setting element Archives - Page 4 of 7

July 27, 2008

The World of Mall

I’m not sure what I will do with this: Inspired by malls everywhere.

July 8, 2008

WALL-E: Postapocalyptic RPG setting?

This post contains spoilers for WALL-E, Pixar’s new movie-thing… and won’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’ve seen it. Angela and I saw WALL-E on Friday. As we walked out of the theater, she leaned over and said something to the effect of, “…and they all died within the first year back on Earth.” I pointed out that...

June 11, 2008

Nobilis

I think I mentioned earlier that I was at least thinking about playing in a Nobilis game. Well, I am. Playing in one, that is. I suppose I’m also thinking about playing in it… or writing about… or writing about thinking about… or… Yeah. We’ve met four times. The first two were devoted to group character, Imperator, and Chancel creation....

June 5, 2008

Faith in Fantasy

What is a religion like when faith is a non-issue? In many fantasy worlds, there is direct intervention by gods. You don’t need to convince people to believe that your god exists. It isn’t an issue. How would that change what religious institutions are like? To a point, we can look to real-world cultures in which the existence of a...

May 5, 2008

I which I offer a preliminary criticism (or two) about 4e encounter design…

I appreciate the fact that Wizards, in making 4e, took a long, hard look at encounter design and found it lacking. I’ve written before about how big a difference numbers make in 3.x – a group of PCs against one powerful enemy has a disproportionate advantage due to the per-round limit on actions. This could make climatic fights against the...

April 22, 2008

Cooking With Magic II

Basic: Reduce PersonA small person needs half as much food and water to sustain himself as one of medium size. This has obvious benefits from a food-conservation standpoint. It also has benefits for the frugal arcane gourmet who has limited access to large quantities of high-quality ingredients. Intermediate: Gentle ReposeThe benefits of being able to perfectly preserve a creature’s corpse...

April 11, 2008

The Gnoble Gnoll?

I’ve always had a soft spot for gnolls. I’m fairly certain that it is the visual of a hyena-person that I appreciate, since I don’t actually like most of what D&D has done to them over the years. I’m not a fan of their demonic associations. I don’t like the characterization of them as shiftless and overly-lazy. I don’t really...

April 8, 2008

Roleplaying in your own backyard

It seems like most of the modern rpgs that I end up playing in are set in the area I live in… Currently, I’m playing in a Mage campaign set in Champaign-Urbana and a post-apocalyptic game set in Illinois (we haven’t actually been to C-U yet, but we’ll end up there at some point). I have mixed feelings about this...

April 2, 2008

Cooking with Magic I

Basic: MendingThe kitchen uses of the Mending cantrip are innumerable. The spell does not have an effect upon creatures, but dead things are considered objects rather than creatures. Want to check the doneness of your meat? Slice it open as far as you want… and then cast this simple spell to mend the tear. Mending can also be used for...

March 12, 2008

The slippery slope – a dungeon trap?

Yesterday, Jeff posted about “classic” dungeon crawls – the sort that get more challenging the further down you go with numbered dungeon levels that correspond to the levels of characters for which they are an appropriate challenge. Something has been bothering me about the post, but I didn’t put my finger on it until this afternoon. Most of the discussion...

Neitherworld Stories

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