Back in June I wrote some ideas of new rules for gems. I started with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules for gems, which provide standard values and some variation. I wanted a little more detail, though, so I drafted a table that separated ‘size’ and ‘quality’ so they could each be rolled with …
I’ve talked about my data workflows before, but now I’m going to mumble a bit about layout. In my current workflow I break the game entities (feats, spells, etc.) out by type, then work with them. Each has different rules for rendering. I realized a while ago that from a …
News release? New releases? Whatever. My books, let me sell you them. It is to my immense satisfaction that I announce that I have completed, for now, the Echelon Reference Series Spell Book line. They are not yet all published, but all have been compiled and laid out. Most are already available …
In discussing city wards in my last post, I said that each ward could have up to three qualities. This was partly to keep the total number of qualities in a multi-ward settlement to reasonable levels, but also to prepare for this step: applying the polyhedral process (introduced in Polyhedral …
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 …
James Spahn (Barrel Rider Games, publisher of White Star and of Labyrinth Lord supplements) had an unfortunate interaction with a kamikaze bambi. He and his family are fine, nobody in the car was injured, but they’re looking at a big repair bill. I was already planning to run a sale …
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 …
