Campaign Mastery

Today, I offer a new technique for rolling multiple dice many times with great efficiency. Any RPG can benefit from that! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas break. Mine was great, though not without its challenges – but I have evidently weathered them, because here we all are, in a bright and shiny New […]

The AEE is a subsystem that slots into any RPG for simulating everything from Bad Weather to Plagues & Poisons. The Backstory A while back, I was working on an adventure for one my campaigns (being deliberately vague, here) and I needed to look up the effects of Cobra Venom in the Hero System. I […]

This post continues the text of Part 5 of Chapter 5. Its content has been added to the parent post here and the Table of contents updated. 5.8.1.5 Blended Models In general, the rule is one zone, one model. In fact, as a general rule, your goal should be one Kingdom, one model – that […]

This post continues the text of Part 5 of Chapter 5. Its content has been added to the parent post here and the Table of contents updated. I have decided at the last minute to let the featured image (but not the head image) evolve with each post. 5.8.1 Villages The village is the fundamental […]

We’ve used the economy to distribute fortifications, and used those to locate inns. Now let’s wrap some communities around them. Table Of Contents In parts 1-3 of this chapter: Chapter 5: Land Transport 5.1 Distance, Time, & Detriments 5.1.1 Time Vs Distance 5.1.2 Defining a terrain / region / locality      5.1.2.1 Road Quality: An introductory […]

Snakes & Spiders in RPGs tend to one-size-fits-all construction. Use reality to make them exceptional! I got curious this morning. Australia is well-known around the world for the number and variety of deadly fauna we live alongside. The likelihood of your home being robbed drops by a ratio of between 100-1000 times if you live […]

Lots of die configurations can substitute for a d20, or for 3d6. This article looks at some of the most unusual. Part 3 of 3. There’s something indescribably appropriate about writing the first words of this post on Halloween – after all, many of these rolls are monsters unfit for gentle company. At the same […]

Lots of die configurations can substitute for a d20, or for 3d6. This article looks at some of the more unusual. Part 2 of 3. Progress on writing this post has been a lot slower per word than I was expecting. That’s partly down to the attention to detail, partly it’s the complexity of the […]

There are lots of dice configurations that can substitute for a d20, or sometimes for a 3d6. This 2-part article looks deeply at some. Not all RPG players and GMs are Geeks, it has to be said, but many of us can spend hours noodling over dice and probability curves and other Geeky dice-related subjects, […]

We all have expectations when we belly up to the game table. Sometimes, the GM delivers on promises both real and implied, and sometimes those expectations were never realistic in the first place. After struggling with the most recent installment of the Topologia game setting (it really should have been three parts, maybe 4, but […]

Can thoughts pass from one dimension or reality to another? In the real world, no, so far as we know, but the realities our games create have no such limitations – so let’s examine the concept further. Certainly, it can seem that way when a radical concept floats into your head, seemingly from nowhere. In […]

A rant about Auto-updating software leads into a discussion about how updates to source material and game systems impacts RPGs at various levels. I hate Auto-update I hate auto-update. There, I’ve said it. The reasons are many, and I’ll look into them individually below, but for me, it’s a colossal pain in the backside with […]