Category: Geek Culture

  • Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020

    Yes, I realize that time is fluid, and that we arbitrarily section it up into manageable chunks in order to make sense of a chaotic universe. I’m actually okay with that, so I want to talk a bit about this past year, and look forward a bit into the next. I have to admit, the…

  • Beyond Lamentations

    A little while back I posted my thoughts on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess publication “Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book”, both here and over at The Rat Hole. It was pretty well received, and of course the usual Zak and Jimmy apologists came out and were blocked, because life is short…

  • The Hedgicorn

    I love coming up with weird, quirky things for my D&D campaign. As one of my groups is entering a pocket of the Faewylde, I wanted to create something special for them to encounter. I love faerie, because done properly they hide a frightening power behind a cute facade. So I thought to myself, how…

  • Lamentation’s End

    It was just before Gen Con, and I had had a good run. I had gone months without thinking about anything related to Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Zak Smith. I realize that is a luxury and a privilege that some don’t have. But any obligation I had to think about LotFP was in…

  • RPGaDay, Day Sixteen: Dreams

    Dreams are often used by the Game Master to provide a spooky or unsettling moment for the players. But there are so many ways to use dreams to enhance the game for your players, and add exciting elements to your campaign. Here are some tips and things to keep in mind: I dreamt this moment!…

  • RPGaDay, Catching Up!

    As always, we come to the part of RPGaDay that I play a bit of catch up. So enjoy, and if you want to chat about anything I’ve written here, find me on Twitter! Day Ten – Focus This is something I might write a longer article about, because there has been some interesting discussion…

  • RPGaDay 2019, Day 8 & 9: Obscure and Critical

    Yesterday was a bad brain day so no post, but my migraine/depression is your gain with a twofer today. Enjoy! Day Eight – Obscure As I was building my current D&D campaign world, I had to make decisions as I went as to what things would be common knowledge and what would be obscure or…

  • RPGaDay 2019, Day Seven: Familiar

    I love wizard’s familiars. They have been a staple of fantasy fiction for ages, and a part of TTRPG lore for as long as the hobby has existed. I love that the bookish, sometimes curmudgeonly, wizard has a cute(ish) little companion that follows them around. Occasionally they are even useful, though that doesn’t matter because…

  • RPGaDay 2019, Day Six: Ancient

    The characters in my D&D campaigns encounter old things all the time. My current games are set in a homebrew world in which an interplanar war 1000 years previous led to an arcane cataclysm almost five hundred years before present day. So as they explore the world they are commonly encountering ruins that are at…

  • RPGaDay 2019, Day Five: Space

    I presented at a convention last year, talking about the history of science fiction roleplaying games. I’m in the process of switching that up and editing it for future use. But it was fun to research and pull together, because science fiction RPGs have always taken a back seat to fantasy RPGs. Recently, though, with…