Neko Miyako, Cat Clan Samurai

   Neko Miyako has traced an erratic course through the Legend of the Five Rings campaign – appearing, vanishing, killing someone, calling in a few favors, and vanishing again on her own bizarre quests. Most of the other characters she’s encountered consider her quite mad – but she’s dangerous enough in a fight that usually [...]

Bayushi Michio

   Michio is currently a devastating killing machine with hundreds of XP, a high rank, a maxed-out school, high rings (including a very high void ring), and a variety of other techniques – both personal and granted – as well as his personally-forged legendary jade blades. On the other hand, he started off as a fairly normal [...]

“Smoke” Balamada, Senpet Heka Mage

   First up for today, it’s one of the older characters – a temporary replacement for Alex, back when the campaign hadn’t yet hit 200 XP. Smoke eventually retired to become a Demon Ninja Cat – or simply a cat shapeshifter with a few Shadow Points, depending on how you looked at it. Not coincidentally, [...]

Halloween

   Unfortunately, it looks like halloween will make playing this friday a bit impractical: there would be constant interruptions – and some players will be attending halloween parties anyway. Sorry about that. If anybody wants to put in a few online notes about what their characters will be up to, go right ahead. Legend of [...]

Continuum II Ceremonial Magic

   Today it’s another segment from the Continuum II RPG – and one of the oldest sections at that. The original Ceremonial Magic system goes back about 25 years and – like most of the Continuum II rules – is modular enough to fit into most games. It also tries to reproduce the general feel of [...]

The Allomancer Template

   Relatively recently, I was asked about a series called “Mistborn”, in which there was a system of magic called “Allomancy” – an innate ability to ingest and “burn” chunks of metal to gain various special powers.    Well, the various special powers are each easy enough to design individually. Requiring access to the appropriate [...]

Large Changes

   Some time ago I put up an essay entitled Small Changes – a discussion of how relatively minor game-characteristic changes in a species can lead to massive social changes. This time around, it’s a look at the opposing position; sometimes you can make massive changes in a species basic abilities without changing their social [...]

Toku Najite, Monkey Clan Bushi

   Well, here’s another character – in this case a replacement – for the Hinode Monogatari Legend of the Five Rings campaign. Given that we’re currently coming up on session 78, he’s got quite a lot of XP to play with, and is both very powerful and of very high rank. Given the setting, he – [...]

Legend of the Five Rings: Session Titles

   Just for record-keeping purposes, here’s a list of the session titles for the last 77 sessions of the Hinode Monogatari Legend of the Five Rings campaign. The session logs are crosslinked for easier reference, but the first series – up through the Vortex of Time Series – all take you to the compiled pre-blog session logs. [...]

Latest Material

   Well, the experiment with keeping a “latest updates” index stuck to the top of the page was well-recieved, so I’ll go back to doing it. You should be able to find everything here that’s either been put up in the last week or two or hasn’t been put on the main index tabs yet. [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Log: Session 31

   When last heard from, the characters were cleaning up after a fight with some bandits that unexpectedly went nuclear.    Unfortunately, after getting Jarvian and Jaiden patched up, checking on the Mirage revealed that it was in emergency shutdown – and Kevin wasn’t at all sure what effect a healing ritual would have on [...]

L5R Campaign Log Update:

   Today it’s getting the Legend of the Five Rings log caught up to date for the last four sessions…    The Planar War: The Powers Of The Earth, A Dark Mirror, Adrift Upon A River Of Stars, Into The Ivory Kingdoms. Kochige, Michio, Shigure, Kochige, Okari, Shin, Alex, the Ki’Rin Elder.    Unable to come [...]

L5R Campaign Log Update

   The Clan War: Wandering In The Darkness, The Strength of Stones. Kochige, Michio, Shigure, Kochige, Okari, Shin, Alex, and the Ki’Rin Elder.    Kochige stopped in to see his family and check on the kids: it seemed sort of obligatory before going into the Shadowlands again. He wound up picking up Shin, his youngest [...]

More Battlemech Conversions:

   Due to a special request, here are a few more Battlemech-to-d20 conversions, following the rules HERE.  There will be some more up shortly. Urbanmech, 30-Ton Gargantuan Light Mech, 74 HP,Str 30, (Operators Dex-8), DR 10, AC 19, Move 60, Jump 60, Autocannon 10 (+1 To Hit, 4d6+1 Damage), Small Laser (+3 to Hit, 3d6+1), [...]

Who’s Who in Jigoku

   With one of the Legend of the Five Rings characters currently trapped in Jigoku (and generally assumed to be dead), a little more information about that realm and its major inhabitants has been requested – so here it is: the Hei’an Zhuan or the Epic of Darkness:    The Primal Demons or Lords of Destruction – [...]

Blog Birthday

   As a note, this blog is now one year old – and currently contains 465 posts and 201 sub-pages. You will now read, comment on, and bask in the glory of, each and every entry! I so command it!    Of, if you’d rather, you can simply use the Index tabs and the calender [...]

Introduction to Atheria: Principles of Plant and Animal Birthrights

   Humans do not have a monopoly on the magic of Atheria, no matter how much they sometimes wish they did. Fortunately for them, however, they do tend to have more of it than most creatures do.    A creature’s ability to use the magic of Atheria is dependent on two major factors – Intelligence [...]

The Great Weapons

   First up for today, it’s The Great Weapons – a selection of horrific weapons for the Amber Diceless RPG. Given that they were pretty powerful for that setting, they should be sufficient to equip any random gods you want to upgrade… This file DOESN’T list the various power words they use: I put them [...]

Amber Diceless RPG Power Words

   First up for today, it’s a couple of hundred Power Words – innate, and very fast, but relatively minorspells – for the Amber Diceless RPG. This particular set is mostly drawn from a set of Great Weapons (which I may put up next) that formed part of the backdrop for one campaign. As such, they’re mostly [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 30

   Since the session was primarily combat-oriented, this is a fairly short log…     “Capture the Flag” seemed a silly way to run a bandit raid – but given the local tendency to use swarms of disposable minions, the group supposed that it made some sense. Still, they, personally, were planning on some decent food, beautiful women, and [...]