RPG Bloggers

The Week In Geek… from HeroPress

A round-up of geeky news you might have otherwise missed...(1) The Vorpal Blade Went Snicker-Snack: Timed perfectly to coincide with Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, Skirmisher Publishing has released an OGL roleplaying supplement inspired by the work...

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Monday Monster: Razor Treant from Kobold Quarterly Magazine: Monsters and Magic for D&D Gamers

Instead of leaves, the gnarled black tree grew sharp, metallic slivers, ringing out like a thousand tiny bells in a constant trickle of wind. Stronger gusts often cause a razor or two to disconnect, falling lazily and slicing blades of grass in its descent. The accumulation of dismembered birds...

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The Quandary of the Missing Player from Exchange of RealitiesOn gaming

What happens with a player who’s gone missing? I don’t mean the ones who you expect to slack off and vanish, but the kind whom you know haven’t lost interest, who may be late sometimes but will always tell you why and what happened, who return all your calls—and then one week they...

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Ripper DMing: Temple of Elemental Evil VIII from Advanced Gaming & Theory

We didn't get very far, but then again we haven't seen each other for almost a month, so the mouths were flapping! It was also that stupid daylights savings-time, so we had to quit early, however the main part of the game was to test out miniature play...

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[Let's Study - C:tL] Beast from Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer

Welcome to the first in the series of articles that will go over the details of the various Seemings for Changeling: the Lost. I have to start this off by saying that the Seemings and Kiths are some of my favorite aspects of this game as it lends itself to a great number of character

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Further on NPC Generation from PLANET ALGOL

The procedures and tables I've developed for NPC generation proved fruitful during today's Planet Algol session and it seems like they're in line with my goals for creating quick, memorable, motivated NPCs. The process involves using die rolls to generate both the "RPG rules" details of the...

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Peter Graves 1923-2010 from LivingDice.com

Rest in peace Mr. Phelps. Tom Cruise never held a candle. The Great Livingdice.com Munchkin Boomark Contest end draws near! Tell you friends that it is nearly time... Find out how to enter at LivingDice.com! The Great Livingdice.com Munchkin Boomark Contest end draws near! Tell you friends...

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A Creature Featured: The Talyn Warrior from Power Word: Blog

A recent discovery has found an unsettling development. The primitive race known as Talyn are becoming more advanced. Investigators at the scene of a recent Talyn attack on a caravan have found, through eye-witness account and physical evidence left behind, that a new caste now exists, the Talyn...

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Random Lord Generator and Empires before Alexander from Game in the Brain

The Random Lord Generator is meant to allow for the quick, simple, and detached creation of NPC lords as allies, patrons, or adversaries. They are also designed in mind of populating a setting for a GURPS Mass Combat War Campaign. Random Character crea...

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Black Rose, Part 4 from The Other Side blog

What sort of stories do we tell in a this mash-up of Romantic Fantasy and Gothic Horror?Well lets start with the obvious. Evil is out there and it needs to be stopped. In the Gothic Horror tradition, the evil is always more powerful than th...

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Alternity “The Lighthouse” Session Summaries 16 and 17 Posted from Geek Related » RPG

We’ve completed a couple more sessions of our Alternity campaign, The Lighthouse! Sorry, I’m falling behind since I’m running one campaign, doing session summaries for this one, and doing other RPG work on the side. But this should catch us up. Sixteenth Session – As...

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[Adventure Seed] Countdown from allgeektout » RPG Bloggers Network

Time to get back in the habit of posting again! Here’s another plot seed for the Doctor Who RPG. Kronos, the manufacturer of fine intergalactic watches (Knows where you are and changes the time automatically, regardless of time system - guaranteed!) has just announced their intention to...

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Magic In Midgarth from Emergence Campaign Weblog

Midgarth was an older d20 setting. In most ways it was pretty standard, although loosely based on the Byzantine Empire and Mediaeval Russia, rather then on Feudal Europe like so many other d20 settings. Unlike most d20 settings, however, magic was relatively scarce. Magic In Midgarth ...

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I hereby promise to not publish any more "generic" fantasy crap on this blog. from Back Screen Pass - A DM's Secrets

In the comments to my last post (a continuation of my ongoing Orcish Lowlands series), Timeshadows called me out for throwing some gargoyles into the petrified forest without providing a real sense of what they were doing there, why they were doing it and how they might get 'er done. I...

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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 10 from Happy Jacks RPG Podcast

Welcome to Season 02, Episode 10 of Happy Jack’s RPG Podcast. Your hosts are: Stu, Stork, Tappy and Kimi. We discuss collaborative play vs player coddling. Featured Song, “The Day That I Wed,” by the Poxy Boggards, from Barley Legal.

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Beyond Sanctuary: Scene 1 from Risus Monkey

For an introduction to this Mythic Game Master Emulator Sandbox adventure, see this post. Setting details and links to characters are posted here. OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This is an actual log of my Mythic session. I have only edited it for format and obvious errors. If this were a story, I'd...

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Epic “Save the World” Fantasy In The Sandbox from RetroRoleplaying: The Blog

I finally got around to setting up my RSS feed reader this week. I lost it when my old PC died in January -- I'm now using Feedreader which syncs with Google Reader so this should not happen again. As part of this process I went out into the gaming blo...

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We role-played the entire session from World of Alidor

This last Thursday I played Pathfinder RPG again. The best part about the session was that we pretty much role-played the whole thing. I told the DM afterwards it had been nearly 5 years since I had played a game where the whole session was spent role-playing and no one got bored. The group I [...]

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Green Ronin Roundup! from Purple Pawn » RPGs

The team at Green Ronin was super-busy this weekend! Rather than break out all of their news into individual items, we’ll go ahead and list ‘em here: Family Games: The 100 Best is available for pre-order and even includes a free copy of Walk the Plank; this sequel to the very cool...

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L5R – JYSB Campaign Report 5 from Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal

Our heroes arrive, at last, at Samui Kaze Toshi (Cold Wind City) after their adventures on the road. After a bath, they made their way to Blue Heron House, one of the Crane estates and occasional home to the Emerald Magistrate Doji Akira. At Blue Heron House they are informed that Doji Akira had...

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The Whole Point of RPG’s from Joethelawyer's Wondrous Imaginings

"I do not play role-playing games in order to participate in group story telling; I do not play role-playing games in order to simulate a feasible world; I do not play role-playing games in order to exercise tactical or strategic skill. I do not play r...

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Ayn Blüd and the Silver Order from Continuing Clockwise

The mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition are very tactically oriented, and some argue that this comes at the detriment of the role-playing elements. However, the game’s crunch can add to a rich role-playing experience when used as guidelines and inspiration for character development. In...

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Photo of Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway from Continuing Clockwise

Here is a picture of my copy of Fantasy Wargaming, The Highest Level of All, which I wrote about a week or so ago.

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Cursed Scroll of Spell Obstruction from The Underdark Gazette

Upon the reading of this scroll by a MU, the spells in his mind will be assaulted by an inimical magical force. He will take 2d6 points of damage and must make a save vs. spells or be Feebleminded. If failed, all spells will be wiped from his memory ...

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Game Review: Leverage: The Quickstart Job from Wild Die

Recently I was sent a review copy of Leverage: The Quick Start Job, the quick start adventure for Margaret Weis Production’s upcoming game Leverage based on the television series. I have to admit I had my doubts about this game at first. I have never been a fan of the Cortex System and...

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Vampire Doppelganger Monk from How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less

So basically what I learned today is yes, I was an idiot at sixteen, but gloriously so. I was going through some old files on the desktop I used in high school, and chanced upon some old plans I'd devised for a villain in a campaign I ran during that p...

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1000 and 1 characters from Cradle of Rabies - From role to games

Some time ago I saw this challenge at RPG.net (cannot find the topic anymore), where idea was to create character to all games you own for your blog or what ever. I found it really cool idea. If you are a bit bored, this is fun way to get time to pass....

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News in Review for March 8 to March 14 2010 from NEUROGLYPH Games

As this week was leading up to a major release from WotC, I guess I should not be surprised by huge number of D&D 4E news items we had this week. In addition to not just one, but three pre-release reviews for the impending Player’s Handbook 3, there were some great posts on indie [...]

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Ravens of Blashyrkh [Blashyrkh Campaign] from Trollish Delver

"Strength comes from us above Ravens' season has begun" - Nebular Ravens Winter An iconic creature in the frozen kingdom of Blashyrkh is the raven, a great black scavenger of the icy wastes. The ravens are much larger than we have in the real world, with a five-foot wingspan and huge ravenous...

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Creature Feature from The Rune Under Water

One of my very few complaints about Mongoose RuneQuest II was the paucity of monsters in the core rulebook. Now, this is going to be rendered moot very soon with the release of the Monster Coliseum book, and we have the MRQI Monsters and Monsters II books that don't need much...

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Skill Package: Washed Up from 8:05 p.m.

One of the interesting new features with Mongoose Traveller is their use of skill packages at the end of character generation (p. 37). By selecting a particular package, the PCs begin to create a basic sense of who they are and why they adventure together. Of course, being the twisted (er,...

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Liquid Snake from World of Corruption

One of the sites I just love for inspiration is Worth 1000. This is a place for graphic artists of all skill levels to come compete and hone skillz. Sometimes I’ll post here with something I’ve been inspired with. Four months ago, a contest ran called Liquid Assets. The winner was the...

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P is for Pi-finder from tenletter » rpg

To celebrate Pi Day, let’s add some tasty pastry goodness to your Pathfinder game: Delicious and nutritious, the humble pie becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the skilled piemancer. Mundane pies are treated as improvised thrown weapons that deal no damage. A pie still in its baking tray...

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GPC – The Battle of Mearcred Creek from Ratty Ramblings

With the Chief unable to make a second session of the GPC game, we continued with the events of 485 and the player knights' first battle. Uther's army assembles at Sarum in early summer and soon a host of several thousand has gathered in the heart of Earl Roderick's lands. Notable by his absence is...

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Geomorph Mapping Project #43 from A character for every game

A traditional geomorph style design, with three distinct segments that don’t contact each other, but share walls.

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New Combat System – Part 2 from Robertson Games

Thanks for the feedback on the first part of the new combat system. Here we go beyond the basics a bit and look at how things like Dexterity, Shields, Armour and Weapons affect work. The combat maneuvers are taken directly from the excellent idea presented with Super Simple Combat...

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Mass Combat Low Tech Templates from Game in the Brain

Made a bunch of GURPS 4e Mass Combat Low Tech templates. They feature the basic Ally cost and some lenses. Right now I'm constructing a way to randomly roll up Lords or Status 5 and 6 characters. They make great adversaries and patrons for a campaign. ...

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Orcish Lowlands – Petrified Forest from Back Screen Pass - A DM's Secrets

Long ago, immense trees covered the landscape that is now a high, barren, windswept plateau. In the millions of intervening years, all traces of these trees have been obliterated... except in one valley that rises from the lowlands up into the nameless mountains to the west. When an ice...

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Maps Galore! from The Labyrinth

I finally stopped procrastinating and sat down to redo the Caliburn Map. The map I was previously using can be seen here. Obviously there is nothing wrong with that map, and to be honest I loved it when I made it, but I doesn't look...

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“Let’s drop down a hole and circumnavigate the forest” from Level 1 GM

So here it is, as promised, though part of a double dose as my computer went out the other night when posting the pre-game write-up. There are so many things that happened that I am making a list. Quick Run-Through The Sorceress, who we all joked was ’squishy’, critting twice in a row...

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The Generic Villain on Inopportune Targets from Exchange of RealitiesOn gaming

Last week I explained why kidnapping was not in and of itself an idiot plot for villains like us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bring down shame on people who fail the execution of a kidnapping—who screw up who, or when, or where, or how, or why. Many people have failed [...]

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The adventure between times from Level 1 GM

(This post is late because I realised just now it wasn’t posted, so you get a double-dose for the weekend.) Well, by this time tomorrow afternoon my number of sessions of D&D I would have played will have gone up to two. You heard me right, I am playing for once, taking some time out of...

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Tortured Secrets from Dungeon Divas

There was heavy jolt, then Imago’s voice in my ear, “Wake up Ms. Brigid, we’ve landed.” The light coming in the opening doors was bright in my eyes. As my vision adjusted, I realized it was coming from some dim lights hanging from the ceiling. The facility had definitely seen better days. ...

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Design Goals – Multiple Interpretations of Planet Algol from PLANET ALGOL

Gene Wolfe On One Shoulder, Encounter Critical On The Other A Short List of Influences Upon Planet Algol Clark Ashton Smith Lin Carter, especially The World's End Series Jack Vance, especially The Dying Earth and the Demon Princes series Moebius Richard Corben HP Lovecraft, especially The Dream...

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Adding fluffed topping to a hard crunchy core from Unofficial Games

Well the Piecemeal 1e beta is about ready to go out in the next week or so, primarily just adding fluff and helpful tools at this point (experience calculators etc). This brings me to my current topic, how much does setting really matter in a game setting? I often hear that indie RPG's live or...

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The Three Loathsome Tomes of Kral-Ugott And The Tales of Leigkhu the Scoundrel from PLANET ALGOL

As I was discussing earlier, I've been working on putting some flavorful grimoires of repute in my campaign. One of the design goals was to elegantly incorporate "non-core" spells into my campaign. The below are the results of some thought on the matter, the specific goal being to provide an...

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The D&D Action Pyramid from Geek Ken

So when I jumped into 4E, all my players were new to the game. One had dabbled a bit in a 3.5 game but his experience with D&D was limited. I will be the first to admit that 4E combats can get a little overwhelming. The game takes a very tactical t...

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Crosslink Updates from Emergence Campaign Weblog

Continuing with catching up on the indexing, here we have a selection of links to some of the player blogs – and the materials they’ve come up with. Star Wars d6: Alys Diary: Session II, Session III, Ben Therus: Precognitive Advisor. Eclipse d20: Dr Soloman Brenner: A highly...

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Cthulhu Reads RPGs in Public! from The Escapist Blog

I was doodling today, and this picture of ol' squid-face jumped out of my pen. I liked it so much that I posted it to the RaRPGBiPW Facebook page - and someone there liked it so much, that he printed it out and hung it up in his office! I've got a hi-res (300dpi) scan for print magazines (if...

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Making the Most of Mythic Structure – GamesU 2009 from Temple Lion

In this session from GamesU 2009, accomplished game designer and screenwriter Matthew Grau discusses the monomyth and how to use it to create epic and enduring stories in your games. Popularized by Joseph Campbell in his book “Hero with a Thousand Faces”, the monomyth is a powerful...

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