Herding Links Across The Web
I’ve been a wandering these plains, searching high and low for fine posts to bring to market. Check out the teeth on these fellers.
Tools:
Want to whip up a monster style NPC for 4e in a minute? Check out the flash based NPChimera (beta). It uses PB1 races and classes so far.
Hate the math of encumbrance, but don’t want characters to carry 20,000 copper in their pockets? Take a look at D7′s lightweight encumbrance system.
Want a prompt for making unique monsters? Look no further than Chaotic Shiny’s Monster Generator. If you like the tool, consider entering the contest, and winning cool prizes.
World Building:
Check out these Inkwell Ideas for building more complex cultures.
Want your fights to be more interesting than blank squares on a battle map? Look at Johnn’s Hazards of Combat series, starting with Types of Combat Hazards: Terrain.
Gaming Theory:
Sometimes you want to turn the dial to eleven, sometimes you want a system that better supports casual engagement. My group faces that issue– when we game on Friday nights, my wife is often exhausted from the work week and it’s nice to have strong systemic backup. Doyce looks under the hood in Min Maxing Fun and sparks a good discussion in comments.
Making tactics matter in abstract combat systems. (From D7)
Buried Without Ceremony has a good post about Saying No and hearing no. Sometimes no is more important to a story than yes.
Bankeui has a pair of posts about fruitful group character creation. It’s a casting process, where the interactions matter as much for story completeness as any character.
Buried Without Ceremony has another good post, plugging in scenes and system, that might help you diagnose unenjoyable play. It’s very possible that there’s just a disconnect that needs bridging.
Industry:
MJ Harnish asks “Is Savage Worlds the new D20?“. It’s an interesting question– given the love that Kurt and other gnomes have expressed, it sounds like an interesting chassis to build on.
Living Dice has links for 29 OGL scenarios for Living Arcanis. If you’re stumped for play tonight, check em out.
What Impressed You Recently?
Audience participation time– seen anything interesting or useful? Throw it in a comment with a brief description and share it with the world.
Our second book, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, is now available in print and PDF!
Reviewing Masks, RPG Blog II said, "Masks is a system-neutral, well-organized treasury of memorable, easy-to-use NPCs that will add to any Game Master’s arsenal."
Buy Masks now and start using it in your game tonight!
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Martin Ralya
I always love your roundups, Scott — thanks for doing this one! We read enough different stuff that I always find a ton of new material whenever you do one.
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
kenmarable
I’ve recently started working through the World building in 30 days. Although it’s written for fiction writers, everything seems quite applicable to RPGs (in fact, you can tell from some of the posts that the writer is conversant in D&D).
It’s a very thorough step-by-step guide for building rich, varied worlds rather than “Ice world”, “Swamp world” that have no variation at all.
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
Tricen
Seems d7 is down. Shame, I REALLY wanted to check out that “abstract combat systems” link.
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
Scott Martin
@Tricen – d7 was very slow, but just opened up for me a minute ago. Hope you’re able to reach it soon.
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
d7
Thanks for the link love!
Things should be better behaved right now on my site. I had just moved my blog to new hosting last night and there are clearly some performance issues to sort out, so thank you for the flood of gnomes to help me test out the new setup.
I have some better caching in place that seems to have improved things immensely.
(If it goes down again I would dearly appreciate if someone on Twitter would direct message me @sevensideddie.
)
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
Kurt "Telas" Schneider
Interesting discussion at the MJ Harnish/Savage Worlds link. Thanks for that one!
Sep 11th, 2009 - Link
Swordgleam
Thanks for the plug!
Interesting links, as always.
Sep 12th, 2009 - Link
AndreasDavour
You feel like starting an argument, and sounding like an authentic old geezer?
Enjoy!
http://kellri.blogspot.com/2009/09/burn-baby-burn.html
Sep 13th, 2009 - Link
Kurt "Telas" Schneider
@AndreasDavour – Someone need to program that into a WordPress plugin…
Sep 13th, 2009 - Link
AndreasDavour
Sep 13th, 2009 - Link
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