Last Christmas I ran the Bone Dragon Pyramid from The Creative GM’s Guide To Extraordinary Locations as a one-shot for some of my old school friends and their kids. I placed the pyramid in Chult (Forgotten Realms) and inserted a Heart of Darkness-style boat ride up the river Tyriki to reach the pyramid, after which […]
I stayed up late the other night to watch the ENNIES live stream at Gen Con. I hadn’t really planned to, but I got home from drinks with friends around 1:30am and the ceremony started at 2am my time, so I figured why not stick it on while I got ready for bed? It was […]
I’ve seen even experienced Game Masters resort to railroading at the gaming table. Hell, I’ve been guilty of it myself, and on more than one occasion. But why would any GM stoop that low, when pretty much the one thing that everyone in this hobby agrees upon is that “railroading is bad”? Contrary to what […]
“Bonus actions are hot garbage!” raged the middle-aged gamer on X.com, before proceeding to eviscerate this iconic part of 5th edition design in an epic eight-piece takedown thread. The identity of this blowhard grognard? No doubt one of those OSR evangelists who spend their days shaking a 10-foot-pole towards the Seattle skies and screaming “5e […]
You might have hazarded a guess that, as a blogger, I love the elegance and clarity of the written word. But these days, I find myself spending more time devouring videos on Youtube than reading the latest posts of my favourite word-punchers. Video is such an engaging medium, and I think the fact that the […]
Too often in Dungeons & Dragons, DMs and adventure writers default to creating temples for their settings that closely resemble real-life churches. And I’m not talking about just the aesthetics. Often the entire “vibe” of fantasy temples, along with their role in society, are copied and pasted from how Christian churches function in the real […]
Facehuggers scuttling towards you in the Medlab, chestbursters exploding out of colleagues’ ribcages, and drones dropping out of the air vents to confront you in the flickering light of a doomed space station. Hope’s Last Day delivers everything you could want from your first session playing ALIEN The Roleplaying Game. I am not surprised it […]
The 1986 movie, Aliens, blew my mind when I first watched it. It was action-packed, stylish, thrilling, funny, and absolutely terrifying. I think there’s a strong case to say that the Alien xenomorphs are the most horrifying creatures ever spawned by the human imagination: monsters that violate us, impregnate us, eat us alive from the […]
It’s February already, which means the RPG Blog Carnival on the topic of “Fantasy Locations”, has wrapped up. A total of 8 bloggers contributed a variety of design tips, think-pieces and original new locations that gamers can drop into their own RPG sessions. Below you can find links to all that location-based goodness, posted on […]
Extraordinary locations are at the heart of all great RPG adventures. They provide the cinematic settings of our shared stories, inspiring our players to interact with and explore the worlds that we inhabit in our imagination, while offering abundant opportunities for magic, intrigue, danger, and adventure — the very reasons we come to the table […]
