Warrior Societies of Aurikesh, Part 2 1

I enjoyed writing the first two warrior societies so much that I thought I might do two more. I also left out any clear indication of fighting style for the Iron Temple in the last post, so I thought I’d mention it here. I mostly see these guys fighting with […]


Magic in Narrative: Games and Fiction 5

A conversation about magic in the Marvel universe over in Google Plus today has me thinking about the greater role of magic in storytelling and games. A ton of different sources factor into my thinking here, starting with Merlin and the wizard-heroes of the Kalevala, continuing through the Wizard of […]


Monsters of Aurikesh: Domain Sentinels

Creature design has always been tough for me. When I run tabletop games, I mostly use monsters out of the books. I can take credit for only a small number of the monsters in Dust to Dust. On the other hand, I’ve found that in almost every creative endeavor, the […]


Experience Points 3

It’s interesting to me how conversations about specific topics sometimes crop up in multiple unconnected places at the same time. Just as Ryan Macklin is discussing disadvantages and experience points in his blog, there’s also a lively exchange on experience points going on in Google Plus. The G+ conversation is, […]


Warrior Societies of Aurikesh 3

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned warrior societies as a means of giving fighters more social connections and motivations to drive interaction with NPCs. I had wanted to include a few example warrior societies in that post, but it was long enough that I thought better of it. These […]


Projects that Could Have Been

By request, all commentary on this Projects that Could Have Been post has been redacted. I apologize for any grief this has caused.


Adding Depth to Fighters 3

Several weeks ago, a Conscientious Reader commented that I have a long history of giving a lot of design consideration to spellcasters of every type, at the apparent expense of fighter and rogue characters. My Swordplay series of posts aside, I’m comfortable calling this an accurate observation of a blind […]


Content Presentation: the Mystical Vignette 3

Following a considerable gap in posting caused by a Dust to Dust event, I want to talk a bit about a common thread between DtD and several of my favorite games, culminating in thoughts on applying the concept. Nobilis may be the first game I saw that communicated a huge amount […]


Effect Counters by Spell School 1

This idea emerged right at the end of a previous post as I was writing it, and I’ve had some time since then to turn it over in my head. I liked where the ideas about effect counters even better when applied to the eight spell schools – it was […]


The Problem of the Fire Mage 2

Between Sea of Stars, G+, and a few other places, there’s been some discussion lately about what I see as the problem of fire mages. This problem generalizes somewhat to other tightly themed spellcasters, but the fire mage and the mind mage have it worst, I think. The problem is that […]