I haven't been painting miniatures for long. In the past, I've purchased pre-painted miniatures because I didn't have the time, money, or bravery required to paint miniatures myself. Recently, I've felt comfortable enough with my personal budget to spend a little money on a paint kit, and I buy a mi...
I'm reading through the published adventures available for Cubicle 7's Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG. Litanies of the Lost is a book containing four adventures that can be run independently or as a continuous campaign. The framework requires the IMPERIUM keyword, and the first adventure is for T...
Here's the thing about traps. They're the ONLY encounter in an RPG that players cannot opt out of. Once you encounter a trap, whether your character is physically trapped or you're just being blocked from progressing the story by a really hard puzzle, you basically have no choice but to deal with th...
There seems to be a lot of talk these days about character death in D&D and other roleplaying games. It seems that there's an audience that doesn't want their player character to die. Ever.
Which, admittedly, is the point of the game mechanic. If players don't care about death, then there's no poi...
My first experiences in hobby shops (specifically, but not exclusively, a Warhammer store) were not great. And yet some of my best experiences in the hobby have happened in a Warhammer store. I think there's a secret to turning a geeky hobby, like building and paintng 28mm toy soldiers so you can pl...
In a previous post, I wrote about how tracking encumbrance made loot more "valuable" by enforcing a weight-based economy. However, tracking encumbrance can be hard. In theory, it's exclusively the responsibility of each player, but if the game master (GM) doesn't announce the weight of each item t...
Everybody has their own tolerance levels for how much paperwork in an RPG they feel is fun. For some people, updating their character sheet is a milestone system for their character. It's as much a part of the game as NPC interactions, decisions, strategy, solving puzzles, and so on. For others, a c...
I track the passage of time in my RPGs, and so should you, and it's actually easy. This blog post tells you how.
What you need
A deck of cards. If possible, use Pathfinder or Starfinder cards, or something similar. You'll see why.
How to do it
Set your deck of cards on the table. When an...
I think a lot of us gamers think that tabletop roleplaying games are exhilarating at the beginning, but that they tend to taper off toward the end. Commonly, this is expressed as "the problem with high level play." I sense that it's seen as more of a problem in class-based systems that emphasize the...
I'm reading through the published adventures available for Cubicle 7's Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG. Litanies of the Lost is a book containing four adventures that can be run independently or as a continuous campaign. The framework requires the IMPERIUM keyword, and the first adventure is for T...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. The final chapter is a bestiary with an assortment of new monsters for Ravenloft. D&D monsters are a pretty easy target. Dungeon Masters always need new monsters...
I'm reading through the published adventures available for Cubicle 7's Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG. Null hypothesis is an adventure for Tier 3 or 4 characters. The framework isn't specified, but the quest giver is a rogue trader, while the subject of the rescue quest is Imperium, so there's an...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. Casually hidden away at the end of chapter 4, there's a Ravenloft adventure called The house of lament. The back of the book says nothing about this, so I was...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. Chapter 4 contains Dungeon Master advice, and several new mechanics including a whole new type of playable character. That's a lot of content, but that's not all...
I'm reading through the published adventures available for Cubicle 7's Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG. Affliction Ascendant is the fourth and final book in a quartet of adventures, preceded by Bloody Gates, On the wings of Valkyries, and Lord of the Spire. The books aren't quite sequential,...
After you paint a hundred miniatures or so, you might find that you start to get a sense that some miniatures are fun to paint, while others are less fun. It might seem strange that there would be a difference. It's tempting to assume that one hunk of plastic is the same as any other hunk of plastic...