Creating the perfect D&D character can be a tricky thing. Sometimes you need the inspiration to make that perfect character. Luckily, there are D&D tropes and character archetypes that can easily be translated into a D&D character. Today, we’re looking at the different character classes in D&D and getting inspired by looking at D&D character…
DM: “The frost giant’s ice club smashes down, crushing the very life out of you for (rolls) 40 points!” Bored Player: “Eh I still have 29 left, so after the Cleric does his healing I’ll be good as new.” DM: (sighs) One of D&D weaknesses is how damage- whether from combat, traps, or miscellaneous things like…
During this Halloween season, inject fear into D&D. After all, going into a dungeon should be a scary thing as it involves life or death decisions. Plus the monsters are real. And while I’ve written a previous column on making your games scarier via the 5 senses, there’s another technique. Empathy. I find that players…
Designing a campaign setting isn’t all about world lore and locations populated by classes, races, and monsters. You need to have things for those classes, races, and monsters who populate your setting to do. What we’re talking about here are staples of play in d20 system games — feats — and how to avoid some…
As the leaves turn and the skies grow cloudy, we turn our minds toward All Hallows’ Eve and things of an often creepier, spookier, or more macabre appeal. Let us turn our minds then toward a sweet sample of the garish gallery to be found in the westerly lands of the Pure Steam™ Campaign Setting….
Gamemastering at GenCon can be a blast. It’s a way to introduce people to a game you love, or even a game you’re trying to publish. It can also be a way to play obscure games that just don’t have a big following in your hometown. It’s a lot of work, though, and can be…
Character classes are the gateways through which players enter our games. As DMs, it’s important for us to understand character class design and what kinds of classes our players might enjoy playing. Remember this maxim: “What works for one game or one set of players might not work for another!” I took the liberty to…
Creating new races or writing for old ones can be a chore. Given that no matter how incredible our idea may be someone somewhere has probably already done it, we think there are a couple key design approaches one can follow to help build a better race. Races come from the land. This may sound…
Pure Steam™ is first and foremost a campaign setting. Settings are important to films, TV, comics, radio plays, novels, and books of all sorts. Settings are places, but settings are also more important than that. Settings are populated by heroes and villains, filled with wondrous and dangerous locales, and form the backdrops for our imaginations when…
Who doesn’t enjoy a good time travel story? The idea’s been prevalent in fiction for centuries. Whether it’s something where time travel is usually just a framing device like Doctor Who, or whether its integral to the plot like in Back to the Future or Chrono Trigger. The best thing about time travel is that…
There’s a collective sigh of relief and that figurative, though often literal, fist-pump when you’ve hit a milestone creating something you love. That’s how we at ICOSA Entertainment felt when we finally shipped our initial RPG offering, the Pure Steam™ Campaign Setting. But the holiday pounds were already melting away as our feverish brains began…
Hey all! B’omarr Punk (Adam), creator of Pure Steam™ here. This article was intended to be a wrap to our series from last year: “I am become designer, creator of worlds!” Instead, it serves as the new start of a series we like to call, “Behind the Gear-spun Curtain: A Purely Steampunk Look at Game…
Whether it’s ancient literature like Journey to the West or the latest Jackie Chan movie, the martial arts genre is one of the most well-loved and longest lasting. The hand-to hand combat of a typical kung fu flick will blend very well with the action-oriented side of Dungeons & Dragons. If the ancient Eastern arts…
Welcome to Adventure Seeds, a semi-regular column that will help ‘plant’ ideas. We’re going to start off with the old standby, pirates. (And yes, we’ll be doing a column on ninjas later, just to be fair) Whether in the old school X1 The Isle of Dread, Green Ronin’s Freeport setting, or Paizo’s Skull & Shackles…
You’ve spent hours pouring over charts, grids, drawings, stories, and reference guides and finally you have it: a tale worth playing. So you call up your closest friends and your local pizza joint, and you all gather to play this game. It’s all going pretty well at first; everyone’s having fun and the game’s running…
Last time we looked at different aspects to the horror setting, today we finish that topic up with the most important aspect of horror: The Twist. Now this is the most important trick to writing horror. Details and presentation are all nice and dandy, but the twist is where you blow your party’s mind. It could be…
“I am become designer, creator of worlds!” is a limited series on the ins and outs of building your own roleplaying game from the ground up—and with it a business model by which to grow and create more new ideas. In the first article in this series, we presented a three-step look at how we,…
Cat says… So, I am about to start DM-ing my first campaign with a group of people I’ve played with for a while, and I’m taking over for a DM that leaves a lot to measure up to. My problem is that since my partner has been playing and dm-ing D&D for a long time,…
Roberto V. from Stafford, NY asks… Keith, all of the complex political maneuvering and back-stabbing (sometimes literal) plus the brutal battles in a low magic setting are what makes Game of Thrones so addictive to me. How can we adapt those elements to our Pathfinder/D&D game while still making it fun for the players? And…
Looking forward to the “Weapons for Hire” Scrolls of Destiny solution? Look no further! Discover which sellsword plans to hire on with which noble House.
Playing the new Game of Thrones RPG? Toss this Scrolls of Destiny puzzle in your game for a quick, fun challenge for your PCs!