Posts Tagged ‘4e’

I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization

The Impossible Mission It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in your use of descriptive language and extraordinary narrative if you don’t know what it is that you are supposed to be describing. It follows that GMs need to construct and maintain a mental image of their world as it exists at any given moment […]

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Transferable Skills From Bottom to Top and back again

A collision of thoughts: the origins of this article The other day, I was searching through past articles looking for a particular reference for a cross-link when I found myself re-reading my article contrasting literary processes and writing for games (The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs), and – as happens to me from time […]

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Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables

This article is the result of some recent work that was done for the next adventure, “Boom Town”, in the Pulp Campaign that I co-referee, “The Adventurer’s Club”. Players in that campaign don’t have to worry, I’m not going to give away anything that will damage the game! How big is a LOT of money […]

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Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required – Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line

This entry is part 4 in the series Some Arcane Assembly Required

I’m in the process of answering a question from GM Roy, who wrote: “I need some inspiration to create cool names for spell components. I have 5 [scales of rarity = Mike]: Common (flesh, breath, water, dust) Uncommon (earth from a cemetery, humanoid blood) Rare (head of a Medusa, Minotaur’s horn, black dragon blood) very […]

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Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required – Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B

This entry is part 3 in the series Some Arcane Assembly Required

This question comes from GM Roy, who wrote: “I need some inspiration to create cool names for spell components. I have 5 [scales of rarity = Mike]: Common (flesh, breath, water, dust) Uncommon (earth from a cemetery, humanoid blood) Rare (head of a Medusa, Minotaur’s horn, black dragon blood) very Rare (Essence of the ghost […]

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Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required – Pt 2: Sourcing Parts

This entry is part 2 in the series Some Arcane Assembly Required

This question comes from GM Roy, who wrote: “I need some inspiration to create cool names for spell components. I have 5 [scales of rarity = Mike]: Common (flesh, breath, water, dust) Uncommon (earth from a cemetery, humanoid blood) Rare (head of a Medusa, Minotaur’s horn, black dragon blood) very Rare (Essence of the ghost […]

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Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required – Pt 1: The Sales Pitch

This entry is part 1 in the series Some Arcane Assembly Required

Material Components don’t have to be a dirty word. They can be a rich source of color, flavor, and adventure even while avoiding the excessive paperwork.

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Random Encounter Tables – my old-school way

This was originally intended to be part of my recent article, Pieces Of Everyday Randomness, but it quickly grew to dominate everything else in that article. So I’ve extracted, edited, and enhanced it into this stand-alone piece. Some people are really opposed to the concept of Random Encounter Tables, aka Wilderness encounters, aka Wandering Monster […]

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Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive)

Today’s question comes from all the way back in June 2010 – I’m sorry it’s taken so long to answer it! The question comes from Brett, who wrote: “I am an extremely new DM, but I have played for 7 years now. I am looking to put my players in conflict with Drow. At one […]

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On the binding of Wounds – Everyday Healing For Pulp

This entry is part 4 in the series House Rules from The Adventurer's Club

Pulp Rules for Healing, and how & why Pathfinder & 3.x GMs should consider adapting them to their games.

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The Loss Of Innocence: Some unexpected insights

I was watching a documentary on the roles of Women as portrayed on Television the other day, and it yielded a couple of unexpected insights – one into modern society, and the other into the edition wars that have plagued D&D over the last few years, and the divide between “new school” and “old school” […]

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The compounded interruption of basic services

The West Wing said it very succinctly: “The costliest, most damaging, disruptions occur when something we take for granted stops working.” We depend on the mundane and everyday aspects of life to function seamlessly at least most of the time in order to be able to cope with the occasional extraordinary disruption or Act Of […]

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