In My Campaign

Fantastic Location: TV Tropes

kjdavies January 11, 2012, 12:56 pm January 11, 2012 Uncategorized

As I mentioned in this week’s Links of the Week post, Jason of The Action Point suggested using TV Tropes to describe the important thematic elements of your campaign, the nature of situations and events players can expect to encounter, and so on.

This seems a good idea, so I figured I’d take a quick look to see if anything jumped out at me…

Somehow, a ‘quick look’ for ‘a few minutes’ means outside my window things went from “o’dark thirty” to “lunch time”. It appears I found a temporal anomaly, without even leaving my desk!

How cool is that? Fairly uncommon in a site (but not unique), easily accessed (many people have, and returned), but physical and biological laws seem to be suspended. Fantastic!

Fantastic Location: Rime Tower, Part 1 – Inspiration

For the last week or so I have been talking about fantastic locations. I have described one, I have discussed even more the resources I use when devising them. I thought it time to describe another one, and I realized that I didn’t feel like going back to revise an …

Link of Fame: The Muppets’ Secret Elevator Tapes – Battle Hymn of the Elevator

kjdavies January 10, 2012, 2:51 pm January 10, 2012 Link of Fame

This video was just forwarded to me by a friend online and it really cheered a rough day.

Being muppets this was obviously staged rather than spontaneous, but it’s still silly enough to make me grin.

Thanks Chuck! It really helped today.

Fantastic Locations: On Holy Ground

kjdavies January 10, 2012, 5:48 am January 11, 2012 2012-01 Fantastic Locations

Temples are one of the more common places of power in my campaign. In a world where gods exist, places of interest to them often take on characteristics appropriate or pleasing to the gods. The gods were interrupted while building the prime plane, which has had some consequences. There are …

D&D 5e Announced

kjdavies January 9, 2012, 12:41 pm January 9, 2012 Uncategorized

I haven’t yet checked RPGBA today, but even without watching the reaction at google+ I’m pretty sure there is a lot of reaction to Wizard’s announcement that they are developing D&D 5e (which I might have thought they’d have somewhere easy to find on their site, but, well, it is …

Links of the Week: January 9, 2012

kjdavies January 9, 2012, 6:00 am January 9, 2012 Links of the Week

I think I might call this the Shatterworld Edition. It seems Niccodaemus has most of the links this week.

RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations

I’m reading all the carnival posts I find — all I’ve read so far look really good, thanks for taking part! — and have decided to round them up separately in a weekly post on Thursdays. Even though it excites me to see them, I’ll leave them out of my normal Links of the Week posts.

I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with the turnout so far.

Kickstarter Projects

I haven’t become aware of any really exciting (to me) projects this week. At least, that I can afford; the 3d printer project looks really cool but I can’t justify the expense.

Monster Stand-Ins (Plastic Card Miniatures)

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inkwellideas/monster-stand-ins-plastic-card-miniatures)

I’m still hawking this one. It’s a little over a third of the way funded and there’s more than a month left, but I’d really like to see it succeed.

Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1806106772/astonishing-swordsmen-and-sorcerers-of-hyperborea)

This one is funded and I just backed it myself. It’s cool enough I thought I’d remind people of it before the project closes January 15 since there is a stretch goal. Tim makes a more impressive case for giving Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers your cash at I’d Rather By Killing Monsters….

Continue reading“Links of the Week: January 9, 2012”

Fantastic Locations: Resources for the Lands of Chaos

kjdavies January 8, 2012, 6:00 am January 11, 2012 2012-01 Fantastic Locations

In the last couple of days I’ve reviewed some books that have information that looks useful for developing fantastic locations. Of those there are four that I look to most often. Revised System Reference Document The only thing I’ve found in the RSRD regarding chaos lands has to do with …

Fantastic Locations: Places of Power

kjdavies January 7, 2012, 6:00 am February 29, 2016 2012-01 Fantastic Locations

A common trope of fantasy settings is that there are places of unusual power. Whether they are ley lines (or better yet the confluence of ley lines), nodes of power, holy sites, or something else, there is something about them that makes them valuable and useful. They are typically fairly …

Permalink Plugin…

kjdavies January 6, 2012, 4:09 pm January 6, 2012 Uncategorized

“So,” says I, “The plugin that broke my site last time has been updated. Let’s give it a try, I know how to disable again after if they didn’t fix that niggly little thing.” Install plugin, check niggly little thing, deactivate after finding niggly little thing still isn’t right. Forget …

Fantastic Locations: Sources of Fantastic Elements

kjdavies January 6, 2012, 5:51 am January 6, 2012 2012-01 Fantastic Locations

A few days ago I described how I identify fantastic locations. I have given an example of how I describe a fantastic location, in some detail, using a fairly standardized structure. I don’t think I’ve spoken much about how I define them, so I’ll take a run at it now. …