Author Archives: Brent
Game Design Hour: How to Find Play Testers
This is part of a series of blog posts where I confront issues relating to tabletop RPG game design. First off, you may be asking: Do I need play testers? Can’t I play my game with a few friends, then just post it online? Of course, yes, you can just publish it. And if you’ve got a … Continue reading
How Ryon Got Kicked Out of Our Group
Play tabletop RPGs long enough, and you’ll run into him: the player who you no longer want to be part of your group. He’s not just annoying; he makes the game less fun for everyone. Again, to be clear: this post is about a player who decreases everybody’s enjoyment of the game. That was Ryon. He was rude, he’d elbow … Continue reading
Game Design Hour: What You Need for a First Draft
This is an ongoing series of posts where I look at tabletop RPG design pretty darned exhaustively. Let’s say you’ve got an idea for an RPG, and you’ve written down some notes and rules. Let’s further say that you want to release this to the public. Before you do, you’ll want to show it to at … Continue reading
Monster Monday: Komodo Investigator of Tarakona
The savage continent of Tarakona, where draconic races battle for supremacy! The studious Komodos explore the ancient ruins that cover Tarakona in groups of 5 to 10, typically made up of rangers, investigators, and tamed hunting drakes, who then report back to a team of researchers in a Komodo stone city. Once the rangers get a … Continue reading
Faction Friday: Elydain’s Caravan, The Dragon Egg Smugglers
Elydain’s Caravan can be used either as a friendly faction that sends the PCs out on a mission, or as a foe that the PCs must overcome. This small caravan of about two dozen tightly-knit, mostly elven merchants, guards, and family members, led by an old elven lady named Elydain Cirelthion, trades mostly in metal merchandise from pans to daggers. … Continue reading
Game Design Hour: Helpful Sites for the Designer
This post covers public websites with features useful for the game designer during design. In other words, this isn’t about publishing your game (that’s another post). Often, you’ll need to share game materials with other players, or you want to work on your rules from multiple places. Some folks forget the utility of Google Drive. You can create … Continue reading
Campaign Concept: Savage, Dangerous Nature
Imagine a D&D fantasy world where you don’t screw with animals. If you enter a cave and you run across a growling wolf, you back down and find another way in (or tempt the creature away, or make peace with it, or whatever). Now, you could make exceptions for some vermin, like sewer rats and … Continue reading
Game Design Hour: The Three Phases of Prototyping
This post continues a series of blog posts in which I provide recommendations about tabletop game design. This won’t necessarily teach you how to design a game, but it will help you along as you build it. In this post, I’m going to talk about the prototyping. The Crappy First Prototype When I get an idea … Continue reading
Monster Monday: Pupae-Disgorging Pregnant Armor Spider
How metal is that, huh? Inspired by the Egg Hunt encounter designed by Drunkens & Dragons, this giant armored spider has two particularly interesting elements: Every 1d4 rounds, the spider spits out 1d4 teethed pupae, who quickly join the fray. The pupae are low on Armor Class and Hit Points but high on damage, which means PCs … Continue reading
Faction Friday: The Necromancer’s Pits
The Necromancer can be used either as a friendly faction that sends the PCs out on a mission, or as a foe that the PCs must overcome. Scarloth Vonidar studies necromancy in an old, haunted cave complex. He normally keeps to himself, but now he needs spell components to further his research. As a friendly faction, Scarloth is a … Continue reading