Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

This is Part 04 of a series wherein we talk about generating an entire campaign, on-the-fly, for your favorite fantasy role-playing game(s). In the future, it might have a tighter focus on either D&D or Pathfinder, but for now, let's consider this material more-or-less generic.

NOTE:...

This is Part 03 of a series wherein we talk about generating an entire campaign, on-the-fly, for your favorite fantasy role-playing game(s). In the future, it might have a tighter focus on either D&D or Pathfinder, but for now, let's consider this material more-or-less generic.

NOTE:...

This is Part 02 of a series wherein we talk about generating an entire campaign, on-the-fly, for your favorite fantasy role-playing game(s). In the future, it might have a tighter focus on either D&D or Pathfinder, but for now, let's consider this material more-or-less generic.

NOTE:...

This is the first part in a series, where we'll be talking about a concept for generating an entire campaign on-the-fly for your favorite fantasy role-playing game. In the future, it might have a tighter focus on either D&D or Pathfinder, but for now, let's consider this material more-or-less generi...

I used to play a lot of AD&D back in the old days. Then I didn't for a long time. Now I'm trying to get back into it in a rather hardcore way, and I'm finding it a challenge.

Why is that?

Age might be an answer, along with its associated distractions and responsibilities. Yes, age, but not so...

We all know that the person running an RPG game like D&D is called the Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM). But what are the other people at the table called?

The obvious answer is player. After all, the other people in the game each run a player character (PC), so surely they must be t...

In my previous posts about converting monsters from 2e and 3e to Fifth Edition, I mention that many monsters have been converted already. I mentioned that to dissuade you from feeling like there's a need to sit down and struggle through the math to convert your favourite monster, at least not b...

I got a lot of great feedback about my previous article, How to Convert D&D monsters to 5e, so it's obviously time for the same article for Third Edition (or 3.5, realistically).

For the longest time, I never really bothered converting from 3.5 to 5e, because I found them to be relatively...

If I had a gold piece for every time a game has been derailed because two players stop to discuss whether they're guilty of accidental "metagaming", I'd be a as wealthy as a brass dragon (not that brass dragons are any richer than any other dragon, necessarily, but they are my favourite dragon)....

D&D is often called the world's oldest RPG because, well, it literally is. With a history of over 40 years, if you're a player of D&D, you have decades of material at your disposal. Thanks to digital technology, the bulk of that history is available in electronic form, so you don't even have to r...

If you're new to the hobby, you may not have ever heard about THAC0, or you may only have encountered it in video games like the classic Baldur's Gate. There's no real reason to know anything about THAC0 now, of course, because neither Pathfinder or 5e use it. However, if you want to turn back th...

I grew up around games, but since I didn't use an OS that got many games, I didn't play many. But ever since it came out, I've heard about Baldur's Gate. It's a much-loved game that adhered firmly to the D&D rulebook, and now it's often referred to as an important step in the develop...

The world of Golarion is the default setting for the wildly popular Pathfinder game, a fork of D&D 3.5 edition. While former Dragon Magazine publisher, Paizo, was able to inherit all D&D rules, the OGL didn't enable them to inherit all of the lore, as laid out in decades of novels, magazine art...

Arguments of quality and quantity aside, I'm of the opinion that you can never have too many RPG modules. And short "one-shot" adventures are, for me, priceless. If D&D is both a game and a hobby, then it's the one-shot modules that make it possible for it to be "just" a game. After all, people do...

In my 3 Pillar XP and Ultimate Intrigue posts, I explained the D&D 5e and Pathfinder (largely compatible with Starfinder) implementations of noncombat-based XP. Such systems are useful when you find that your gaming group isn't playing for constant non-stop combat.

I don't think of myself a...

In my previous blog post, I explained the D&D 5e implementation of noncombat-based XP, because sometimes your gaming group isn't playing for constant non-stop combat. Now, that doesn't mean your gaming group shouldn't play only to fight; treating D&D as a series of skirmishes with some looting...