Off the Path: Traps Unchained

Traps are a classic element of adventure design, but in play are often abstracted away with a couple of skill checks (one to detect the trap, one to disarm it) or outmaneuvered by clever play. Either way, the trap construction system presented in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is more “mechanically sophisticated’ (i.e. …

Race and Class, Part 2: Alternate History

Or perhaps ‘historical alternates’. In my last post I described how race and class were linked in various editions of Dungeons & Dragons (and family). In this post I’ll expand a little on these connections, and a couple of alternatives to them. Later-era D&D 3.x presented ‘alternate class features’, where …

Off the Path: City Construction, Part 4: Polyhedral Process

In discussing city wards in my last post, I said that each ward could have up to three qualities. This was partly to keep the total number of qualities in a multi-ward settlement to reasonable levels, but also to prepare for this step: applying the polyhedral process (introduced in Polyhedral …

Off the Path: City Construction, Part 3: Wards

So far, the city construction process has really only covered fairly homogeneous settlements. You might describe a bustling port as having lots of commerce (high Trade score and the Mercantile property) but highly-transient population that can get pretty rowdy (low Stability score). This isn’t a lot of detail, but until …

Off the Path: City Construction, Part 2: Qualities

In my last post I talked about the basics of city construction. Settlements have settlement scores analogous to characters’ ability scores, though applied to different purpose; levels analogous to character levels, that influence the size and resources available; population analogous to experience points (which will come into play more in …

Off the Path: City Construction, Part 1: Basics

Deviating from plan (I’d said my next post would be about building a ‘local pantheon’ of small gods), I decided to write instead about alternate rules for developing a city or other settlement. It expands somewhat on the Polyhedral Pantheons Adaptations I wrote about a while ago. Settlement Basics Before diving …

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