Fool's Moon Entertainment

I don't believe any given class should be inherently 'evil'. Sure, a majority of the people who take the class can be evil - I get that, but the class itself? Let me give you a pair of examples. 1) An Assassin. They only kill the corrupt and vile. They won't take a job to kill someone who doesn't deserve it, and they won't inflict 'collateral damage' (such as staff, guards, etc), unless it's in self-defence (and even then, prefers non-lethal methods). Their purpose is to ensure those who believe they're above justice face justice. They're doing the same thing hired adventurers might do, only with a lot less death involved. So, evil? 2) A Necromancer. They act as a go-between between the living and dead, act as a psychopomp, helping the dead find peace, eliminating undead, helping families grieve, and helping the ill or frail to pass on without pain. They're not raising undead, defiling graves, sucking the life force out of people, or an...

I'm going to begin with the following statement:  One is not inherently better than the other, they are simply different, and I have my preferences. This is not an attack on either style of RP, but just my thoughts on the subject matter. That out of the way, I like crunch. I like detail. I don't write games with a lot of crunch, because I'm casting a wide net - I want to write games that are easy for children and adults, and which allows you to put as much detail into the game as you want. The ASPS engine can be a streamlined, simple game with a focus on narrative play, or it can be resource heavy and detailed if that's your preference. The soon-t o- be-released Keepsakes (was Widdershins ) is incredibly simple, because it's supposed to be an all-ages game. But yeah. I want a game where poison is lethal, you need to keep track of that stuff and prepare for it. I want a game where if you're out in the wilderness, there's things like exposure , and you could ...

Because of a new RPG coming out that (if I recall) has a wheelchair available for PCs, the entire discussion about wheelchairs in a fantasy setting has come around again.  Here's my stance on it: It isn't a problem. People are making excuses, though.  Who'd want to adventure with someone in a wheelchair? How would they navigate dungeons?  Why do they even have wheelchairs, when magic can fix everything? Here's the thing. Not everyone has the ability to choose their course in life.  Not everybody has access to 'magic' that can fix everything.  And it's amazing what one can do with good friends who are willing to give them a hand. Dragonlance is a good example, in fact, with Raistlin.  Why didn't they dump his anemic ass and get a 'real wizard' to help them out?  They didn't.  Because he's a friend.  Oh, how about Charles Xavier of the X-Men.  You know there's skads of people in the Marvel Universe who could fix his legs - but he doesn...

Greetings! Let's talk about world building. While the mechanics of an RPG are important ('how the world functions'), the world building -- the setting and all its moving pieces -- need to be just as solid for immersion. There are plenty of 'generic' RPGs out there (Tiny d6, GURPS, Fantasy Age, FATE, Savage Worlds, etc) which can lay out how the world functions through mechanics, but most such games lack when it comes to building the world you're going to be playing in. Then you have games which lay out a world, but it is perhaps the most vanilla world that you'll ever see -- there's nothing fresh and unique about it.  Or it's just shallow, and any differences are superficial. (Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is a huge example). So what makes a setting interesting? Here's a few things to consider: Culture -- what cultures exist? How do they interact? How long have they been there? Religion -- what pantheons exist? How do they interact? How do they...

  Magic and Technology Don't Mix I've heard this many times, and I don't believe it. The conceit is that, since magic exists,  there's no reason for technology to advance. After all, magic does it better, does it easier, does it faster. Sure. Except that's not even remotely true. How much teaching does it take to get even a modicum of skill in magic? How much does it cost to get trained? Where do you need to go for that training? How many years to get good ? What are the restrictions on spell casting? Do you need to register to be a mage and be allowed to cast certain spells? How long to learn the proper spells? Sure. Developing certain technologies may take time, but the thing about technology is that it builds upon itself. And once something's been developed, it's not too hard to learn the foundations. For example? Steam technology existed in ancient Greece. They started doing all sorts of interesting things with steam. Given time and peace, who knows wher...

One of the greatest books (in my opinion) to come out of 3.5 was the Tome of Battle (aka the Book of Nine Swords). In essence, it destroyed the idea that martial classes should be perfectly mundane, and put them solidly in line with the spell casters of similar level. If you were from one of the classes in the ToB, you were giving fighting techniques which allowed you to do more than go 'I hit it with my sword'. Because in most circumstances, regardless of how you describe a fighter, it all boils down to 'I hit it with my sword'. No amount of poetic license is going to give you any real benefits beyond, 'I roll to hit, I do damage'. ToB fixed that. You had stances, which did different things, and you had maneouvres, which augmented your attacks and gave you nifty things to do. This was sort-of brought over into 4e, and while I never played 4e, I could see the DNA of the ToB in it. The thing is, they didn't put it into 5e.  Not really.  And they really should...

Here's a hot take for you. If a game ends with a TPK it doesn't necessarily mean... the game was bad. the encounter was 'too tough'. the GM was a bad GM. the players were bad players. that someone made a mistake. that the GM should have fudged. The nature of gaming has changed significantly in the last fifty-five or so years, and the nature of the games themselves have changed with it. While you have those people who insist that D&D is a 'wargame' because of its roots, you'll see them in the same breath talk about how the story is important, and how GMs should fudge dice rolls or ignore results (or even monster blocks) for a good story. I find it a touch hypocritical, but whatever. It seems the expectation is that a 'good campaign' is one where the characters go through it, grow and evolve, have their dramatic moments, and typically see the story to the end -- they face the bad guy, there's a conclusion, plots wrap up, etc. Me? I see that as ...

Balance Balance might be the #1 thing talked about in gaming when you go into game theory and play. We talk about balanced rules, balanced parties, balanced encounters... Here's the thing. Mechanical balance isn't possible. Not really. Not without harming the game itself. Because for true 'mechanical balance', you need to have the mechanics control the decisions that the players make - right at character creation. It needs to control the choices players can make in an encounter. It needs to control the choices the characters make in the setting. It needs to control the choices the characters make as they level up. What gear they get. What bonuses they get. Who they encounter. What they can get from each encounter. What they can gather out in the world. The characters get pushed into smaller and smaller boxes, with less and less choices, all in the name of 'balance'. And what this does is make the character sheet really bland, and the mechanics really bland. You ...

A group rides down a road.  On either side is farmland, peasants working the fields. There's an inn near the village, and in the distance is a walled city, with a castle in the centre. The group sees wagons with barrels, or hay, there's carriages carrying those of status, and people lug around wheelbarrows, ploughs, and farming tools. Yep.  That's medieval fantasy. But where's the fantasy part? A lot of world building for fantasy games completely ignore the fantasy aspect when it comes to actual civilization. Sure, there's elves, and dwarves, and dragons, and orcs, and wizards and priests. But ... civilization doesn't seem to acknowledge that the very presence of magic and monsters would fundamentally alter how civilization would be changed. Some anime are taking this into account now -- magic items to mimic things we'd see in the modern day and age (the 'magic microphone to broadcast in arenas' being a good example, flying podiums, teleportation gat...

So, story for you. TL;DR: GM has to deal with two players who are hyper-prepared, take pages and pages of notes, and actively uses everything at their character's disposal to get their goals accomplished in a way that crushes any thought of opposition by the sheer force of temporal power they can bring to bear to satisfy their schemes. I was at a table with a group of hard-core players, and a GM who didn't know what he was getting into. Two of the players kept extensive notes on everything that happened in the game: names of NPCs they met, deals and oaths made, people they saved, and damn near wrote a portfolio on these people. If we wound up going to the same town / city, they'd touch base with these people, cement ties, do favours, etc, etc. Me? I was like 14. I was not ready for this either. I was just along for the ride. Well. One day, the players tell the GM 'we're going to stage a coup'. The region we were in had a tyrant ruling it, and the PCs decided the...

Sometimes, the Heroes lose. Sometimes, the Heroes lose horribly. Not every threat encountered is meant to be defeated with violence - or is ever able to be overcome with violence regardless of how 'good' the group is. Not every threat can be negotiated with. Not every threat can be avoided. And this doesn't mean the GM is being malicious, or 'out to get the players' -- yes, there are game masters like that, but that's a different problem to discuss another time. No, this is the game master showing that - no matter how good the PCs are, there is always something out there bigger than them. A good GM gives warnings -- signs that things aren't right.      You come across a village - one that's not on any maps. The colours are grey, the people fidgety and you see strained smiles when you walk in.  One comes up to you, all smiles.      "Think happy thoughts," he says. "Only happy thoughts. Keep any angry thoughts or sad thoughts or anything els...

  Voodoo Dolly here!  We're working hard on Keepsakes , but while we're doing that I want to introduce you to one of our current titles, Fox Magic !  Fox Magic is a narrative game where the players create a den of kitsune - Japanese fox spirits, to protect their domain.  The setting-agnostic engine allows the game master to run the game in any world, any genre, and any time period. The rules allow the game master to set the backdrop, while allowing the players the freedom to innovate and expand on each scene, creating new events, new characters to interact with, and tell their story, while providing the game master a firm but gentle hand in keeping the players on-track.  It uses the d12 Story Point System. You can download Fox Magic at Drive-Thru RPG: https://bit.ly/2OP2jtf Have a fantastic weekend! ^_^