Part of developing skills involves constantly assessing your abilities. Among my strengths are abstract though and pattern discovery, and other analytical skills. Not so much among my strengths is quickly inventing detail… without tools to prompt me. My brain insists on making things make sense and be sensible, and I …
Ever since I discovered (i.e. “learned about from someone else”, I didn’t invent them or anything) fractals I’ve been mildly fascinated by them. This is not an uncommon thing. A fractal can be defined, in part (I’m not going to go into the full mathematical definition), as a “self-similar pattern”, …
I’ve written this post two or three times now in my head, each time with a different emphasis. Hopefully I’ve chosen a good one. And I’ve just decided to bail on everything I’d written to start over, because I was digging into the differences between sandbox flavors (hex crawl versus …
The primary option for gaining experience points in Seekers of Lore is to discover and recover that which was lost. Knowledge in general and special items are prime candidates for this activity, and easily portable. Not so portable, but may easily be as valuable or more in the long run …
There are many ways to present campaign maps. Depending on the purpose, different map styles can be more appropriate than others. Seekers of Lore is going to be very much a sandbox campaign, with a great deal of exploration. There are two primary map styles I am considering. Artistic Maps …
Technically this starts with ‘C’ and meets the A-Z Challenge criteria, but it’s awfully cheap. I’ll post another article, on cartography styles, later this evening. In the meantime, my friend Erik Tenkar is coordinating a “Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day” on April 17 (I’m not entirely sure why that day …
I’ve recently touched on some ideas about spell books as rewards in Seekers of Lore, but didn’t explore the topic thoroughly. First, there are other sources of knowledge. Books are perhaps one of the most convenient overall ever — generally portable, fairly durable, human-readable, and with decent data density for …
Dungeons & Dragons has long had the concept of alignment, though the definition has changed over time. This post will explore some of the options available to me, looking for a best fit for my Seekers of Lore campaign. Nine-Fold Alignment Model My background is primarily with Dungeons & Dragons …
I’m taking part in the A-Z Challenge this year. The premise of the challenge is to post one article every day, except Sundays, through the month of April. This usually amounts to twenty-six days, or close to, and for an added twist, each post is to cover a topic starting …
I was thinking recently about spell books — arcane and divine — and realized that the structure of Seekers of Lore could make good use of them. I don’t know precisely how I will incorporate them, and I’d welcome your thoughts, but here are a few things I’m thinking about. …