Pulp fiction uses strong strokes and colors, to use a painting analogy, to set the stage. The genre leans on larger than life elements, partly to make it more exciting, but also partly because it makes it clear what’s going on. Unless it’s a mystery story, there isn’t much ambiguity …
Creating pantheons has always been an interest of mine, to the point I wrote a book about creating pantheons. I’ve got another one in the works about developing deities based on their domains. In fact, Divine Trappings has been the subject of my A-Z 2021 and A-Z 2024 blog challenges… …
Icons are, hands down, my favorite bit from 13th Age. A set of major figures who influence aspects and elements of a campaign setting, with a very long reach. Even abstractly named — surely the Elven Queen doesn’t have that on her birth certificate — they provide a focal point …
One of my favorite takeaways from Sine Nomine’s An Echo, Resounding is that PCs will reasonably give you the side eye if they start running into big, dangerous, local threats they never heard of before being able to take them on. The book then goes into how to lay the …
Have you ever noticed that in pulp fiction (the genre, not the Tarantino movie), you rarely see characters traveling? At least, not in detail. In movies, it’s often glossed over with a picture of a map, and lines being drawn from way point to way point. The intrepid investigators start …
In Emergent Stories, I wrote that various ‘major figures’ have purposes. This sounds like it means individual characters (‘figure’ in this context usually means a person), but it doesn’t have to. A faction is a collection of people (characters or creatures, not necessarily humanoid) with a shared purpose. It seems …
My participation in the A-Z Blog Challenge always seems to be hit and miss. Often, I complete the challenge, more or less on time. About as often, I don’t complete nearly on time (last year I ‘finished’ in October!), or even finish at all. In April 2013 I got as …
Roleplaying games are sometimes described as ‘collaborative story telling’. I’ve seen two main ways this is implemented. One is almost totally free form: PCs play adventures, have a time, and the events make a story. Okay. The second is more structured: PCs play an adventure path, hitting planned events, and …
I’ve been playing and reading roleplaying games for decades now. Something I’d noticed, mostly because the exceptions stand out so much, is how static things tend to be. Specifically, encounter areas are usually pretty fixed. A stage is set and then… doesn’t change. Sometimes there are hazards present (drops from …
Much like the Tome of Adventure Design, Modiphius’s Conan 2d20 line presents a couple ways of creating and adventure. Both approaches have merit, and I’ll explore them below. Ancient Ruins and Cursed Cities This approach is very site-based. Define a location with interesting things, and adventurers will come. Summarized, the …
