Originally published on BabyCenter.com March 9, 2016
I don’t try to get my kids interested in my hobbies, but it’s inevitable to a certain degree. I spend time watching Little Einsteins and drinking imaginary tea, and in turn they want to join in my card games and help me write. That’s how they got involved in a role-playing game with me this past weekend.
Continue reading “My Kids Became a Butt-Kicking Princess and a Friendly Zombie”
Finalist, Lethal Lairs 2015 contest, KoboldPress.com
“Ambush at the Oasis” is a CR 9 encounter for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game. It is set in the Southlands campaign setting, available through Kobold Press, but can be adapted for use in any fantasy setting that has a desert.
According to legend, the blue wyrm Azdrar once looked upon his life and saw an emptiness that all his greed and machinations could not fill. Determined to turn over a new leaf, he spent the last decades of his life aiding travelers through the Sarklan Desert, serving as one of the only examples of a benevolent blue dragon the world has ever known.
Whether Azdrar truly reformed or not, a small desert spring in the Hariek Hills holds his bleached white bones and a ring of desert lupines that always seem to retain a vibrant hue. It is said that the waters of the oasis sprang forth from the tears of remorse the wyrm shed and that they possess curative properties.
Continue reading “Ambush at the Oasis: A Pathfinder 1st Edition Encounter”
Originally published on Sidekickcast.com January 26, 2016
While most fantasy fiction limits magic use to the main characters, fantasy RPGs have a whole economy built up around them. A default RPG setting assumes that the PCs are one of many heroes, which means towns are likely to hold retired spellcasters who might provide services or even sell magic items to younger heroes.
None of this magic economy really benefits the commonfolk, unfortunately. If a typical peasant makes only two silver pieces a day, he has to save up for a couple of months to even afford a simple cure light wounds spell, let alone something that could cure diseases or raise the dead.
The fantasy one-percenters, however, have a lot of fun options out there. Here are a few things somebody with lots of cash can accomplish in a typical fantasy RPG. I’m using Pathfinder 1st edition as the rules default here, but most of these options exist in similar games as well.
Continue reading “Opportunities Abound for the Fantasy 1%”
Originally published on Sicdekickcast.com November 17, 2015
Easily my favorite part of tabletop RPGs is the fact that they have so much latitude and room for player agency. No matter how robust a computer game is, there are always a finite number of choices. Because tabletop RPGs rely on human adjudication, the possibilities are limitless…like that time the PCs in one of my games inspired a pair of half-fiends to become vaudeville stars.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Dancing Half-Fiends and the Glory of Infinite Choices”
I can’t help myself when it comes to putting the deck of many things in front of my players. Now it’s back again, and it’s thrown my campaign on a very unexpected course.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Revenge of the Deck of Many Things”
A longer time ago than it seems, I got married. Sometime around the date of my wedding, I created the following template for Pathfinder first edition. I swear the timing is coincidental and in no way reflects upon my own lovely wife Sarah, who was nothing but composed and gracious all through the planning for our wedding, who is the most gorgeous and intelligent woman I know, and who would be even more attractive if she stopped threatening me with a fire axe as I type this.
Continue reading “The Bride-to-Be”
Originally published in Wayfinder #15
Once the pyres start burning, it’s hard to tell the dead from the undead. It doesn’t help that one becomes another so easily.
Continue reading “Fiction: Matters of Faith”
The destruction of the SS Stupid brought an end to one of the more bizarre chapters of my GMing experience. But great stories often get sequels, and it wasn’t long before the SS Stupid returned in a new, grander form.
Continue reading “The SS Stupid Rides Again”
Character death is a touchy subject in RPGs. Some people think the PCs should always be at risk, and that an adventure is an outright failure if at least one character doesn’t get killed off during the action. Others never have PCs bite the dust, using house rules that cause a hero to go unconscious but not die when the rules as written would have them pushing up daisies. And, as with any divisive topic with extreme opposite stances, the majority of players fall somewhere in the middle of that scale.
Continue reading “On Character Death”
Night Below: An Underdark Campaign is a classic AD&D adventure that I purchased when it came out in the 1990s but which I never got to run all the way through until the 2010s. Beginning with D&D 3rd edition and eventually converting to Pathfinder, my final version of the campaign saw some changes, including revising the Rockseer elves and adding a secret villain behind the aboleth conspiracy: the Red Mage.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal!”