Posts Tagged by fantasy
| July 19, 2012 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
One of the things I’m often at a loss to provide my players on the spot would be a description of the various members of a merchant train or caravan, either being met by a party of adventurers on the road or a stock one the adventurers can hitch a ride with. Having let this task go unresolved for too long, I grabbed my iPad and keyboard, a few reference books (fantastic and mundane) and found a shady spot in my yard. With my daughter…
| April 25, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I recently created a calendar for my fantasy hexcrawl, Bleakstone, and since it was a fun process and I’m pleased with how it turned out I thought I’d share it here. I wanted a calendar that was largely similar to the one we’re used to (the Gregorian calendar) without being identical, that evoked the flavor of the world, and which didn’t have any fussy bits — no leap years, no months with varying numbers of days, etc. Divide up the year After doing the math…
| March 27, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
This is the fourth year that the annual One Page Dungeon Contest has been held online, and it’s well worth checking out. The idea behind one-page dungeons is that…wait for it…they have to fit on one page. It might not sound like you could get much dungeon on a single page, but you can. Like any limitation, the format forces you to be creative within its constraints, and that’s fertile ground. There are two reasons why I think you’ll be interested in this contest. The…
| September 13, 2011 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Martin’s note: This is the 1,000th article on Gnome Stew! We went live on May 12, 2008; here are our initial welcome article and all of our launch day articles. Thank you for reading the Stew, spreading the word, and supporting the site for the past three years! We love sharing GMing advice and we love our readers — happy gaming to you all! And now, on to today’s article… In styles of play where the PCs start out as relatively low-powered or inexperienced nobodies,…
| February 26, 2010 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
I just got back from our trip to Walt Disney World. For the second time we decided to drive rather than fly and stopped in North Carolina along the way. Even before we started, our mini-van was filled with accents. I have a South Jersey accent (no, I don’t sound like Rocky or Tony Soprano, although I do pronounce that wet stuff as “wooder”). My in-laws are from the Bronx and Connecticutt, and my wife has that Midwestern “non-accent.” Needless to say I heard my…
| September 17, 2009 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
Today’s Hot Button is related to a previous article, but I think it is worth debating on its own. Psionics (or psi powers, or psychic powers, etc) have traditionally had a troubled relationship in fantasy games, especially in Dungeons & Dragons and its various permutations and dirivatives. The first time I’d encountered psionics in RPGs was in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (1e), which relegated psionics to an appendix. Unlike divine or arcane magic, psionics wasn’t attached to a character class and played…
| August 26, 2008 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
For those of us playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in the early 1980s, the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module was a big surprise. Our intrepid adventurers disovered a crashed starship and, after defeating strange monsters and robots, came out with interesting loot. During the next few adventures, it was not uncommon for a paladin to be toting a laser pistol or a fighter wearing power armor. That notwithstanding, I’ve met many players and game masters over the years that get upset when obvious futuristic…
