A dojo for players of fantasy role-playing games
Part2: Mastery Items In the first part of this series I discussed the problems that result when magic items become disposable once better, more-powerful versions are acquired. For me, at least, the practice of churning magic...
Part 1: Reconstructed Items In my last article, I introduced a way to rethink attunement and possibly make it more interesting by connecting it to proficiency. Graham Scott followed this up with discussions about how to...
I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut. — Hattori Hanzo, Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Miramax Films, 2003....
Short and Sweet Overview: If an Attunement limit in 5th edition seems arbitrary, one solution might be to tie a character’s number of attunements to the already existing mechanic of proficiency. You would then be able to attune...
Last time, in the final installment of my discussion of the Four Principles for Game World Design, I discussed the non human races of D&D and how the demi-human races in particular failed to...
Blending Approaches In this series on low-prep, reusable scenarios, I have described five fun types of low-stress campaign. However, so far I’ve tackled each of them one at a time, without looking at how they might be...
The Arena The Scenario in a Nutshell: Let the players practice tactics or find out how tough their characters are by having them fight creatures or NPCs. Note that this scenario works best for players...
Glen Cook’s Goblin Recon The Scenario in a Nutshell: The realm is at war with vicious enemies who have started sending teams of operatives through a buffering or bordering forest, marsh, or similar terrain. The PCs have...
The Sandbox Campaign The Scenario in a Nutshell: Instead of using random location generators, you could grab an existing dungeon map, a published setting, or even a map or guide to a real historic setting, and then...
The Tarterian Highway The Scenario in a Nutshell: A fun twist on the random Nostalgia Crawl is a Vault of the Drow-style dungeon, or what I’m calling the “Tarterian Highway.” It’s a linear dungeon crawl...
Game-Mastering Advice / Settings / The World of the Vault / World Building
November 10, 2019
City Adventuring / Game-Mastering Advice / Get Medieval
Get Medieval: The Village in the Middle Ages
October 28, 2014
City Adventuring / Settings / World Building
Introducing the Ludus Population Engine
October 21, 2014
Welcome to The Ludus, the School of Games We’re writing The Ludus for players and game-masters of tabletop fantasy role-playing… Read more…
