Fred has opened the door to pitches for a book of Don’t Rest Your Head hacks, which is a fantastic idea. You can find out more details, you can check out his post, and if the idea appeals to you, I strongly encourage you to consider writing a pitch. I’ve had an idea for a […]
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About Those Elves, blog
Today, I want to talk about elves. When you sit down to make your own fantasy setting, whether for publication or just for your own game, the simple reality is that you stand under the twin shadows of Tolkien and D&D. They set an expectation for what a fantasy world looks like and, more importantly, […]
Jazz Rules
I made a reference to something in comments on Friday which I realized is not an actual colloquialism, so I want to unpack it a little bit, since I think it’s a powerful, useful idea. I am not a huge jazz fan. There’s some stuff I like, but it’s never been that big a thing […]
Counting Noses
Want a quick litmus test for the health of your game? Ask one of your players how many NPCs they can name. If that number can be counted on one hand, that’s a red flag. This may seem counterintuitive at first – after all, games are about the characters, and we all know the dangers […]
Feats and Faces
I’ve always found the idea of feats more compelling than the reality. As I conceive them, I expect them to have a strong signature. That is, I expect them to really be strong differentiators, something that really calls out a clear distinction between characters who might otherwise be fairly similar. In 4e, this is one […]
A Bag Full Of Cats
One of the jokes about older versions of D&D is that there was nothing more deadly to a wizard than a bag full of housecats. It’s a double edged joke (made utterly unfunny in explaining) that highlighted both the fragility of wizards, who had trivially small numbers of hit points, and the problems with assigning […]
The Sports Paradox
Every now and again someone gets it in their head that they want to do a sport-based RPG. It’s a logical instinct – there’s lots of great, classic sports stories out there, and they hit a lot of the same notes that make an RPG fun. I have nothing but admiration for anyone who wants […]
What Shall We Do With This
A lot of people will go to great lengths to publish an RPG. This used to be a much bigger problem in the past, when the singular vision for an RPG might require taking out a second mortgage on your house to pay for a giant print run that wouldn’t even faintly sell through. Nowadays, […]
What’s in the Box?
While I have specific demands for maps in games, the issue if more muddled in pure-setting products, most famously defined by the boxed sets for things like Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. These are well-loved products, and their design sensibilities have influenced many setting products that followed, but they merit some examination. The questions that […]
Double Edged Maps
I love maps in RPG products. There’s something utterly compelling to me about detailed maps of things and places that don’t exist. They’re a joy to look at, and they’re fantastically information-dense. You can derive a lot of meaning about relationships and tensions in a setting just by studying a map and considering how people […]