High Level Games: Five Settings To Pilfer For Your Game

I wrote another article for HLG! This one is Five Settings to Pilfer For Your Game. It's about a handful of books, shows, and games I've experienced relatively recently that I think would make for good tabletop RPG settings, or at least settings to pilfer from. One of them should be obvious given the image below ;), but hopefully one or two of these will be new to you.

High Level Games: 3 Unique Variations on "The Crawl"

I forgot to post about this sooner, but I wrote another article for HLG! This one is about rethinking "The Crawl" in tabletop RPGs, and how that design goal in the abstract can be applied to different kinds of games. It was inspired by my recent game Pixels & Platforms: The Platform Crawl RPG, my submission for DREAMJAM on itch.io. With that game, I took the base mechanics of Lasers & Feelings, generally considered a "storygame", but applied a design philosophy of retro-2D platformer videogame Stage-as-Dungeon to create an experience intended to be more like OSR. While it has undergone revisions, it is still definitely a work in progress, but I hope that people will check it out, play it, and provide feedback, or also use it as a springboard for their own Crawl ideas.

High Level Games: 4 Reasons Why Your Game And Mine Are Less Different Than You Think

I wrote another HLG article! In line why my recent interest in SWORDDREAM (check out the subreddit!), this article is about defying our preconceived notions of what differentiates different kinds of games, and to what extent it's authorial intent, culture, dice probabilities, etc., and also how to go about leveraging that knowledge. Even if you disagree with the particulars, the point of this article is more about just encouraging people to think about their games more critically, or at least differently.

High Level Games: 5 Tips to Handle Settlement Building in Tabletop RPGs

I finally wrote another article for High Level Games! They're great and I hope people give the article a read. I've been thinking a lot about settlement building, and how to make a campaign out of a single location, something I emphasized heavily in my SHIELDBREAKER campaign and intend to emphasize in my current Aquarian Dawn campaign. As the image suggests, this HLG post was largely inspired by Numenera Destiny (linked in the article itself). Check out the article here!

High Level Games: 3 Ways to Modify Any Game

Image Source

I'm breaking my "posting only every other week" rule to share that high level games has posted my next article! In the article, I discuss, in very broad strokes, a handful of system-neutral ways to modify games. I think if you're reading this blog there's a good chance you're already familiar with my suggestions, but even so, my discussion of dice probabilities and how modifiers affect different dice or how dice can affect character progression may be interesting if you have not given that much consideration.

You can read the article here!

High Level Games: 5 Ways to Make Interesting Characters

Picture Reference: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/10/19/19/08/medieval-1753740_960_720.jpg

Two posts in one day! Whoops! Well, the awesome HLG blog posted my new article today, 5 Ways to Make Interesting Characters. My other posts there, 5 Ways to Make Fantasy Worlds Fantastical Again and 5 Steps to Make Monsters that Matter (A Halloween Special) have been more about worldbuilding, so it was exciting to talk about something slightly different. Please give it a look!

High Level Games: 5 Steps to Make Monsters that Matter (A Halloween Special)

This is my second article for high level games, 5 steps to Make Monsters that Mater (A Halloween Special). It's partially a play report / loose module for a "Halloween" special, partially my attempt to explain how monsters can be used to build a setting and tell a story, and partially my attempt to do Halloween with a Weird & Wonderful twist. Let me know what you think!

High Level Games: 5 Ways To Make Fantasy Worlds Fantastical Again

I recently started writing for High Level Games, I'm aiming for one article a month there. They're a cool bunch who provide each other writing advice, and I think being accountable to other people will encourage me to be a better writer. Whereas my blog is generally more about my personal ideas, my posts there will be more about general thoughts and advice in the form of listicles. This blog post is my advice for how to make a fantasy setting fantastical. It culminates in a one-paragraph micro-setting that's probably tighter and more broadly appealing than any of the micro-settings I've posted yet on here :p. Give it a look!

5 Ways to Make Fantasy Worlds Fantastical Again