I was interested in creating a smuggling scenario structure, since I have need of it in my Traveller Campaign. So I began designing one. It turns out smuggling can include lots of sub structures. Even if I took a narrow definition of “smuggling” its big. As it is my definition of smuggling is “to take a shipment from one place to another secretly”. So in this article I will lay out a very high level structure and break it down into components at a fairly broad level.
Time Travel for Role Playing Games : The Basics
There are plenty of time travel films and TV series, Back to the Future, Looper, X-Men Days of Future Past, The Time Tunnel, Doctor Who and so on. Physics doesn't look too kindly on most of these. The reality appears to be pretty dull so, for the sake of adventure we are going to redefine …
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Kitchen Sink: Crystal Marbles of Pax
This is an article about some non-cannon D&D magic in response to Justin Alexander's Kitchen Sinking article. The Chrystal Marbles of Pax were a magic item I invented for one of my D&D campaigns a long time ago. Although they are fairly innocuous they became a favoured possession to my players for quite some time. …
Fear of Psychics
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" can be a good way to start an adventure. But what happens when the "something wicked" is the person you admire and look to for help? I found the horrors of Call of Cthulhu and its sanity loss mechanism to have been the most viscerally scary role playing system I …
The Evil They Do
Good guy and bad guy Non Player Characters in role playing games As a game master I am always looking for techniques that help me build rich experiences that provide opportunities and meaningful choices for my players. The most prominent of these are the ones that let me develop a full cast of non-player characters …
D&D5 RPG : Raw Experience and Treasure Sets
This is an excerpt from a pdf you will find on my Patreon account. This is a set of mechanics to add some significance to treasure and to require some down time to assimilate raw experience before it can be used to gain levels. The detailed reasoning and rules are in the attached pdf. The …
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On Lycanthropes : Take II
This is an excerpt from a pdf you will find on my Patreon account. In the 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, on page 206, you will find a section on Lycanthropes: Werebears, Wereboars, Wererats, Weretigers and Werewolves. It has a section on being infected with the curse, a saving throw to prevent becoming …
Strange Flight 