Author Archives: Brent
Monster Monday: Great Owl
Sure, sure, there’s a giant owl in the Monster Manual. But all it does is swoop and attack with claws. Let’s make something scary, like the Great Owl from The Secret of NIMH. To me, the scary thing about a giant owl would be its silence and its rending beak. You don’t hear the owl coming … Continue reading
Faction Friday: The Weretiger Merchants
Normally solitary creatures, weretigers do occasionally mate and form families, though they normally scatter once the litter grows to maturity. Jax and Thessia Ironsky are different. Very much in love with each other, unusually fertile, and free from the territoriality so common in their race, over the years they’ve raised a large family of over … Continue reading
200 Word RPG of the Week: Kataware Doki, the Game of Body Swapping
Joseph Le May‘s Kataware Doki is a 2-player LARP heavily inspired by a Japanese anime film, Makoto Shinkai’s amazingly successful Your Name. The game just directly tells you to play out the central conceit, of two characters switching bodies. There are no mechanics in the game, just things you’re supposed to do at different times. (That’s okay; … Continue reading
Where is the Story Load in your game mechanic?
You roll dice to find out what happens, right? OK, how do you determine the parameters for “what happens?” When you roll dice in a tabletop RPG, you’re generally comparing the roll to one of three things: A target difficulty number that varies according to either the rules or the GM’s decision during play (as in D&D, where the … Continue reading
True Tiles: Next Generation Terrain?
I own a fair amount of “standard” dungeon terrain, the kind with 1″ squares and walls appropriately sized for standard D&D minis. I break it out most days, and players “ooh” and “ahh,” and then after a little while, something happens: They start to forget where things are. I deploy terrain precisely so that players won’t forget where things … Continue reading
Monster Monday: Agents of the Library of Time
Time travel is messy, and it always rewrites history. Someone has to keep track of all those changes. And so, the Library of Time serves as a collection of books about history, all history, including the histories that no longer happened. However, a book that tells of an alternate timeline can be a powerful weapon in the wrong person’s hands. The very … Continue reading
Faction Friday: The Library of Time
Time travel is messy, and it always rewrites history. Someone has to keep track of all those changes. And so, the Library of Time serves as a collection of books about history, all history, including the histories that no longer happened. However, a book that tells of an alternate timeline can be a powerful weapon in the wrong person’s hands. The very … Continue reading
Dungeon World-style Fronts for other Fantasy RPGs
Dungeon World includes a wonderful mechanic called fronts, which describe larger-scale threats that the PCs may face: a cult, a horde of orcs, a powerful wizard, a natural disaster, etc. Fronts have quite a few moving parts, though: Scale (campaign-level or adventure-level) Dangers (people, monsters, traps, unstable artifacts, etc.) An impending doom for each danger … Continue reading
Semi-Monthly Map: Chothun’s City Home
This map works well for a murder mystery, political intrigue, or other urban storyline in a fantasy world. Chothun, a successful silk merchant, maintains this lavish home in the capital. Made of locally quarried stone adorned with blue and white tapestries and silk curtains, the house exudes luxury without feeling overly ostentatious. Entrance through the main door … Continue reading