As players level up in an RPG, they expect increased challenge. They want bigger monsters that are harder to kill and that threaten to kill them first, faster.
The formula seems like it would be simple: As player characters level-up and gain hit points, you make the monsters deal more damage. In o...
I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review may contain spoilers.
It's interesting, for me, to see how TV handled two-part episodes throughout the years. This is the conclusion to a two-part episode, but instead of doing a "Previously on..." segmen...
With the release of Spelljammer for D&D 5th Edition, I decided to break out the second AD&D Spelljammer module Skulls & Crossbows. I'm looking at it particularly with quick conversion in mind, but also for story and general usefulness. The third adventure in the book is called "Small package trade...
Building an RPG character is complex. While Shadowrun's character build process is explained well in the 5th Edition Core Rulebook, there's a lot to filter out because there are so many possibilities. This post describes a linear build process for a Shadowrun magic user character, and is designe...
As a hobbyist game designer, I have the distinct advantages of making lots of mistakes. Mistakes are great, because you learn from them, but as a bonus you learn to see the mistakes you made in other people's designs.
Lately, the mistake I've been hyper-focused on is the lack of tags in games....
With the release of Spelljammer for D&D 5th Edition, I decided to break out an old Spelljammer book for some adventuring material. The second Spelljammer adventure book to be released was Skulls & Crossbows. I'm reading through it as prep for an upcoming Spelljammer campaign, so I figured I'd give...
I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review may contain spoilers.
This is a pretty strong opener for Season 2, and it's got a bunch of 1960s spy tropes. Season 2 is also in colour, which was surprising to me because I honestly don't remember any of...
With the release of Spelljammer for D&D 5th Edition, I decided to break out an old Spelljammer book for some adventuring material. The second Spelljammer adventure book to be released was Skulls & Crossbows, a collection of adventures that, in the style of Infinite Staircase or Ghosts of Saltma...
I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review may contain spoilers.
Every now and again, I see an episode of a TV show and think it would have made a really great little movie all its own, if only the obligatory trappings of the "host" TV show weren'...
I've been reading through the Starfinder source book, Pact Worlds. It's a small book, but fits a lot of information into it, so I'm going to post about sections as I finish them.
Verces is the fifth planet from the sun in the Golarian system, and it's tidelocked. I didn't know what tidelocked m...
When the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide DMG came out back in 2014, I read it from cover to cover. I knew I'd be running games, so I needed to know about the rules of the world. That is, of course, what the DMG is. It contains the rules for things that aren't the player characters themselves, but that i...
I mentioned in my first look at Spelljammer that ship combat appears to largely be missing from the Astral Adventurer's Guide. I've fixed that with some custom rules, adapted from my well-worn Starfinder ship combat ruleset.
I didn't have high hopes for ship combat rules, honestly, because I'v...
I picked up a copy of Spelljammer, the latest release from Wizards of the Coast, and I've spent the past couple of days reading over the three books in the boxed set. This is a quick cursory review of the new setting.
When Spelljammer was first announced, I was excited about it. I've already pla...
I've been reading through the Starfinder source book, Pact Worlds. It's a small book, but fits a lot of information into it, so I'm going to post about sections as I finish them.
In my initial read of the Aballon section, I expressed some dismay with the lack of explicit descriptions of the r...
Building a character in Shadowrun is a lot of fun. It's not quite the roller coaster that Traveler or Dead Earth are (for instance, you can't die during character creation in Shadowrun), but it's a detailed system in which you map out your character's life and education prior to running the shad...
I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review may contain spoilers.
This episode features an intriguing crime sydicate consisting entirely of women, most notably a race car driver named Nazarone. They are, predictably, as beautiful as they are deadly...