In year 2 of writing Papers & Pencils, I started to get real worried about all the neat posts that nobody would ever read, because they were buried deep in my site’s archives. Now, as I move into year 6, the problem has only become more pronounced. A manually curated list of notable posts is … Continue reading Blog Index
The Glory from God system as established before now stands perfectly well on its own. If the stuff that already exists is all you want to play with, that works great. But, if you’d like the magic to be a little more chaotic, you can play with these casting oddities, which add an element of … Continue reading Weird Cleric Magic: Oddities
In 2014 it was fashionable to post evocative alternatives to +1 swords. Gus did it. Courtney did it. Arnold did it. Errybody did it. I wasn’t blogging much at the time, but I really enjoyed reading those. I miss reading them. So I’m gonna write one. The Mugger’s Choice: On a natural 20, the wound … Continue reading Jumping on a 2-Year Old Bandwagon: Replacing +1 Swords
Dramatis Personae +Linlin Kins as Umquat the Specialist +Ronnie Whelan as Ronnina the Magic User +Spencer Kelty as Virgil the Jet Addicted Alistair Loot: NADA Character Modifications: Ronnina had Virgil mount the dead robot’s arm from the previous session onto her stump. It’s a little oversized for a teenaged girl, but works sufficiently well. Since that robot … Continue reading Session 8 – Too Much Shit for a Hunk of Rock
Players having the ability to buy magic items isn’t actually a problem. It’s the means by which the purchase of magic items is implemented that can be a problem. Functionally unlimited access to a full list of magic items is the problem. Game advancement that assumes the players will accrue magic item upgrades along a … Continue reading Spending Money 3: The Curio Shop
In Monday’s post on making overland travel more engaging, I discussed how a hex crawl might work in practice. As I noted, the whole concept seems rather dull until you add two elements: survival, and random encounters. I was only able to touch on these concepts briefly in that post, so now I’d like to … Continue reading Hex Crawling Encounters