Legend of the Five Rings – The Timeless Wanderer Bushi School

   Next up we have a player-submitted school for Legend of the Five Rings - albeit with the usual selection of mechanical tweaks and a bit more description.    The Path of the Timeless Wanderer is long – and perhaps truly without end. Once one has set forth upon the way, only in death will a [...]

Traveller – The Wanderer

   Here’s a small starship that was originally assigned to a group of special agents. In that campaign the characters were all presumed to be 1) on active duty, 2) trained psionics using a notably extended psionics system, and 3) too eccentric to serve under any normal Captain, yet too valuable to be discharged. They [...]

Glowstone Alchemy Part II – The Items

   In part II (part one is back HERE) we have a selection of the glowstone devices generally available on Shandar and their usual prices. Elsewhere, of course, the availability and price of such things is more a matter of the availability of glowstone. Off Shandar, some of these items may be considered priceless relics. [...]

Amber – Advanced Trump II, Virtual Creation, Morphic Resonance, and Psychomancy

   Here we have part II of the series on advanced powers for the Amber Diceless RPG. Given that the last Amber game that I actually got to play in closed up rather a long time ago, some of the notes for research that was ongoing at that time may not be complete enough to [...]

Glowstone Alchemy Part I – The Basics

   Here we have a special request from a player who’d like to have a bit more information on one of the sample “Occult Skills” listed in Eclipse: The Codex Persona – in this case, Glowstone Alchemy, one of the features of the Shandar setting.    Glowstone Alchemyis classified as an “occult skill” not because [...]

Amber – Advanced trump I, Tapping and Shunting

   Here are a couple of advanced trump techniques – or collections thereof – for the Amber Diceless RPG. In the original game quite a few of these were commonly accessed via a combination of (Very) Advanced Trump Powers and Power Words – allowing the user to access effects very very quickly.      Advanced Trump Powers [...]

Awakened and Mages (not necessarily) Monte’s Way

   There are still a couple of options left in Monte Cooks d20 version of the White Wolf – so as to finish up with that request, here are the last two conversions to Eclipse d20; the Awakened and the Magi. In this case, the Awakened are easy enough – but the original White Wolf-style [...]

RPG Design – Freeform Magic

   A lot of players, and somewhat fewer game masters, like a freeform magic system. After all, it seems a lot more appropriate – and “magical” – than a long list of specific spells and effects. Even the best rules systems tend to lose a lot of their allure when the charts and tables start [...]

Eclipse – Star Wars Base Classes

   The old d20 Star Wars game is currently as out-of-print as the d6 version – so I’m going to take a quick look at building some generic Eclipse classless d20 equivalents to it’s old character classes. Given that the different editions and versions alternated between the wound-and-vitality points systems and regular hit points, these [...]

Legend of the Five Rings – The Thunderbolt Blade Bushi School

   Today it’s the Thunderbolt Blade Bushi School (sometimes known as the “Hand of Bayushi” School) for Legend of the Five Rings.    Darkness is everywhere. Beneath the ground, beyond the stars, hidden within the light, and lurking in the hearts of men. None can escape it.    The blade pierces darkness. One with it, [...]

Demon’s Monte’s Way

   To continue with that request, here’s an Eclipse conversion of the Demon, from Monte Cooks d20 version of the White Wolf version. These “demons” are extra-dimensional energy-beings that pull a body together out of random material on arrival. Unfortunately, once they’ve created a body, they’re bound into it; if it’s destroyed, so are they. [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 77: Memories of the Fallen

   While the reports were still coming in, it still looked like the initial estimate was holding up surprisingly well; they could account for nearly 85% of the original – rough – count of nearly three hundred Death Knights, and slightly over 5% were known to have had their swords broken and lost without a [...]

Werewolves Monte’s Way

   To continue with a request, here’s an Eclipse conversion of the basic Werewolf, from Monte Cooks d20 version of the White Wolf version. Once again, that’s pretty roundabout. White Wolf took the various traditional and Hollywood notions about werewolves, gave them their own spin, went through three editions – with some pretty major changes [...]

Eclipse – The Narrative Powers Template

   One problem with allowing the players to manipulate the narrative and environment of the game is that not all the players are going to be interested in that. Some of them just want to explore life in a fantastic world, some just want to get into interesting set-piece battles, some want to solve puzzle-situations, [...]

Vampires Monte’s Way

   For a minor request, here’s a quick Eclipse conversion of the basic Vampire, from Monte Cooks d20 version of the White Wolf version. Does that sound roundabout? Well, after three editions and a system conversion, it probably should. It’s not like there aren’t a thousand versions of vampires out there anyway…    So, what do [...]

RPG Design – Practical Melee Weapons

   Long ago, in a distant movie theater, there was a really bad movie called The Sword and the Sorcerer.    On the other hand, it was a fantasy-adventure movie that was around in the early days of fantasy role-playing – so quite a few gamers at the time promptly tried to lift things from [...]

RPG Design – Designing for your Players

   To actually be a player in a game, your decisions have to have some impact on what happens in it. Otherwise, you’re just an audience.    As a small child I encountered a basic magicians trick; a performer who glanced at a deck of cards, slipped it into his pocket, and claimed he could [...]

Wild Dawn: Quick Roleplay Rules

   This particular rules system got tossed together on the fly for a freeform game evening. Like most such it’s pretty simple – but it proved popular enough to justify actually typing out the notes on how it operated. The original game was a wild-west dinosaur-hunters episode, but we’ve used the system for a few [...]

Eclipse – The Ancient One +2 ECL Template

   The beginning is lost. The razored edges of broken memories, shattered like a mirror in a whirlwind or the reflection of the moon upon the waters, broken by the twin transitions of life to death and of instinct to sapience, offer glimpses of a life untouched by complications. Within those glimpses roam the primal [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 76b: The Knight-Pursuivant

   Thawban bin Jalalu-d-din bin Davud Al-Ganem, Knight-Lord of the Order of the Wind of Allah, had witnessed Marty’s battle with the Death Knight Melek-Zolmat – a Champion of the Darkness – and had revised a few assumptions… Whatever-it-was that walked their streets in the guise of an overweight Shughliri was no mere merchant who [...]