In turns out, that Thunderspire is a fairly popular adventure to alter. From SlyFlourish’s tips, to the Eleven Foot Poles reviews of its encounters and subsequent rewrites to H1, H2 and H3, and Bens RPG Pile video playthrough, there have been lots of tweaks to improve the adventure. One thing I want to do is …
Category Archive: Inspiration
General Ideas and Inspiration.
Thunderspire Labyrinth as an Encounters Season?
It seems a strange thing to discuss, one of the original PHB1 4e adventures, and WotC’s popular encounter a week format? Yet the two are more closely linked than you may think. Thunderspire Labyrinth was the second in the heroic tier published adventures, and was set after the events of the Keep on The Shadowfell, …
What Exactly Is a Spellbook
For most users of the arcane arts, the unlocking of their true potential is gradual but constant, warlocks who prove their capability to their patron receive ever greater power, bards craft new ballads and insulting poems, the arcane threads of the world woven into the musical notation used to transcribe their work. But it is …
The Rituals of the Dwarven Forge Masters
The Rituals of the Dwarven Forge Masters ‘The sound of hammering resonates outwards from the anvil, each blow felt collectively by the 20 or so dwarves working their, sweat dripping from their beards in the sweltering heat generated by the forge’s fire. Here, in the heart of the clan hold, they were making magic…’ Almost …
A look at goblin tribes
An excerpt from the journals of Colonel Horvath Mont Gormoth, retired explorer and gentlman, late of the sub-continent… Goblins, or to give them their correct title, Homo Gobelinus (other variants on the name exist, but there are too many to list here) are an extremely common foe across the known world, and despite their relative …
36 Plots
Old Tricks In the 1920′s Georges Polti wrote a book called The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, and I first came in contact with it through the Legend of the Five Rings GM’s Survival Guide (still an excellent DM resource, and not just for L5R). Mr Polti set forth a structure for defining each story with respect …
Themes & Things To Keep In Mind When Writing Fantasy Stories and Adventures
This list is far from complete. It’s not even trying to be complete. It knows better than that. It just wants to be helpful and provide some inspiration here and there; you know, offer little suggestions that might lead to bigger ideas. (Especially by using the words offered as Wikipedia searches!) Feel free to make …
Lessons from Nerath
Reading the human racial write up in Heroes of the Fallen Lands gave me stark picture of the problem with Nerath: it lacks culture. In this case I mean it lacks a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices to characterize it. Nerath, even when described vaguely is described in such a way as …
Its a… Monster!
Dragons are iconic to the game and yet prior to 4th edition I hated using them. But in the past two years my home campaign has seen more dragons fall to the heroes than in nearly every prior year combined. I’ve written 7 delves for Living Forgotten Realms and 6 of them feature a dragon …
Social Elements in Fantasy
“One thing that often surprises me is how much, and yet how little, we change when we create fantasy worlds. For instance, we often radically change the look and feel of the world. We add new wondrous species, awe-inspiring locales and epic legends. However, rarely do we change the fundamental underpinnings of our societal structure …