Tips that can help improve the setting or flow of play. Very little ‘real game content’, except perhaps as examples of how rules or techniques can be applied.
I recently posted a description in a comment to a blog post of how I handle experience and level gains that I thought I should include on my own site. In considering how to write it, I realized it might be worth exploring a few other models of character development …
So far, these articles have focused on definitions and theory. This article shows how they can used together to actually craft something. Summary of Steps Develop the setting, so the campaigns have a place to happen. Develop campaigns, so the player characters have long-term goals and to provide a general …
The number three seems to have a strong cognitive effect. Hearing something three times can help someone remember it, we usually need at least three observations to predict a pattern, and we seem to be able to easily remember about three things about a subject. Listing sets of three is …
This process owes its genesis to ideas I had while reading Justin Alexander’s Node-Based Scenario Design essay. This essay formalized processes I had been applying and helped focus my mind on them… and led to me to some abstractions I hadn’t considered before. An adventure, a scenario, can ultimately be …
In a recent thread in rec.games.frp.dnd, I saw a comment with regard to a matter of power balance in a focus-mojo-and-release idea that I thought I would follow up on. I think it does a fair bit to explain where I’m coming from in my game design and campaign expectations. …
This is a quick addendum to my last post, particularly the section on scope levels. I wrote how scope levels describe how broad an impact or influence entities can have. However, I didn’t write about how big I expect game elements of each scope level to be in play. This …
This article is a follow-up to my earlier Campaign Setting Design article. It expands somewhat on the idea of entities (there called ‘features’; I have formalized the structures somewhat). I will be providing some greater description of the techniques I use to develop settings and scenarios. In order to do …
After reading most of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, I stumbled on The Dresden Files RPG, and clearly it had to be mine. I’m only about fifty pages in, and I’ve read a campaign design technique hadn’t really thought about. I’ve been doing something similar for a while, but …
In discussing yesterday’s post about the goals of Echelon, I realized there are some unspoken assumptions on my part. I mentioned how I didn’t mind ‘CR math’, the arithmetic used to combine Challenge Ratings to find Encounter Levels and thus estimate whether or not an encounter can be considered reasonable …
This is the first post I wrote on the topic of Polyhedral Pantheons, but the Polyhedral Pantheons Hall of Fame page is a better starting point. It has links to pretty much everything on my site regarding Polyhedral Pantheons, and even some on other sites. I am shamelessly stealing the …
