Category: Tools for GMs
| March 18, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Building on the idea of die drop tables and tools in Vornheim, I came up with a simple approach to quickly generating a region: the drop map. I had fantasy hexcrawls in mind when I wrote this, and the map I’ve created using this method is for that sort of game. There’s no reason you couldn’t fiddle with this in all sorts of ways to produce maps for larger/smaller regions, other genres, or even other kinds of maps entirely. It’s deliberately a lazy, quick, flexible…
| March 7, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
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…
| February 26, 2013 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
Almost every gamer has seen Lou Zocchi’s classic pitch for GameScience dice, and if you haven’t yet and have the 20 minutes, click that link. It’s worth a watch. About 4 minutes into the first video, Zocchi references his picture of stacked dice, seen to the right. This picture has long been the major piece of proof that GameScience fans point to as proof of the superiority of their favorite dice. We can date that picture between 1981 and 1991 because the far left stack…
| February 22, 2013 | Posted by John Arcadian |
If you would like a printable version of this post for quick reference, I organized it into a PDF which you can find here. I have recently become intimately aware of the extreme effects of having sickness ravage my body. It is the same kind of awareness I gain after most conventions I go to, or when travelling by airplane. Anytime I’m exposed to masses of people and am putting even just a moderate amount of energy into travelling or socializing/working, that con-crud, nasty flu…
| February 21, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
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.…
| February 14, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing are partnering with Lone Wolf Development to integrate the content from all three of our books into their forthcoming Realm Works campaign management software. Backers of the Kickstarter campaign for Realm Works will be able to access Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, and Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters within Realm Works for free. What’s Realm Works? Realm Works is a system-neutral tool that enables…
| February 7, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
I recently read a fascinating novel, Something Like Normal by Trish Doller. It was fascinating–and somewhat alien to my experience. Since it’s set in the world around us today, it should have been easy to slip right into the character’s head, but it turns out that I’m more easily able to get into the heads of mighty magic wielders, nanotech artists, and creepy alien races. Strangely, those heroes of destiny seem to share my upbringing and values. You know, they’re people who buckle down, study…
