The Men For Whom The World Exists
There exists a belief among Jewish mystics in a group of 36 humble righteous men for whom God permits the world to continue to exist. There are many names for these men. One is ‘lamedvavniks’. Their profound goodness, even in the face of a degenerate world, shows God that the world is worth perpetuating. For […]
Small Changes and User Experience
I recently ran some sessions of two RPGs that strive to emulate related genres of fiction. Though they don’t seem so at first blush, under the hood, the two systems almost identical. Yet they play very differently. Let’s look at why. Space: 1889 is a game about an alternate late 19th century where marvelous technologies […]
Mali’s Real-Life Adventurers’ Guilds
Timbuktu is an ancient crossroads town in northern Mali, in the dusty Sahel between the Sahara and the green lands farther south. Its scholarly institutes make great adventurers guilds. Seriously – the libraries of Timbuktu have everything a good adventurer’s guild needs: an interesting ideological reason for existing, tension, high stakes, plot hooks, and quests […]
Reshuffling Dungeon
One of my favorite kinds of dungeons is the one where the layout itself is a puzzle for the players to solve. This reshuffling dungeon looks straightforward at first, but repeats itself in unpredictable ways. Clearing the dungeon gives the illusion of forward progress, but doesn’t actually lead anywhere. Nonetheless, once the players realize this, […]
Help! My roommate is a genie!
Robert Lebling, in his wonderful book Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar retells a bit of Bangladeshi creepypasta about a coed who was revealed to be a jinniya, a female jinni. If Lebling repeats the story a little credulously, well, it’s a good story. The yarn, reportedly found on […]
Stealth Rules
Stealth in most RPGs suffers from a problem of attention and consequences. If the stealthy character wants to go off somewhere and sneak around, that’s great, but since the rest of the party isn’t there, those players wind up twiddling their thumbs while he does cool stuff. A certain amount of this is fine, but […]
Hellas and Glory
I recently ran a game of Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone. It’s classical Greek mythology meets space opera – fickle gods, spaceships, glory, tragedy, laser pistols, and apotheosis. Hellas has a really fun parallel experience track called ‘Glory’, which represents your esteem in the eyes of gods and men. As you gain Glory, you […]
Saber-Toothed Tigers and Weapons Ghosts Recognize
Medieval Finns believed stone age artifacts were magical. The millennia-old knapped stone tools sometimes turned up by their plows could, they thought, ward off evil. Medieval Finns buried these tools in the foundations of their walls and hearths to guard their homes. There’s something very cool about stone arrowheads and adzes as wards, whether they […]
Funneling Ambush
This is an encounter intended to funnel the party in a particular direction without leaving the players feeling railroaded. This version has the party chased down a mountainside into a cave, but you can adapt this to any terrain. The trick is to: Make the enemies tough. Make the terrain favor the enemies far more […]
Elephants vs. Dragons
I stumbled upon this wonderful bit of Pliny the other day, and there was no way I wasn’t sharing it. Pliny the Elder was a first-century A.D. Roman author, natural philosopher, military officer, and senior Imperial official. His Naturalis Historia was an encyclopedia covering much of what Romans knew about the natural world. It also […]
Treasures that Drive the Plot
Treasures which, once acquired, drive the plot in an interesting direction. Let’s look at two examples. Infernal Solidus This piece of metal looks like a Roman solidus (gold coin), but no one can identify the emperor it depicts. Whenever someone picks it up, if it’s the first time since sunrise she’s picked up a coin […]
Methanol Fires
Methanol – wood alcohol – is a clear liquid used as a solvent, an antifreeze, and a fuel. It has the uncanny property of burning without smoke and without color. In daylight, a methanol fire is effectively invisible. Let’s talk about how weird this stuff is and how to use it in games. Methanol fires aren’t […]
A Most Peculiar Cottage
Mankby is an archaeological site in Finland, not far from Helsinki. In the 14th and 15th centuries, it was a fairly typical medieval village in what was then part of the kingdom of Sweden. There is one structure in Mankby, though, that has raised some eyebrows: a most peculiar cottage. The cottage consisted of three […]
Stone Boat
I wanted my players to encounter a boat in the Underdark, one that had been abandoned for centuries. I also wanted it to be weird and a little bit alien. Of course, boats don’t last for centuries, so this is what I wound up creating. The boat is made of stone, thirty feet long, ten […]
Aristodemos
The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus records an interesting story about Aristodemos, the one Spartan who survived the battle of Thermopylae. It’s the sort of thing that could make some great PC backstory. Quick background: the Battle of Thermopylae, best known these days from the movie 300, was a three-day battle fought in 480 […]