Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

Call me a traditionalist or call me sentimental, but I tend to prefer the Friday movies set in the campgrounds of Crystal Lake. So you might think, as I did, that taking Jason out of the woods and putting him in a metropolitan setting invites a lot of whacky "only in New York!" opportunities, and s...

I got to play a PC in a Starfinder recently, which was nice because so far I'd only played as GM. One of the most interesting aspects of Starfinder is its game-within-a-game system of starship combat. Played on a hex grid with a unique initiative system (a lower roll is arguably better, because t...

This is Part 06 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:...

Earlier this week, I wrote about how much I love spells. The obvious tag line to a book of 708 new spells is you can never have too many spells. While that's definitely true, it wasn't [entirely] the need for more spells that drove me to purchase the Book of Lost Spells from Frog God Games. Wha...


Listen!

We have heard of the thriving of the Danish kings,

How they flourished in days long past,

How those royal athelings earned their glory!



With this adjuration to 'Listen!' begins one of the most important stories in English letters. Any serious student of literature will ha...

You can never have too many spells. That's what they say. And I guess they're right, because it seems I never tire of looking through spells.

Spells as untold stories

Even if I never have the occasion to use a spell, reading a spell is like reading a story that has yet to be written. In order...

Do you like the movie Carrie? Do you like Friday the 13th? Would you like to bring the two together? That's the elevator pitch for the seventh movie in the Friday the 13th series.

I don't care for the movie Carrie, so it's convenient for me to have a movie that brings the story of a relucta...

This is Part 05 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:...

While traveling, I picked up the first installment of the first official Starfinder adventure path: Incident at Absalom Station. I wanted to read through it in anticipation of running it with some friends because I have, so far, only run a homebrew Starfinder adventure (and a homebrew Interface Z...

I play D&D 5e as well as Pathfinder (1), and my players are mostly oblivious to which one we use for any given game. We build the characters together, or else I provide pregens, and they reference their character sheet when rolling. It works well, but switching between character sheets every few mo...

The second edition of Pathfinder (P2) is out, and along with it Paizo has released a free conversion guide so you can use P1 material with P2 rules and, in theory, P1 characters in P2 games. At least, that's what you'd imagine a conversion guide would provide. But Paizo's conversion guide clarifi...

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:...

You may remember, if you've watched the series lately, that in the previous film A New Beginning, somebody states that Jason was cremated. They were incorrect.

In this movie, it is revealed that someone paid the city to bury Jason, instead. And when Tommy Jarvis shows up in this film, on a br...

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...