Author: Scott Martin

In the last article, we sketched out the boundaries of a hidden world. (Quick recap: A hidden world is (usually) a world that seems much like our own, but that’s just an illusion. However, the “modern world” isn’t what it seems… for some reason. Compelling reasons include conspiracies secretly running things, aliens quietly interfering, supernatural forces existing and meddling with the world, or even this reality being but one of many.) Welcome Behind the Curtain One of the most influential decisions you can make for…

Last time, we talked about The Invisible World; a world that has grown so familiar that it goes unnoticed. This time we’ll talk about one of my favorite setting tropes, The Hidden World. The hidden world setting is often a world that begins by modeling the world around us, but adds a concealed truth. There are levels and levels of hidden worlds; sometimes the secrets are literally unknown worlds (like the hollow earth popular in pulp novels–a great place to stash your dinosaurs), others feature…

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” (Leslie Poles Hartley) The Invisible World I found a recent post at Datastories.in very interesting. It’s a post titled, Of Visible and Invisible Luxuries. There’s another distinction here that’s useful – between what’s ‘visible’, and what is ‘invisible’. We treat some of the infrastructure of our daily life as so important, as so critical, that we barely notice it – it’s like the air we breathe and we don’t think of these things as…

How will your villain manifest their power this time? Similar to our Brass Knuckled villain from the previous article, we’re looking at a foe who engages the characters directly, but this time our foe will be slightly more subtle. Even though villainous fingerprints are all over the scheme, there’s at least some plausible deniability. Cloaked Blades Like our brass knuckled villain, the Cloaked Blade strikes directly and violently at the PCs. Unlike the Brass Knuckled foe, something keeps this villain from claiming responsibility for the…

One trait for your villains is how they influence the world. Is your villain the King of Latveria, issuing public decrees and whipping up his people into a genocidal froth? Does no one know who turned the nobility to the worship of Asmodeus? Some villains are subtle, barely detected in the shifting of alliances and minor tweaks to the laws of the land, while others are brutally direct. Providing your foes with a mix of power manifestations can help to differentiate them. Struggling against unknown…

I’ve enjoyed Quinn at Thoughtcrime‘s recent posts about developing cultures in play–and his efforts to bring historical cultures not part of the western mainstream to light, with a particular focus on using them in gaming. Sounds perfect to me! Gameable Culture Let’s start with his pair of Gameable Culture posts. The first post, Gameable Culture: Where I’m From provides you with a process that will produce cultures and people whose expression of their culture feels natural. The process is simple–but it hinged on introducing a…

Sometimes your villain needs something a little out of the ordinary to set him apart. Or maybe that hapless NPC has a redeeming quality. If you’re feeling inspired, working out extra details for characters can be interesting, but if you’re on a deadline–or really not feeling inspired–sometimes a blunt tool is what you need. Below are 4 tables to encourage an out of the ordinary encounter even when you’re brain’s not at maximum creativity. Villainous Secrets (Modern) [d8] 1: Secretly supports a local animal shelter.…