5 Fantasy Series You Should Read If You Play D&D
Movies, television, and theatre are wonderful places to get ideas, concepts, and even plot-lines for great D&D campaigns. However, for true inspiration and a real feel for how adventures/characters...
View Article7th Sea: Second Edition – Kickstarter
“John Wick brings 7th Sea back in a 300-page, full-color, hardbound book. Revised rules, revised Nations, updated for the 21st Century. “ I funded John Wick’s 7th Sea: Second Edition Kickstarter today...
View ArticleHome is Where the Heart of the Campaign Is
This week on the Campaign Trail we look at creating headquarters with your players. Most Tabletop RPG (TRPG) involve a fellowship of heroes who wander the land righting wrongs and fighting evil. These...
View ArticleLet’s Get Digital! ePubs in the RPG Industry
This weekend we have a quest post for Senda from the She’s a Super Geek podcast. We all know it, RPGs are a hobby that can require massive amounts of shelf space. Sure, some of the books (Fate Core,...
View ArticleWild West – Crimes and Punishment
I’ve been working to define some more aspects of my Wild West campaign setting based on 1870s Western United States. I started to put together ideas about crimes and punishment, and pulled a lot of...
View Article4 Weird And Wonderful Homebrew Campaigns
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone that reads my stuff that I’m a huge fan of homebrew. Except for most of the things in the Players Handbook, I homebrew until the cows come home. The...
View ArticleModiphius’ Conan Roleplaying Game – Kickstarter
Today we see the British Game Publisher Modiphius crowdfunding the highly anticipated roleplaying game: Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. The kickstarter has already funded within hours, and...
View ArticleDealing with Difficult Players – A DM’s Guide
If you spend enough time roleplaying, either as a player or as a DM, you will eventually encounter a player that can be best described as difficult. (There are also a few other select words that could...
View ArticleFive Essential Lessons for New DMs in D&D
Since the release of 5th Edition, I’ve run into many DMs trying their hand at D&D for the very first time. Some of these folks are coming to the table with previous experience in Pathfinder, Star...
View ArticleA Visit the Shadowfell – Shadar-Kai & More
This week on the Campaign Trail we visit the Shadowfell to look at the Shadar-Kai and other inhabitants of this plane. In my next campaign (which is about to start) we’re returning to the Nentir Vale,...
View ArticleChoose Your Own Adventure
Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? (They still make them.) You had a list of options, and they indicated a page number, then you flipped through to that page number after making a...
View ArticleThe Legend of Zelda Franchise and the D&D Roadmap
In the spirit of journalistic, or at least hack-authorial, integrity, this article was written with a large amount of medically-prescribed opiates in my system. I had an osteotomy on my left shoulder...
View ArticleD&D 5th Edition – Gambler Prestige Class
I am working on a Gambler option for my Wild West campaign, and I started with an idea for a Rogue archetype, but then I worked toward a Prestige Class. That way it could be an option for any class...
View ArticlePopstar and Putting a Good Twist on Classics
I am taking a break from the Zir’an series this week to focus on some GM advice from an unlikely source: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. I’m a big fan of the directorial efforts of Christopher...
View ArticleTribal Knowledge: Playing with a Stranger’s Toys
DriveThruRPG, the DM’s Guild, and the gaming blogosphere are just the newest sources of the huge wealth of setting material that has been published for D&D, to say nothing of WotC’s extraordinarily...
View ArticleIndependence Day: Resurgence and Wasting Good Design
Zir’an can wait one more week. I absolutely must discuss Independence Day: Resurgence and how it represents the very worst parts of bad fantasy and game running. As weird as this sounds, this movie is...
View ArticleThe Earl of Lemongrab and Antagonists
“I have to use my sound sword now! It’s a sound sword!” -Lemongrab, Earl of Lemongrab The current trend of power fantasy poses some interesting challenges for the modern GM. Anecdotally speaking,...
View ArticleGoodman Games’ Mutant Crawl Classics – Kickstarter
This is the last day for everyone to join in and support the new Mutant Crawl Classics by Jim Wampler. The kickstarter has already been funded, and they almost at 1000% of their goal. There are only...
View ArticleRoll20 to offer Official WotC D&D Content
I just saw the news on Polygon that Roll20 is offering D&D content as explained by Greg Tito. “We’re always looking to broaden access to Dungeons & Dragons, and Roll20 already plays a...
View ArticleSasquatch Game Studio – ALTERNITY SciFi RPG
To the stars! Sasquatch Game Studio announces that it plans to release ALTERNITY ™, a science-fiction roleplaying game that covers everything from galaxy-spanning empires to near-future orbital...
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