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 …
Category Archive: Inspiration
General Ideas and Inspiration.
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 …
Sandbox vs Safety Rails
A couple of days ago ThadeousC posted a seemingly innocent tweet that asked the following: “In OD&D running from monsters is often a valid option over fighting, does it ever happen in your 4e game?”. The ensuing discussion was spirited and occasionally intense. I wanted to get involved, but 140 characters was far, far too …
Rokugan to 4E DnD – Part 1
I know the Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) setting pretty well, more than well enough to run games there “off the cuff” and so it is easier for me to look at it rather than Dragonlance, which I haven’t taken a serious look at for 15 years or so. As a result I’ll be …
4E Inspired by..
I have been thinking about a campaign to run and recently thadeousc asked on Twitter what people’s favorite modules were and my initial list was quickly: Living Forgotten Realms module Silver Lining – I love the NPC that goes along with the party. BECMI modules – Rahasia and Castle Amber – I actually used Rahasia …
Inspiration: The Happening
or “what can you learn from a movie that failed to deliver?” I didn’t see The Happening at a cinema, I happily hired it from the video shop for $1 for a week. I’m glad I didn’t watch it at the movies. But I think there are things that can be learnt from it for …
Inspiration
One of the biggest problems with coming up with a module, or even a single encounter, is getting inspired. There are obvious sources of inspiration that a routinely mentioned; mostly movies and books, then there are others like old gaming books, other games, and history. Movies and books are full of ideas if you look …