Things I’ve worked on, or that I’m working on, intended for publication.
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 …
In my last post I talked about the basics of city construction. Settlements have In this post I’m going to talk more about qualities. Settlement Qualities The Pathfinder GameMastery Guide defines a dozen qualities that influence the nature of a settlement. Each quality is basically binary (present or not) and has …
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 …
Many campaigns have world-spanning deities whose power reaches everywhere (more or less). They can provide the ‘full range of services’ (i.e. spells all the way up to ninth level, or seventh in some editions of D&D). Very useful from a game play perspective. However, the idea of being able to …
A brief diversion on the Words of Power exploration, I thought it worth providing a bit of an overview of how powers are constructed in HERO System. This looks like it will become important soon. Effects Powers in HERO are based on effect, with descriptors added to give flavor and something to …
In my last post I outlined some things I’d like to see in the Words of Power system. The unified power framework might seem to be the most ambitious… but I noticed something that might make it a lot less work than I expected. I’ll come back to that a little …
The first Off the Path series will take the Words of Power system from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Magic and make it more to my taste. The general approach is good, and I see room to add a lot more to it. Words of Power Overview Words of Power in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game …
I’m starting a new series, “Off the Path”. Off the Path takes an idea currently implemented in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and changes it — much like the old ‘KJD-ALT‘ posts I used to make to rec.games.frp.dnd. Much of my design is influenced by my work on Echelon. I mostly talk …
In the last couple of posts it’s pretty clear I was wearing my geek hat. Time to lower the flaps and tie the strings under my chin, because this is going to get busy. Taxonomy Straight from dictionary.com: Moving to a more abstract representation of the game data means I need …
In my previous post I wrote about the evolution of the Echelon Reference Series. So far there have been four stages: Now to describe the next generation of the Echelon Reference Series. Next Generation Data Geekery Grab your pocket protectors, this is going to be a ride. The biggest limitation …
