Posts Tagged ‘GM tools’

What Do You Need Help With?

Posted on Jun 18 2010 | No Comments
In addition to the world setting I’m creating, I’m looking at producing a line of products to help GMs run better and more immersive games. To that end, I’ve created a short survey asking for your input. Please help me out by taking a moment to give me your ideas. I’ll post the results here next week. Click here to take survey

Want to be a Better GM? Ask Your Pla...

Posted on Mar 25 2010 | 5 Comments
Want to be a Better GM? Ask Your Players How do you know how good a GM you are? You’ll need to ask your players. Below is a questionnaire I hand out to my players from time to time to find out what’s good about my game and what needs to be improved.... Read More »

Taking the Initiative: Review of Pai...

Posted on Dec 01 2009 | 5 Comments
Taking the Initiative: Review of Paizo’s Combat Pad This review is part of the Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide. Running combat in d2o/3.x systems is no task for the faint-hearted. Multiple characters, each with their own initiative, spells, delayed actions, held actions, potions,... Read More »

Beg, Borrow, and Steal

Posted on Sep 28 2009 | 2 Comments
Evil Machinations is branching out. Starting 6 October 2009, I’ll be publishing a free weekly newsletter called “Beg, Borrow, and Steal”. Not a repeat of my blog posts, BB&S will contain: Small locations you can drop into any game — a tavern, an inn, a spaceport, etc. NPCs — people you can add to your game How to’s for... Read More »

“Where are we again?”: C...

Posted on Jul 24 2009 | 3 Comments
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 a list of... Read More »

City Creation: Religion

Posted on Jun 26 2009 | No Comments
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, that I’m going to leave... Read More »

City Creation: The Fix-it Guild

Posted on Jun 18 2009 | No Comments
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... Read More »

City Creation: Guilds and Guild Poli...

Posted on Jun 09 2009 | No Comments
Now that we know what kinds and how many of each type of business Meadowbrook has, we can work out how powerful each of those guilds are, how they relate to each other, what part they play in Meadowbrook politics. We’ve already postulated a split of the town council between the merchant guilds and the craft guilds. Basically, every trade in Meadowbrook... Read More »

City Creation: Buisness Demographics

Posted on Jun 08 2009 | No Comments
Okay, now we’ve got an idea of the kinds of business Meadowbrook might have, how many of each are likely to be there? S. John Ross has an article called Medieval Demographics Made Easy, which lists a number of medieval businesses. He gives each of them a “Support Value” — that is, the number of people it takes to support a single business... Read More »

City Creation: Businesses

Posted on Jun 05 2009 | No Comments
What kind of businesses does a town need? Despite what fantasy games might imply, towns are more than just the ubiquitous taverns, inns, weaponsmiths, armorers and magic shops we usually see. Most of a town’s business will be to support its own residents, not adventurers, which means that town the PCs are passing through likely doesn’t even have a... Read More »


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