I’ve been a huge fan of Robin Pierson’s History of Byzantium podcast since… whenever I finished listening to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome (I also talked about Byzantine history here), and the part where Robin explains court titles and the importance of honors to the power dynamics of Eastern […]
My Aurikesh campaign has 149 sessions under its belt at this point. Fourteen of those sessions are in 2024, which is more than we’ve had in some whole years. The highest-level characters are 11th to 13th level. Because my personal “old-school” is AD&D 2e, as the players reached 9th level […]
I haven’t had a chance to write my UA breakdown article on the Bastions and Cantrips packet for Tribality yet, but today I’m makin’ gravy without the lumps! This is content that should be fun even if you’re not using whatever comes from the Bastion rules in the end. I […]
One of the best parts of Darkest Dungeon, Pillars of Eternity, and a lot of other RPG video games is building up your home base town over the course of your many adventures. I’m not really talking about giving the town itself a numerical level that scales up, though that’s […]
This is a continuation of the last post. I’m working through more of the Player’s HandbookBackgrounds and official variants. Criminal (Spy) By surviving one or more tests of loyalty, you rise to positions of influence in a royal or freelance intelligence service. You become a spymaster. Spymasters sit at the […]
I’m a bigtime fan of 5e’s introduction of Backgrounds, particularly as a source of skill and tool proficiencies and noncombat features. Even more than (most) classes and subclasses, Backgrounds also suggest a trajectory of your personal story, beyond zero-to-hero. But within that arc, your Background features don’t change. Inspired by […]
If you followed my History of Domain Rulership over in Tribality, which ran from March of 2016 to January of 2017, I mentioned there that I was going to try to build my own ideal domain rulership system for 5e. In this post, I’m showing the work as I go. […]
