This article expands on a sometimes troublesome piece of the Entity Template I posted earlier. ‘Scope’ measures how broad an influence or impact an entity has on a game. This is not necessarily a measure of how much power an entity has, but power and scope often are related. Scope …
The Entity Template is one of the more frequently used tools in my campaign and scenario design toolbox. Whether I actually present it or not, the template guides my thoughts to ensure I don’t miss any standard design elements. There was a time, long ago, when much of my scenario …
Some time ago I switched the development of the Echelon roleplaying game from Dungeons & Dragons 3.x to Pathfinder. I figured there was more material more readily accessible. I was right about that. In fact, it turns out that individual topics could not fit entirely in my brain — there …
D&D isn’t just Dungeons & Dragons, after all. Though I started playing Dungeons & Dragons a bit more than thirty years ago (thank you, arithmetic, for that painful fact), and it does relate to today’s topic. A couple days ago I posted about the Echelon Reference Series, an exhaustive (and …
In ages past, the First Scholar Herol discovered how to make markings on animal skins that knowledge will not be lost. This brought him to the attention of Strolen, small god — or rather, sysadmin of Strolen’s Citadel, close enough :) — interested in oddities of the world. In one …
That should have ‘B’ well and truly covered. The first release from Echelon Game Design is nearing completion. I aim to have Echelon Reference Series: Barbarian ready for release by the end of June. The Echelon Reference Series is (or will be) a collection of books gathering information on specific …
Normally I’d probably title this “Scenario Design Requirements”, but I’m taking another run at the A-Z Challenge so “Adventure Design Requirements” it is. Some time ago a friend gave me a set of three “Character Design Requirements“. She was playing in a primarily ‘Supers’ game, but with only a small …
I’m going to withdraw and mark this as a forfeit. I simply ran out of time before I have to move house (moving house in three days, April 30). I’ve been scrambling to get ready for that, tomorrow I break my office down, Monday I finish off disassembling furniture and …
I’m sure it’s no secret to anyone how much I like Teratic Tome by Rafael Chandler. I’ve written a review of it, and I think it will affect how I design monsters in future. Rafael focused primarily on bad things, and a few neutral-but-dangerous ones. I want to explore some of …
I’ve only written a handful of reviews, but they tend to be for single products or perhaps a very small number of related products (such as if I were to finally do the review I’ve been threatening to of Jack Shear’s Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque books). Sometimes, though, reviewing a …