Engineer, musician, warrior… Aelliena became all of these not through inherent talent, but sheer stubborn will to succeed. She is the patroness of all who refuse to give in to failure. She is driven by the need to improve herself, to find elegance (the combination of beauty and utility together), …
I’ve come to quite enjoy the AGE (Adventure Game Engine) System from Green Ronin. For a longer time, I’ve been interested in random encounter tables. This point combines them, after a fashion. When rolling checks in AGE System, you roll 3d6. Two six-sided dice share a color, the third die …
As usual, here is my ‘Z-A Index’ roundup of my blog challenge. I feel like I’ve done better in previous years. This time around I was late many of the days, and I did not actually reach the target (by subject completion, not word count) I was aiming for. The …
[It appears the ‘related content’ plugin works pretty well… the post linked below about adversarial DMs is the same story… but it still makes me laugh, so I’m keeping both posts — kjd] Long, long ago we ran into some trolls and cut them in half, and the DM ruled …
Echelon’s Advantage Dice System started as a straight roll-with-advantage system and has grown dice pool elements (mostly for measuring critical success). You get a ‘tier die’ (based on your level) for any check you can try, then various talents can add more dice based on the tier of the talent. …
I probably usually cheat on ‘X day’; outside of writing about xorn and Xavier (Professor X) and xylophones, fitting this ‘X day’ is a challenge on its own. Sometimes an NPC grows beyond the intended use. An NPC intended for a single encounter can end up being used in multiple …
Several years ago I bought Rafael Chandler’s Teratic Tome. Today I realized — prompted by a post at Against the Wicked City — that I should keep teratic design considerations in mind when I create monsters for Echelon. Possibly not for the quickstart adventure, since I want the focus to …
I like maps. I like automated tools. I find automated tools for creating maps fascinating. One of my favorite engines for creating random maps uses Voronoi diagram methods as a starting point, then expands on them. The engine first creates a Voronoi diagram, then runs a smoothing filter of sorts …
We recently had a season finale in our Low Fantasy Gaming campaign, and I mentioned the Dark & Dangerous checks. Certain creatures (undead for sure, and probably demons) trigger Dark & Dangerous checks under certain circumstances. So to most spell casters (every time they cast a spell). The Dark & …
Most of my gaming is centered on roleplaying games. I play them, I run them, I design them, I even publish for them. I picked up a copy of Terra Mystica a few years ago (I’d wanted it for a while and it came on sale) but hadn’t played it for …
