The universe is a big place. As Douglas Adams once wrote, mindbogglingly so. But the thing it doesn’t lack is space. The commute may kill you, but there’s an infinite number of places to hang your hat if you look hard enough. Here on Earth, we’re running out of room in a lot of the…
It was once said that there are no atheists in foxholes and I suspect the same might be said of being a spacefaring race. Though Aliens & Asteroids may be set a couple of centuries in the future, I suspect that our need to call on a higher power in a time of need may…
Though we initially intended Aliens & Asteroids to be based on the Old School rules of Mazes & Perils, we changed course after several long design sessions and decided to make a new system that was more flexible and less cumbersome. The new system for A&A relies on more speedy mechanics using one or two d20s and a…
Roleplaying has probably been around as long as mankind has had an imagination. As a child, can you remember pretending to be someone else on a school playground or in your own back yard? You might have imagined yourself as a famous sports figure, playing house, or stepping into the shoes of your favorite character…
Words. They can make or break a character. They can define or destroy relationships. They can set the tone for the most innocuous-sounding encounter that blows up to something enormous. Without them, I’ve never seen a gaming group succeed. With them, I’ve seen gaming groups last for years and offer fodder for decades of reminiscing.…
So what is a Gaming Vitae or GV? A GV is just like a Curriculum Vitae (CV) or resume, but of the games you have played over the years. This will take a while, but my gaming career began in 1982 when I met a group of guys who played D&D. My life was forever…
The village of Glarhur is a remnant of the boom times when mining in the mountains brought dwarves from far and wide to explore what the earth was willing to provide. As the veins became harder and harder to find, the miners had to find work elsewhere. As a result, Glarhur is a place where only…
As you may have noticed in the last few posts, I’ve been hinting at the different levels of detail and how they may come into play at the game table. Some folks tend to focus on things at a very high level and others like lots of detail and focus on the ‘why’ behind things.…
On the contested border between two fractured nations exists the good people of the village of Nubonne. They are beset on all sides by bandits and monsters, taking terrible losses with no way to properly defend themselves and no one to stand up for them. Are your heroes brave enough to take on the challenge?…
A couple of weeks ago we kicked off a discussion of “Session 0”. Now let’s see a more concrete example of how it works in real life… Session 0 in action! An example of a rules modification we use in our 5E game is an alternative healing rule as we use the healing rules from…
