Like many games masters, judges, referees, or whatever you like to call them, I have many more adventures and adventure ideas than I’ll—sadly—ever be able to run. I’ve collected amazing one-shots, fabulous books, exciting PDFs, intriguing blog posts and much more, all spanning a variety of settings, themes, and tones. I had this idea percolating inside my head of a campaign that would span many worlds, where the characters would travel through dimensions and planes of existence.
Let me start off by saying, yes, I am working on a brandnew version of my character sheet app, with plans to support Pathfinder 2E, and possibly more. The other week I reached out to users of my Online Character Sheet for Pathfinder, to find out a bit more about how they use the app, and what they think is most important. While I haven’t personally played Pathfinder in some time now, the announcement for a 2nd edition has me excited.
“Professional alternative model, actress, latex aficionado, dork, avid RPG gamer, bookworm, crazy cat lady, music lover, soup maker, polyhedral dice addict.” — that’s how Caroline Pierce’s twitter introduction reads, and I think it covers most bases! I’ve had the pleasure of working with Caroline several times over the years, and I was very happy when she agreed to an interview for my little blog. How did I find out about her role-playing hobby, you ask?
Spell Chains Think of spell chains as thematically linked spells of increasing power levels. You might assign them spell levels such as 1st, 3rd, and 5th, or whatever suits your game. These use the low, medium, major power classification of my homebrew game Hypertellurians, but I also include some notes on how to use the spells in Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Converting to a Vancian or mana-based system should be a cinch.
Back in the early 90s, a few friends and I decided to start what was then labelled an “art group.” This was a digital collective out to create ANSI and ASCII artwork for the computer communication medium of the day: bulletin board systems. A BBS was kind of like a website, but you dialled directly into it (its address being a phone number), and all it could serve you was text, with a hint a color.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Paizo have officially announced the 2nd edition of the immensely popular Pathfinder game. As with the 1st edition, there will be a massive open playtest, and all playtest material (including a massive 400 page fully laid out and illustrated hardcover) will become available on 2nd of August. I, for one, am pretty interested in the direction the game seems to be taking, from what they’ve revealed so far.
The people of Helix are benevolent, wise, and technologically advanced. But the inhospitable wastes, crags, and hills surrounding their domed city are home to any number of strange creatures, like the savage piglin, the strangely erudite goatfolk, and the reclusive sorcerers and sorceresses. Further afield, other clusters of humanity cling onto half-forgotten luxuries and evaporating wealth, on their dying planet, Sonnos. Sonnos, the place that all but the smallest of gods have abandoned.
Don’t look the gift genie in the mouth Other than booze and non-denominational professional pleasure workers, of course. So you’ve returned from your latest adventure, laden to the brink with treasure, loot, and uncountable masterwork weapons from your fallen enemies. Only, you suddenly realize that your grimdark fantasy campaign setting doesn’t have magic item shops! Oh no! If you can’t spend your gold on boring but solid attribute-increasing items, or exchange your +1 longsword for a +2 one, what do you do with all that cash?
My wife Karen loves painting, so I don’t feel so bad when I occasionally ask her to do a painting for me. She works with traditional media, which I can only assume has nothing to do with with me being too cheap to buy a modern tablet and stylus. Here is a selection of paintings she’s done for me over the years. The painting of the satyr and the dryad was originally conceived for a Pathfinder adventure I wrote with a friend of mine, but ultimately never got released, so I repurposed the image for the Sidhe Woods Grove proof of concept app I made.
A couple of years ago I managed to get my hands on a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for a weekend. Now, I’d already heard good things about the Surface for drawing, and the device did not disappoint. Hovering the stylus a few centimeters above the tablet and seeing a reticle indicating its position is awesome. When I was a kid, I would draw a lot. Together with a close friend we’d devise and draw whole comic books, hugely influenced by whatever anime we were watching at the time (nod of the head to Knights of the Zodiac, among others).