Evil Machinations

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

What’s in a Name? Language!

Jade | December 11, 2009

Creating names can be one of the most challenging parts of creating a game setting. Sure, you can name things whatever happens to come to mind, but that can create names from all over the map (literally, if you’re borrowing names from the real world). You can end up with the Boxboggle river in the [...]

Let Us Give Thanks: Chinese Harvest Moon Festival

Jade | November 27, 2009

With this being Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, I got to thinking about harvest festivals in general. I rarely see harvest celebrations in RPGs and yet in real life, they’ve been an important part of life throughout at least a large part of human history. Harvest festivals bring families and communities together; surely our [...]

Let Us Give Thanks: Homowo Festivals or “Hoot at Hunger”

Jade | November 24, 2009

With this being Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, I got to thinking about harvest festivals in general. I rarely see harvest celebrations in RPGs and yet in real life, they’ve been an important part of life throughout at least a large part of human history. Harvest festivals bring families and communities together; surely our [...]

“Where are we again?”: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns

Jade | July 24, 2009

Sometimes creating a believable city or town is one of the hardest parts of building an adventure or campaign. You don’t want all your towns to look the same and you definitely don’t want to get stuck in the generic “fantasy town”, consisting of a tavern/bar, inn or other lodgings, magic shoppe, etc.
Below I’ve gathered [...]

City Creation: Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy, Swordsmith

Jade | July 1, 2009

Since the PCs aren’t likely to interact with Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths other than to have items repaired or commission new ones, I’m not going to spend much time detailing them.
Most Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths focus on creating practical items — horseshoes, plows and farming implements, iron nails and building tools, etc. Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy is the exception to [...]

City Creation: Religion

Jade | June 26, 2009

The next entry on our list of Notable People is “Clerics of the local shrines”. While these would, indeed, be notable people (the head priest/ess of the largest shrines would likely have considerable influence), religions differ greatly from one game system to the next and one campaign to the next. So much so, in fact, [...]

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