Other

   This section is devoted to all the other games – Deadlands, World Tree, Nephelim, In Nomine, and many more – which we happen to play. Unfortunately, this means that its contents are going to be kind of random: things will be uploaded here as I run across them in the old files or happen to think of them.

RPG Design:

• RPG Design Subindex
• Backstory; why it’s vital.
• Game vrs World – The fantasy world versus the rules of the game.
• Getting your Encounters in the Zone; fitting your encounters to your world and vice-versa.
• The Elements of Magic: things to consider when creating a magic system.
• Battling the Balanced Encounter: The advantages and disadvantages thereof.
• Cliff Notes for the 1940’s: how to make a 1940’s-1950’s setting convincing.
• Features of Victorian Settings: the basic characteristics of a Victorian-style world.
• Small Changes and Large Changes – a pair of essays on how tinkering with racial characteristics may – or may not – lead to massive social changes.
• The Basic Adventure: a basic guide for game masters.
• Role Playing Game Design Part I: a general look at designing tabletop RPG’s, using L5R as an example.
Realistic and Unrealistic Injuries: Making the combat system reflect the world you want.
Creating Skill Systems: Basic Considerations, Fundamental Skills, Optional Skills, Practical Example – Revised d20 Skills.
Wild Dawn: an example of a quick on-the-fly rules system.
Shapeshifters and Cursed Lycanthropes. Making Lycanthropy something to fear. A few d20 specifics, mostly generic.
Medieval Price List and Economics. A realistic price list for medieval settings, for both major and minor purchases.
Dark Ages Cultural Worldviews. For Celtic, Nordic, and Christian characters in classical medieval settings.
The Corruption of Power: How does power corrupt and what can be done to prevent it?
Exotic Compounds: Vidan (a drug which breaks down mental barriers), Kos and Narhan (a sensory amplifier and a regeneration-inducer).
The Magical Languages of the Twilight Isles: The unusual effects of languages. Eclipse d20 mechanics, but not much of them.
Designing game mechanics to meet Style and Player Goals.
The Mathematics of Practical Melee Weapons.
Narrative Mechanics: With a d20 Template to buy them in less story-oriented games.
Designing Freeform Magic Systems.
The Eightfold Soul: Adding some mythic depth to the spirits of the dead.
The Laws of Death: How to prepare for and handle character deaths.
Making Magic Mysterious: Making magic in your game a thing of wonder any mystery again.

General Material:

• Magic the Gathering – the RPG. This was originally designed as a submission to WOTC, but they were uninterested in any submissions related to M:TG. The system stretches d20 to the limit, since it uses magic cards as character attributes - but since the playtesters have let the draft files out, here it is. Who knows? Maybe Wizards of the Coast will see it and decide to pick it up after all (not likely, but we reserve any commercial rights that may apply just in case). Still, the playtesters had a lot of fun with it, and – for personal use in its current form – it’s entirely free.
• Useful Exotics. This list of Exotic Plants and Animals includes a bonus set of Organic Power Armor. While it was originally designed for Rifts, most of the list is pretty rules-light, so it should be useful in almost any game.
• Michael’s Diary. Michael was a junior-superhero character in a campaign a bit more than twenty years ago now. but he – and his friends – are still good examples of characters who grew, changed, and suffered a variety of traumas over the course of a game.
• The Corruption of Power: How does power corrupt and what can be done to prevent it?
• Shadows in the Twilight, Walking: Magic through history.
• The Samurai Western: a guide to transferring plots.
• We Three Jarls: a fantasy version of a classic christmas carol.
• Deep Healing: Magical Mental Therapy from an old campaign.
• Enchanting Spells: A general set of spells for making magical items.
• Mild Insanities for Slightly-Cracked (yet playable) characters.
• Shamanism, the Agnostic Faith: Playing classical Shamans, and why they make near-ideal characters.
• Baba Yaga the Exaltation – adapting rules to your own needs.
• The Merrow Mansion: A base, haunted house of sorcerers, and mini-campaign setting.
• Malavon Player’s Handout: Everything which ought to go into a basic world background handout.
• Wild Dawn: an example of a quick on-the-fly rules system.

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Tri-Stat System / Big Eyes, Small Mouth: (For the El-Hazard Setting)

• Zhao Shou Lung. An ancient martial arts master, wielder of the horrendous Dragon Gauntlets.
• Earth and El-Hazard Timeline. Since you really need a bit more background than the book provides.
• Character Templates and Relics. Both PC’s and NPC’s, as well as a selection of unique devices.

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In Nomine Role Playing Game

• Bodhisattva in In Nomine: Playing spirits from other mythologies.
• Sample Characters: Sarge, Etherial Archetype, Raven Harcourt, Human Martial Artist, Sakarit, a Bodhisattva, and Sean Bawn, would-be Human Superhero (and some Power Packages).

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Deadlands Role Playing Game:

• Deadlands to Exalted Conversions: Characters and Magic and a  Bestiary. Not truly Deadlands perhaps, but it may be useful in recruiting some players.

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Classic Marvel Role Playing Game:

   We had a lot of fun with this, so here’s some material for the old FASERIP Marvel RPG – and for its modern variants.

• Dark Future Setting: It’s 2053, the world is a post-apocalyptic disaster area, and you’re a superhero… Mostly non-system specific.
• Dark Future Characters. Other residents of the Dark Future and additional background.
• Kriegspiel & Kalrith. A centaur and his dragon, along with their world and species backgrounds.
• New Base Equipment Packages. For when you want to install some special equipment in your base.
• New Skills and Talents. For the original Marvel FASERIP system.
• Shadowguard- a low-powered superhero group including their equipment, Voltaire, Le Fey, Whisper, Cheshire, Shillelagh, Flux, and The Toad – a bonus opponemt. Here we also have Voltaire broken out by himself.

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World Tree Role Playing Game:

• World Tree, available directly from from Padwolf Publishing or through Amazon.Com, is an excellent RPG system, with an innovative magic system and a creative and intriguing world. Sadly, it never attracted much attention, but we’ve had a lot of fun with it.
• New Magical Techniques. Four minor magical techniques for the World Tree. Binding with Telepathy, Binding with Time, Flicker Casting, and Talismongering.
• Advanced Great Enchantment. Additional rules for Great Enchantment.
• Vancian Magic in World Tree. A PDF download for better formatting. For primes who learn a little off-tree magic.
• Attribute Enhancement. How to accomplish one of the more common World Tree requests, whether by Spell, Enchantment, Training, or Buying Advantages.
• Arden’s Spells. A modest selection of Ardenharius Sen Thrachten Philosos’ – a World-Tree Rassimell –  spell research results, in particular some of the ones used to manipulate and enhance other spells.
• Yahoo Group Archives. The archived posts, logs, and .pdf file contents of the defunct Yahoo World Tree group. There’s some interesting material in there, along – of course – with a lot of stuff that’s totally out of date.
• Advanced Spellbinding is for when those pesky player character just have be experimentive, and start asking “What happens when I try (doing something weird)?” At least for Spellbinding, here are some rules for telling them.
• Here’s a (severely condensed) version of the old Campaign Log. If anybody wants any more details on particular events, ask: I’ll look in the old notes and see what I can recall.
• d20 World Tree: The Prime Races and Special Abilities from World Tree for d20.
• The Distant Voyager: An exploratory airship, and how it was equipped and used.
• Ivarell “The Nose”: A Cani Henchmen of the original player characters.
• Noun Isomers: The properties of higher-order materials.

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Amber Diceless Role Playing Game:

• Amber Disadvantages. For adding a bit of variety to the basic good stuff/no stuff/bad stuff division in the basic rules.
• Sample Starting Characters: Malinbert the Inept and Professor Challenger, Sabre and Wrath.
• Arvons Diary Part 1. A character log from a long-gone Amber game.
• Arvons Diary Part 2.
• Arvons Diary Part 3.
• Arvons Runic Rings. A set of horribly powerful – and equally expensive – magical rings.
• Arvons Shadow, Averos. An interesting place, with radically different natural laws.
• 200-Odd Power Words – also usable as source material for many other games.
• The Great Weapons – a dozen horrifically-powerful weapons to destroy all opposition! After all, these are extremely powerful by AMBER standards…
• Shadow Binding and Superheroics: A new power and some converted characters. What does Thor look like in Amber anyway?
• Characteristic Scaling and Amanda Rose. How strong is Gerard in absolute terms? What does this mean for your style of play?
• Drizzt, The Ressurrected One: A somewhat eccentric young amberite
Advanced Trump Powers: Tapping and Shunting, Virtual Creation, Morphic Resonance, and Psychomancy,
Aristotle: A trump computer or god, take your pick.

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Baba Yaga: The Secret War:

• This is a WWII Partisan Resistance game – spiced up by just a touch of the supernatural, which makes it just barely possible for a small partisan group to hold their own.
• Sample Characters: Luigi Rosso (a young descendent of Apollo).
• The Players Packet contains the character sheet and the major tables. It’s quite free. 
• Baba Yaga: The Secret War is available in Print HERE and in PDF HERE.

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Second Edition AD&D:

• Dunstan Auchenlock Issilor, a Skills-and-Powers elven Cleric/Thief – with a selection of New Spells, New Proficiencies, his Pre-Game History, and his Character Sheet.
• Saelinnyth, a sample elven fighter/thief.

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Continium II:

   Continium II is a project that’s been kicking around for many years now: since the system is modular, and most of it could be slotted into many other games, I’m starting to put up the system. Some of the old players may feel nostalgic.

• The Basic Continuum II Mechanic.
• Martial Arts Basics. How to design your own martial arts.
• Weapons Design and Sample Weapons. An extension of the martial arts – and why it’s better to be armed.
• Ceremonial Magic. A general system for creating magical effects without great personal power.
• Shamanism, the Agnostic Faith: Playing classical Shamans, and why they make near-ideal characters.
• The Rogue. Skill-based characters in Continuum II
• Priests and Servitors. The wielders of Invocation. Here too are some Priestly Examples of how various groups of priests relate to their deities.
• Demons and Manitou. How Demons, Elementals, and Nature Spirits work in Continuum II, and how you can play them.
• Faerie and Dragons. How Faerie and Dragons work in Continuum II, how to play one, and where the myths about them come from.
• The Undead. How Lesser, Intermediate, and Greater Undead – including vampires and such – work in Continuum II and how to play them.
• Spectres and the Empyrean Plane: Psychic Entities and how to play them.
• Introspection Abilities: The most basic psychic talents available.
• General Skills: Basic background skills and tables for random shops and professions.
• Vocational Characters: Heroic, but not superhuman, characters.
• Malavon Player’s Handout: Everything which ought to go into a basic world background handout.
• Malavon Handout Supplement: Sere’ados, the Wilderness Continent.
• Cantrips – the most common of all magics: Shield Cantrips, Alteration Cantrips, Mindsending Cantrips, Divination Cantrips, Illusion Cantrips, Conjuration Cantrips,

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Rolemaster:

   Rolemaster is often awkward to play, but it still stands as grand attempt towards compiling a complete list of everything – and hence it’s easy to get ideas from. In that spirit, here are a few items from Rolemaster to give you ideas for your current games.

• Aetherial Ways: a spell list for Rolemaster (and for swiping ideas from for other games).
• Secretarial Ways: another Rolemaster spell list to swipe bits from – and some of the most practical bits of magic that any diplomat could have.

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Cyberpunk / Cybergeneration:

• Cybergeneration: Exotic Power Packages

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Star Wars d6:

• Khadim-17, an energy-being character of the Old Republic.
Twilight Seekers Campaign, Part I (with Force backgrund), Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
The Scale of the Galaxy: How to cut the statistics of the universe down to size.
10CH, Retired-Assassin Droid. A particularly dangerous PC-Droid.
Kira Keldav. A renegade Sith apprentice of the Old Republic.
New Droids. The HUND wilderness-assistant and CLS10 piloting-assistance droids.
Technical Explanations I: Monopolium, Power Sources, and Dark Energy Manipulation – including Repulsorlifts, Sublight Drives, Lightsabers, Hypermatter Reactors, Artificial Gravity, Tractor Beams, Gravity Well Projectors, Thermal Detonators, Shields, Blasters, and Creating Lightsaber Crystals.
Technical Explanations II: Mental Manipulations, Interrogation, the Force and Biochemical Adaption, Species Interbreeding, Alien Powers, Transplant Surgery, Unexplained Deaths, Technological Limitations and Enhancements, and Bacta.
Technical Explanations III: The Galactic Republic, Major Projects, Currency, the Interstellar Trionist Conspiracy, and Extragalactic Exploration.

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Godlike / Wild Talents / One-Roll Engine (ORE):

   Godlike has a slightly-problematic rules system, but an extremely well-developed WWII-with-minor-powers background.

• Cliff Notes for the 1940’s: how to make a 1940’s-1950’s setting convincing.
• Quirks: Mild madnesses and disadvantages to squeeze out a few more Will points. 
• Sorcery, and how to build it.
• Powers To Never Allow: Deathwish.
• Sample Characters: Jason Carpenter (middle of article), an immortal earth mage, Father Joseph, a priest who shelters refugees and resistance fighters (along with an optional rule for Concentration), Asteraoth, a youngster who can project his mind across the world, Fornemjarnulf and Gullsmed, a pair of scandanavian resistance fighters – a psychic cyborg and a mystical artificier, Les Tenebres, either a crazed french college professor or an immortal medeival sorcerer (along with a rule for General Talent Experience), The Celestial Voyager,  a living space-probe and gravatic manipulator, Earthworks, a TOG Commando who specializes in staying under cover, Dybbuk, a death-camp and massacre survivor who believes that he is dead – and calls up the dead to take their vengeance, Nonoma, a young amerindian warrior and spirit of thunder, Adamantine, a very laid-back – and almost indestructible – infantryman, Carnage, a petty thief turned soldier with a most destructive ability, Nahualli, a mexican jaguar-warrior and priest of the ancient aztec gods, Peter “Pops” Rundell, a specialist in transport from the home front, De Ville Tailleur, a resistance fighter who proves that clothes really do make the man – or the regiment, Nishanth, a blind Vedic Warrior from India who creates his own darkness, Choir, a youngster with a very valuable musical talent, and Regers Tallman, a glider pilot who needs no engine to take his ship into space.

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GURPS Material:

• Vargen the Wonder Dog: A very eccentric character indeed.

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Rifts Material:

• The Ironworks K9 Robot Dog OCC: Guardians designed to change the world.
• Useful Exotics. This list of Exotic Plants and Animals includes a bonus set of Organic Power Armor. While it was originally designed for Rifts, most of the list is pretty rules-light, so it should be useful in almost any game.

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Traveller Material:

• The Wanderer: A deceptive “survey vessel” for special agents. With autocad layout.

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It Came From The Late Late Late Show Material:

• Basic Handout and Attack of the Jade Dragon Ninja III