There are three Great Books, artifacts of prodigious power that are hidden and protected in three corners of the world. Each one is capable of changing the world.| The Library of Attnam
The Manse has recently published a very nice rant on categorisation of magic where they discuss several approaches to the classification of spells and derive their own schools of magic, a neat and clean system of seven traditions with a rigorous naming convention. But there's a fallacy in this approach, I venture. It's tempting to create a well-defined, all-encompassing set of categories and just use them for everything. I will freely admit to doing just that many a time. But real-world syste...| The Library of Attnam
In another installation of ramblings about unplaytested magic systems cribbed from books I read so long ago I only half-remember a few bits, what if spells were a long-term, strategic resource?| The Library of Attnam
By this point, our investigation into the setting of The Saga of the Ortegids has covered every region present in the original NES Dragon Q...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
The goal is to make your world consistent, believable (within the context of a story), and enjoyable to readers.| Speculative Fiction Writers Association
Well, my brainstorming for planets kick continues, now with a little tool for calculating planetary equilibrium temperature (we need better worldbuilding...| Adamas Nemesis
Setting is a story element that must do double duty in any genre: it’s your backdrop, so it shouldn’t take over and become the story, but it should be chosen deliberately and used to both enrich and amplify your scenes. It should blend in and be influential. But this is especially true in mystery novels […] The post Colonel Mustard in the Ballroom: How Setting Shapes Mystery appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.| WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®
Following on the same format from my Erdland maps, now that we've completed our look at Torland, we can now present a complete map of my interpretation of the inner world for The Saga of the Ortegids.| Tales of the Lunar Lands
The setting for the climactic confrontation of Dragon Quest II is Rhone, a highland region in the center of Torland's Southern Continent under the control of Hargon, high priest of a cult that worships Malroth, the god of chaos and destruction. There's a few things that make this area unique and interesting, and they deserve a closer look - in no small part because they raise questions that might elucidate further worldbuilding in The Saga of the Ortegids.Rhone appears to be cotermino...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
The southwestern corner of Dragon Quest II's overworld features a large island off the coast of Tuhn, on which is the city of Beran. There's no major quests or dungeons here, but it is an evocative area that deserves a closer look for The Saga of the Ortegids.| Tales of the Lunar Lands
South of Moonbrooke and the Lianport region, the Southern Continent of Dragon Quest II 's overworld is highly mountainous. The central reg...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
My firm, Magrathea Futures AB, turned two years old yesterday. I started looking at statistics on business survival rates to see how that measures up against the context, but very quickly decided against further spelunking in the dark waters of quantification. I’m still going, and that’s what matters.| Velcro City Tourist Board
i have seen MAC ATTACK| False Machine
Most of the people who migrated to the Foross Sector during the time of the great mining operations arrived as individuals or small families and formed new communities among members of their own species, and even some mixing between different species, that developed new local cultures created from a blend of their countless different backgrounds. … Continue reading "Turikans and Parakarians"| Spriggan's Den
Since I last wrote about the different humanoid species of Iridium Moons, the setting has undergone a number of changes, with some peoples being gone, others added, and the remaining ones having undergone many small changes and expansions to their concepts. So I feel its a good time to do a new writeup of them … Continue reading "Peoples of the Foross Sector"| Spriggan's Den
Gnomes are an artificial race created by Dark Lady Ta-tiki-tekh-uata, the Witch Mother, to serve as her attendants, spies and enforcers. Som...| attnam.blogspot.com
As you might know, I've been on a worldbuilding kick recently, brainstorming out planets.| Adamas Nemesis
Modern fantasy/scifi seems to not feature many federal countries (or as we will call them, “federations”)—that is, countries made up of several subunits such as states or provinces, eac…| Building Worlds
While working on my "" post, part of the "" RPG blog carnival at , I had an idea for a random table to generate magic trades that might be available in a cit...| Advantage on Arcana
Wellgarth is one of the more unique towns in Dragon Quest II. Located in the southern peninsula of the Southern Continent, just across the sea from the Southern Archipelago, the majority of the town is located underground. Why this is is never really explained. It's far away from any other settlement, and none of the townspeople comment on the unusual circumstances of the town. A lot of sources I've found online suggest that the people moved underground to defend against attacks, ...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
So this is probably the single nerdiest thing I've ever done.| Tales of the Lunar Lands
At the tip of the southern continent in the overworld of | Tales of the Lunar Lands
I have been thinking of making this table for a while, and right now am working on it for the Grenzland zine. The inspiration for this is of course the Campaign Event table in Oriental Adventures, …| Stuffed Crocodile
Because scope creep is a fact of life, I’ve been tinkering with several ideas to give some additional detail for the rest of known space outside of the Foross Sector, which has become heavily inspired by the Tales of the Jedi and Knights of the Old Republic comics. Since I am always bad with names … Continue reading "Expanded Iridium Moons map doodle"| Spriggan's Den
There is this staple monster in RPG of all sorts - Slime. Monster in old DnD, low level enemy in various CRPGs and other fantasy video games. Predatory sludg...| VDonnut Valley
My first introduction to the world of Dune happened years before I read the book, when I saw Wayne Barlowe's illustration of a navigator wh...| diyanddragons.blogspot.com
What to know when breaking the laws of physics.| Mythcreants
Why should wizards cast fireballs when they can use machine guns instead?| Mythcreants
To bring back the magic, today's necromancers need fresh ideas and great execution.| Mythcreants
All of my judgements are completely objective, how dare you.| Mythcreants
Don't make your worldbuilding sound like an argument!| Mythcreants
Dear Mythcreants, Part of my setting’s magic system includes a type of fertility spell that allows anyone capable of pregnancy to get pregnant with anyone else, regardless of what reproductive system the partner has. This type of magic has contributed to one culture in the setting being matriarchal, along the lines of certain “independent from […]| Mythcreants
Empty space: it's sexy, wimpy, lonely, alluring, and very sliceable.| Mythcreants
The middle act of Dragon Quest II follows a structure much the same as its successor. After obtaining a ship, you have free reign of the map and must seek out a series of artifacts - five crests, in this case - in order to access the next area. Probably the simplest of these to obtain is the Moon Crest, which is located in the Kingdom of Dirkandor.Dirkandor is a large island to the south of Lorasia. The only site of interest we see in-game is the capital city, which I am calling Osterfai...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
Traveller is an endlessly fascinating game to explore in the 2020s. Its first release was only three years after Dungeons & Dragons, but unlike D&D, which really is just a name and a couple of archetypes attached to a number of very different games, the revised 2nd edition Traveller from Mongoose has changed very little … Continue reading "Traveller is Retro-Futuristic"| Spriggan's Den
The "gunsmith's society" is an occult ritual organization within the clan-ship society of the Navigators, specializing in military leadership, mutual aid, and mediation across the lines of the three Navigator "assemblies".| Archon's Court
I’ve already done some worldbuilding for my planet “Cerberus” and the surrounding system (Sirius B), but what about the Dog Star itself, Sirius A? We wouldn’t want it to be boring, but we also want to keep it scientifically plausible, yet not duplicative of the … Continue readingWorlds of White The post Worlds of White appeared first on Adamas Nemesis.| | Adamas Nemesis | Adamas Nemesis
The Kingdom of Alefgard is the only location to make an appearance in all three games of the original Dragon Quest trilogy. Thus, it's a natural place to begin our exploration of Torland for The Saga of the Ortegids. The entirety of Dragon Quest I and the latter third of Dragon Quest III take place within its borders - using the same map, in fact. This was apparently a big reveal when the games first came out, one that was completely lost on me because I played III first as a ...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
We've come to the end of our journey of analyzing every major location in the overworld of Dragon Quest III for tabletop purposes. Things aren't over yet for The Saga of the Ortegids - we still have two more games to go through - but we now have a picture of Erdland, a historical mashup world grounded equally in history, fantasy, and sword-and-sorcery pulp. To cap this investigation off, I've made a map overlaying the areas in the game with the borders of the different cultural ...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
By this point, we've covered every notable location from the overworld of Dragon Quest III. This does not mean we've covered every location in the game - if cramming an expansive open world into an NES carttridge wasn't impressive enough, they crammed two in there. Apparently, the original Japanese release used every single megabyte of storage space on the cartridge, and it shows. But we'll get to that later.| Tales of the Lunar Lands
Once you get a ship in Portoga , most locations in the overworld of Dragon Quest III are open to exploration, either by sea or via portals....| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
This is a procedure for generating planetary governments for Stars Without Number and other Traveller-alike games.| Lair of the Dusk Witch
Work continues apace on , but in the meantime, I wan...| Lair of the Dusk Witch
A few years ago I made a size comparison of the various classic Star Wars ship types in GIMP. But I only compared the ships against each other. Yesterday, I was trying to get a sense of scale for ships in Traveller, as they are not usually measured in length but by volume. The CR90 … Continue reading "Star Wars ships are massive! But Traveller ships aren’t small either."| Spriggan's Den
In the world map of Dragon Quest III, the vast area corresponding to sub-Saharan Africa, south of Isis, makes up a rugged, mountainous region I've dubbed the Southlands. The Southlands can further be divided into two major regions.First of these is actually named in-game as Gondo, and appears to comprise much of the eastern half of the continent. Gondo seems to be a rather inhospitable region, and NPCs warn you of its dangers. They're probably referring to the high-level enemies there, ...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
Their Origins in Dream| False Machine
The friendly Neurovore familiar to so many is only one| False Machine
"I bin trawlin' these waters since I was a wee little scamp, even younger than you, ya grimy landlubber. I thought that nothin' could shock ...| anxiousmimic.blogspot.com
Whales are weird | Anxious Mimic
Ever feel like your players aren’t as deeply engaged in your game world as you’d like? Collaborate and build the setting together! In my games I want players to know the background of the setting, have a general idea of what’s going on and how things work. It gives them context to make interesting choices […]| Silverarm
As I said in this post| VDonnut Valley
No, I'm not being pretentious enough to compare my own books to "2001: A Space Odyssey" (though my stories are good; you should check them out! hehehe)...| Adamas Nemesis
The Kingdom of Manoza is the largest polity on the Eastern Continent , taking up much of that landmass's southern half. Much as I did with E...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
I've got a little process that I use whenever I start a game of Dungeon World or Homebrew World. It's similar to the first session procedure that's described in the book, but different in some key ways. I've found that this approach reliably kicks off a new game quickly and with a lot of energy, in a way that makes it pretty darn easy to run and improvise. | Spouting Lore
This post was originally a conversation on the Dungeon World Tavern back in Google+. Bryan Alexander said "Let's talk about Fronts and Dangers and Grim Portents... you start!" | Spouting Lore
the truth We did some brainstorming on the DW Discord a little while back. 30 magic swords, no more than two sentences each. We came u...| spoutinglore.blogspot.com
The inland reaches of the Eastern Continent are dominated by wilderness, with much of the northern half of the continent split by a large r...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
Dragon Quest III had to get creative when it came to adapting the Americas to a medieval fantasy world. There's still plenty of historical ...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
After purchasing a ship in Portoga , the overworld of Dragon Quest III opens dramatically. From this point on there are no real road blocks...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
The northern portion of Dragon Quest III 's pseudo-Eurasian continent is dominated by forest. There aren't many dungeons or settlements to b...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
Art by chuckcg Religion does not play a very big part in the Erdrick Trilogy. Remember, these games belong to an era where the difference be...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
As any polyglots out there could probably guess, Baharata corresponds to the Indian Subcontinent in the overworld of Dragon Quest III . It'...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
In my opinion, the Kingdom of Portoga is where the History's Greatest Hits nature of Dragon Quest III really shows through. After clearin...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
You walk the path to Vyeku Proxy Tekha, member of the nomenklatura, the contending-class. You walk it first in trepidation, then in terror, then in resolve - your tin fingertip-covers click against the handle of your knife. He deserves it.| Archon's Court
I know it’s a direct follow-up from my last post, but why not? After all, Sirius B’s companion world is a fascinating place in my science-fiction-cum-space-opera setting. I now have hard numbers, which dictate tidal locking, the question of it being a moon, the orbital … Continue readingMore Thoughts on my Planet “Cerberus” The post More Thoughts on my Planet “Cerberus” appeared first on Adamas Nemesis.| | Adamas Nemesis | Adamas Nemesis
Bend a world to the needs of your story and enthrall the imagination of your reader.| Speculative Fiction Writers Association
Clerics are odd ducks. Their classical image of the mailed crusader with a religious proscription against wielding bladed weapons deliberately evokes medieval warrior-priests of the Archbishop Turpin and Odo of Bayeux vein. But while those fellows were members of a powerful Church with clear heirarchy and vast political power, the adventuring cleric is free to roam the backroads and wildnerness, associating with thieves, bandits and witches, and if they run afoul of the authorities they can e...| Craggenloch Tribune
Originally intended to be GLOGTOBER content, but that ship has long since sailed, ho-hum.| Craggenloch Tribune
Extract from Ode Diminutis Propinquis Hominum: Demi-humans and Their Habits, by master wizard Athanasious Great-Wand, called "the Glaucous".| Craggenloch Tribune
"Will, if we're not on Mars, you tell us where we are?" "I'm not sure yet, we might even be on Cerberus.| Adamas Nemesis
This table was inspired by a quote from Robin D. Laws’ saying When in doubt, blindfold yourself, take any two GURPS sourcebooks off the shelf at random, and combine the results. Ok, this is a bit pointless but also… not. I mean, who has a d140 anyway? Or in fact even so many GURPS books? […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Not sure how many people are interested in it considering this is an English-language blog and this is a (largely) German-language campaign newsletter… but anyway, here is issue 2 of Glimmermärkische Zeytungen. I decided to create an In-Game chronicle here, as written by the scribe on Castle Aberwacht. Which largely concerns the doings of the […]| Stuffed Crocodile
This is one of those things I did for campaigns before: a small newsletter/zine with infos, hints, and used rules about the campaign. It isn’t strictly necessary, but I always liked the idea to have a physical reminder of the campaigns I ran, even though the campaign itself has a wiki-page on campaignwiki.org. Despite the […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Campaigning in a stone-and-sorcery megalopolis. This post covers the final wards the city's slums: 3 new "gods" and a new spin on an old one.| aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com
Okay, it took three weeks of literally being right on the sand where I could hear the waves day and night, and several days where I just lazed on the beach...| Adamas Nemesis
Fantasy gaming, relying on a surface level interpretation of the western medieval period for its commonplaces, has had a difficult time accommodating the role of sexism into its settings. Traditional fantasy settings assumed that the world would be patriarchal and male dominated in order to simulate the feeling of medieval Europe, but in more recent years, largely to accommodate the desires of non-man players, fantasy settings have attempted to do away with the sexism of the medieval period. ...| Iconoclastic Flow
I think I need to step up my Carnival game. I'm the host in the end. So a sneak peak of my Sword of Don setting project, the part connected to the topic of t...| VDonnut Valley
One of the areas in Dungeons & Dragons 3e that are sorely misunderstood and misused are Prestige Classes – even in the official books!| YUM/DM
Lately I've found myself struggling to stay motivated on some of the nitty-gritty bits of running an ongoing campaign. I need a system for t...| vilecultofshapes.blogspot.com
In our supposedly enlightened era, many people would like to imagine that most wars are fought for essentially rational purposes: punishing terrorists, seizing resources, profiteering off of arms s…| Building Worlds
Dolmenwood has a very nice expanded equipment list, with sub-pages for dogs, horses, pipeweed, food and drink, herbs and fungi and more bes...| craggenloch.blogspot.com
Last time I painted the region in which I'd like my adventure to take place. But sometimes it is not enough. Or you just want a hunch of a bigger world so if...| VDonnut Valley
The Sea of Tents, the Black River and Dusk Gate have previously been described, alongside their patron deities the Shit-Beetle, the Goddess of the Lime-Slake and more. Have a look at that post before coming back here:| Alone in the Labyrinth
I recently shared a revision to the curse of the spirit-touched, tying curses in PARIAH to PC inventory, in a nod to Cairn & Eco-Mofos. Continuing my ambition to publish revisions to the game as a series of modular zinis, I compiled the following curse "templates" (they can be applied as a lateral progression/impending doom track to any character) into the four-side format and published on itch:| Alone in the Labyrinth
There comes a time in a nerd's life when they have to take a good, long look at what they've done with their time on earth and think to themselves... FUCK! I HAVEN'T EVEN HAD A PROPER STAB AT A CONLANG! | Alone in the Labyrinth
More than two years ago I made a post called "demi-humans and alignment: dwarfs" which originally included a bit about elves, later replaced with a bit that promised: "elves update to follow!"...| Alone in the Labyrinth
Draw a map. Use whatever format inspires you the most. I like the freedom of a blank sheet of printer paper and a nice mechanical pencil, or thick sketchbook paper and micron pens. Let the ideas flow as you go. If you get stuck quit and go do something else.| VILE CULT OF SHAPES
The Cataclys Region al Legadex T he Cataclys region is one of immense natural beauty and intricately layered histories. From the unsum...| crateredland.blogspot.com
LEGAMON! You Must Acquire Them (Original Series Theme Song) I want to be the very best, above the world's law, To acquire them is my sole q...| crateredland.blogspot.com
Art by Richard Powers So as I mentioned I am preparing to run a Pirates of Drinax campaign and as I talked about in the article one should not see the UWPs of certain worlds as holy writ. Which is …| Stuffed Crocodile
