As I ease back into RPG blogging, one of the things I want to do is share some of my process. That includes things that provided inspiration, my methodology for creating, and the things that I learned over the course of working on specific projects. For the sake of this post, I’ve narrowed down 3 […]
Use strange beings and alien creatures in character development, worldbuilding, and adventures! People frequently want to add Lovecraftian horrors to their fantasy games, but they’ve been there since the beginning. Thing that are beyond the day-to-day existence of a standard high fantasy setting. Creatures so strange that their aims and desires are unfathomable. Beings that […]
This is the weekly Dancing Lights Press Newsletter for 13 January 2019. This will be published every Sunday around 3pm EST. It will be simultaneously sent to subscribers and posted on the website. It still needs a good name. Suggestions are welcome. New This Week Worldbuilding Power: Illusion – Illusion is the tricking of the mind, […]
Today I want to talk about how I view different categories of tabletop roleplaying game mechanics. The intention is to give you some insight on my game design philosophy. I’m making this disclaimer up front, because I’m not saying that one of these is better than the other. It’s all about what problem you’re solving […]
There are three elements that made me fall in love with tabletop roleplaying back when I was 14 years old. They’re the same reason I still love them today. All of them are, in my opinion, unique to the form. First, I got to control my own protagonist. There’s a level of participation and self-expression […]
Use arcane deception in character development, worldbuilding, and adventures! Illusion is the tricking of the mind, and the distorting of the senses. As a category of magic, its purpose is to alter the target’s perception of reality. The definition of illusion magic has expanded over time to include spells that act as disguises, defenses, and […]
The newsletter returns! This is the weekly Dancing Lights Press Newsletter for 6 January 2019. This will be published every Sunday around 3pm EST. It will be simultaneously sent to subscribers and posted on the website. It needs a good name. Suggestions are welcome. New This Week Worldbuilding Power: Mountains was released on Friday. Today […]
This morning I finished watching season 3 of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. I found it to be winsome, which here means sweet-natured and likable. One of the many things that I liked about the books, which the show does a good job of capturing, is the juxtaposition of that gentleness against the […]
Worldbuilding Power: Designer’s Notes One of my favorite things back in the day were the “ecology” articles in Dragon Magazine. They would pick a monster and go into detail about how it lived, what it ate, the impact it had on the surrounding environment, and so on. It was all worldbuilding. There were no new […]
Use perilous peaks in character development, worldbuilding, and adventures! Mountains are places of mystery. Rising above the surrounding landscape, they are seen by all but only known to few. Myth and legend names them as the home of the gods. Rivers and streams originate there. Dangerous creatures dwell there. The terrain is often steep, and […]