Evil Machinations

No scenario survives contact with the PCs … No system survives contact with the GM

Evil Does Not Equal Stupid: 8 Tips for Playing Evil Characters

Jade | February 26, 2010

Whether as a PCs or an NPCs, evil characters tend to get the short end of the stick. All too often, they’re portrayed as short-sighted, reactionary, shallow, and … well, stupid. Frequently, all evil characters look and act the same, like they are clones of one another. Which is a real shame; after all, what’s [...]

X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials

Jade | February 2, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

You’ve spend weeks, months…maybe even years creating your world. You’ve detailed new races, have exciting new character classes, have worked out your worlds ecology, history, monetary system etc. Now it’s time to present it to the players. But wait! There’s something else you need before you can begin using your world. That’s right: [...]

Please Answer Survey

Jade | January 18, 2010

Over at the Guang Keshar website, I’ve created a survey. Okay, the survey’s really at SurveyMonkey, but there’s a link to it from rpgGM.com. Even if you don’t plan on using a new campaign setting anytime soon, please stop by and let me know what you look for in a game setting.
It’s short. Only these [...]

What’s in a Name?: Alphabet

Jade | January 15, 2010

Here it is — the final post of our What’s in a Name? series. Today we’re talking about alphabets.
Well, actually not about alphabets. While you can create a whole new alphabet for your language, it’s a lot of work to do just to create names. Especially since unless you’re writing out all of your game [...]

End of Year Round-Up: The Top 10 Posts of 2009

Jade | January 8, 2010

Here’s a countdown of the 10 most popular posts on Evil Machinations in 2009:
10. An A-to-Z List of Lesser-Known Roleplaying Games, pt. 4: A survey of roleplaying games whose titles begin with the letters Q-U.
9. Building Better NPCs II: 8 Steps to Memorable NPCs: Eight steps for bringing your important NPCs to life and making [...]

What’s in a Name? Tone and Sound Constraints

Jade | January 7, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s part 4 of our series on creating a naming language. Today we’re talking about tone and sound constraints.
Tone
Tone in language is the way you inflect a word or phrase. We don’t use tone on word basis in English, but several Asian languages (and there may be others) use it. The best known [...]

What’s in a Name? Stress is Good

Jade | December 30, 2009

Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

It’s day 3 of our series on creating a naming language and today we’re talking about stress. Not that kind of stress — this is the emphasis we place on one syllable over the others within a word or name. Setting a set stress pattern for names can help keep your [...]

It’s a Brave New World — Guang Keshar

Jade | December 20, 2009

It’s been a long-time coming, but I’ve finally done it. After nearly thirty years of kicking the idea around (and thanks to the guys at the Gamer Lifestyle program), I’ve finally take the plunge and started my own small-press game company, rpgGM.com.
This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now, but [...]

What’s in a Name? The Music of Language

Jade | December 14, 2009

Welcome to Day 2 of our series on creating a naming language.
Every language has its own particular sound. Japanese sounds different from Spanish and few people would mistake guttural German for tonal Chinese. Frequently, with just a little education, we can tell which language is being spoken, even if we don’t we don’t know a [...]

Open Gaming Table Vol. 2 Taking Nominations

Jade | December 10, 2009

Open Gaming Table is an anthology of roleplaying blog posts. Published in March 2009, it’s definitely worth checking out. Now Jonathan Jacobs, the editor-in-chief for that book is putting together a volume 2. You can nominate your favorite RPG blog posts on this nomination form. Here’s the nomination rules from the form itself:
The Rules
1. You [...]

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