During the last week, the RPG Bloggers Network brought an interesting post to my attention: “Discussion: Time Gaps” at Reality Refracted. This got me to thinking about the hierarchy of abstraction, and how often we (GMs) move from one level to another in the course of a typical game session, and how we can use […]
This month’s RPG blog carnival is about cartography and mapping. So, I thought I’d talk about D&D tiles, of which I have several sets, and I like them a lot. If you own more than a couple sets of D&D tiles you understand the challenge in organizing them. The tiles are double-sided, so you want […]
Disclaimer: This article was prompted and inspired by my receipt of a free copy of Player’s Option: Flaws from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, but it is largely based on my experience with the Hero System. 4 Winds did not solicit this review and did not recieve notice of the content. /Disclaimer So that we’re all […]
Who says undead can’t have personality? While rank and file skeletons and zombies will get mowed down faster than you can roleplay, you can turn any single undead into a remarkable NPC. To do that, you just need to add a few details beyond the stat block. Today’s generator will help you do this. Skull […]
Hexographer RPG Mapping Software Summary: Hexographer rocks and solves wilderness mapping fast for RPGs. Even left-brain squareheads like me can churn out beautiful and functional maps quick with Hexographer. I have known about this software for awhile but only recently contacted the owner for a review copy. Erin Smale, publisher of Chimera, put me onto […]
One of the best pieces of writing/direction that I’ve ever seen in a TV production takes place in a later episode of the series, in season 6 or perhaps 7, and it’s something that has made an indelible mark apon my awareness and handling of the passage of time in my campaigns. The Scene One […]
Drow are soon to make their appearance in my Riddleport campaign. They are part of The Great Game being played out in the background as the characters struggle for fame and power in the pirate city. To help me GM the dark elves I created the following tables and references. Maybe they would be useful […]
Dungeon Master Toolkit is an RPG iPad app aimed at game masters of any game system. It is my favourite dedicated RPG app, and my review will explain why. I am using version 1.21 of DM Toolkit. Level 99 Games has promised a 1.3 update soon that offers some interesting new features. Level 99 also […]
You can win a set of the dice that appear in this blog post. Details at the end. Thanks for Q-Workshop for supplying dice to give away! A gamer recently mentioned a disappointing lack of detail when his GM handed out a “pouch of gems.” The player wanted more flavour. It is difficult detailing every […]
This week I thought I would describe a tool that I came up with to help me create quick and easy NPCs, called The Ubercharacter Wimp, or TUW. Three into TUW The concept is really simple: in a document of some kind, I list the highest and lowest PC scores for each of the stats, […]
Great names are critical for immersion. Name an NPC Bob and you set a bad tone for any serious campaign. However, even the best GMs get stumped occasionally on generating great names. Following are links to several online names resources, lists and generators. Before diving into the links though, I have a naming tip for […]
iAnnotate is fast becoming my most-used in-game iPad RPG app. It not only reads PDFs, but it lets you edit them too. And this is where it becomes a killer GMing app for me, which I will soon explain. Thanks to Tom Ganz for pointing this app out in his comment on good gaming apps […]
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