

Funky Mechanics, revisited

A simplified summary of this Funky Mechanic System that I was obsessing on last week, which I hereby dub the FM system: Each skill/ability/whatever has one or more pools of dice (d6s). Each pool of dice represents an additional level of mastery of that skill. When you roll the skill, you roll each of your pools. You take the highest...