A couple years ago, or just slightly more, I wrote about my workflow for extracting game information captured in Word. It’s kind of long: Type (or copy and paste) into Word; Convert Word files to ‘Filtered HTML’; Fix character encoding; Convert to XHTML; Convert to XML closer and closer to the …
A recent question on Facebook reminded me that I was going to review and revise how special materials work with graded items. In short, I expect to look primarily at the effect of the special material and build from there. Sample Materials A few of the common materials from the PRD, …
“Magic item sets” were an artifact (sorry) of the late D&D 3.x era. A small group of items related by their history and power, with a synergy between them that made them more powerful together than apart. The regalia of the phoenix consisted of the raptor’s mask, the crown of flames, the talon scepter, …
Umbral mail, ‘shadow armor’, should probably be a thing. I picture a suit of light mail (chain shirt perhaps?) worn by a rogue who practiced greater and greater acts of stealth. It is a bit like Gyre’s cunning gambeson, so I should look for some ways to differentiate it. Gyre’s Cunning Gambeson …
I don’t often post much Echelon-related material here any more (mostly it’s at EchelonRPG.com), but this particular post fits the skill model I had in mind before I moved over there. Also, it gives me a ‘U Day’ post for this year’s A-Z Blog Challenge. I am not proud. I’ve only …
I explored the market price of graded wands and staves a couple weeks ago, and I’m pretty satisfied with that result. Then I decided that granting graded items some limited spell casting ability — a few spells that can be used daily, sort of thing — could be pretty cool. The fire gauntlet …
So very close to done with the mapping tutorials for now. On Sunday I described how to create the heightmap for a mountain range, and how to render it. On Wednesday I showed how to create the landform for a non-straight mountain range (because the previous article used straight, parallel ranges). …
I’ve written a couple times recently about simple techniques for drawing mountain ranges. Yesterday I showed how I draw the basic landforms, and on Sunday I showed how I manipulate them to relieve monotonous elements and make them look better to me. Under normal circumstances I would have presented the material …
On Sunday I posted a tutorial on a technique I use when drawing mountains. This tutorial focused on a specific set of techniques used to cause a frighteningly boring mountain range — in this case, several parallel ‘ranges’ that were completely straight, uniformly straight, and parallel. They demonstrated how to …
Yesterday I wrote about using flaws and curses when an enchantment check fails, and quirks even when it (barely) succeeds… but what’s the difference? All flaws and curses can be expected to be undesirable and have negative effect on an item or its wielder, and even quirks can be unwanted, or …