Until now, most of the work done has been pretty random. The hex map was randomly generated and the graph of interesting locations was mostly randomly generated. Even combining them had only minor intervention on my part, and that was simply shifting the node locations a bit so they landed …
A couple of years ago I wrote a post On Hit Points and Healing, and a couple months after that a post exploring the Implications of Changes to the Hit Point Model. According to my logs, it seems both have been fairly well-received. It occurred to me recently that the …
Last night I generated a campaign map and a graph showing how major sites of interest link to each other. I have 26 nodes at my highest level, and I usually stick to a total of 10-12 nodes in any given graph for a particular level of detail and locality …
I think it’s time for me to start working on another sandbox campaign. My last one stalled on me when I got busy with another project. I’d like to build this one using a slightly different approach, so rather than trying to update the previous one I’ll simply start over. …
This article expands on a sometimes troublesome piece of the Entity Template I posted earlier. ‘Scope’ measures how broad an influence or impact an entity has on a game. This is not necessarily a measure of how much power an entity has, but power and scope often are related. Scope …
The Entity Template is one of the more frequently used tools in my campaign and scenario design toolbox. Whether I actually present it or not, the template guides my thoughts to ensure I don’t miss any standard design elements. There was a time, long ago, when much of my scenario …
Some time ago I switched the development of the Echelon roleplaying game from Dungeons & Dragons 3.x to Pathfinder. I figured there was more material more readily accessible. I was right about that. In fact, it turns out that individual topics could not fit entirely in my brain — there …
D&D isn’t just Dungeons & Dragons, after all. Though I started playing Dungeons & Dragons a bit more than thirty years ago (thank you, arithmetic, for that painful fact), and it does relate to today’s topic. A couple days ago I posted about the Echelon Reference Series, an exhaustive (and …
In ages past, the First Scholar Herol discovered how to make markings on animal skins that knowledge will not be lost. This brought him to the attention of Strolen, small god — or rather, sysadmin of Strolen’s Citadel, close enough :) — interested in oddities of the world. In one …
That should have ‘B’ well and truly covered. The first release from Echelon Game Design is nearing completion. I aim to have Echelon Reference Series: Barbarian ready for release by the end of June. The Echelon Reference Series is (or will be) a collection of books gathering information on specific …