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 [...]

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 [...]

“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: Hospitality

Jade | June 29, 2009

According to our demographics , Meadowbrook has two inns and ten restaurants/taverns/pubs and one of the innkeepers is a retired adventurer.
Let’s start with our inns.
The Inns
The most obvious choice would be to place one inn in Littletun and one in Bigtun. But since inns generally aren’t used by locals, and the river docks are in [...]

City Creation: The Town Guard

Jade | June 22, 2009

Town Guard are not employees of Meadowbrook. A guild in their own right, they’re employed by the town council. Each guild tithes a small percentage of their annual income directly to the Town Guard, in return the Guard protects the other guilds from dangers local and foreign. But how many town guard members are there? [...]

City Creation: The Fix-it Guild

Jade | June 18, 2009

Continuing our description of Meadowbrook’s notable citizens, we come to Barsus Tinner, the head of the fix-it guild.
The Fix-It Guild
First off, let’s give the fix-it guild an official name. As low-level arcanists, I can see the guild trying to give themselves a greater sense of status with a lofty-sounding name, something like: “The Noble Brotherhood [...]

City Creation: Character Class Demographics

Jade | June 15, 2009

Generally, I don’t detail numbers for the NPCs of my games. Unless I expect the PCs to pick a fight with one of them, I don’t even created stat blocks. I look at the NPC’s history, role in the game, personality and profession to decide what they can do, which is generally I need them [...]

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