No, this article isn’t about dungeons or caves. It’s about a design lesson that I only learned as an adult. As a kid, I skimmed through the Dungeon Masters Guide and the Monster Manuals countless times, planning adventures or just perusing all of the intriguing stuff within. Though this wasn’t playing, it was still magic. … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #36: Phionics, for November 2020. I was conversing with someone via messaging and he misspelled a word. I recognized what he meant, so I overlooked it—but it got me thinking. The word he wanted was psionics, which had just been mentioned in our conversation, but he misspelled it phionics, which is probably … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #35: Seekers, for October 2020. The “magic” in our role playing games is “make believe.” It’s not real, and no one could by reading any of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks or source books learn how to do any “real magic,” if such a thing exists. Indeed, you can’t learn … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #32: Doing Something, for July 2020. Although this is actually about a gaming referee technique, I’m starting with an example from a book, my novel Verse Three, Chapter One, freely accessible on the web. It also begins with magic items, but moves beyond that to objects in other settings and genres. As … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #30: Conflict, for May 2020. A few years back my band Collision left its equipment set up in a church in which we had been practicing. The drummer had gotten our logo made as a drum head cover, so there was this picture of the earth crashing into a giant … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #23: Kralc’s Law, for October 2019. I don’t want to say that Arthur C. Clarke is famous for this; he is, after all, author of the book behind one of the most iconic of near-term science fiction space travel movies (have I limited that enough?), 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, he … [Read more…]
In this series of articles, Michael Garcia shares various custom rules and handouts related to his worldbuilding for his ongoing Northumbria campaign. The Elves are undoubtedly the oldest known race in the world. Their culture is ancient and largely unchanged, despite the millennia that have passed. Typical Appearance Elves are generally slender and graceful people, … [Read more…]
Deliver Us From Evil Optional Rules for the Ritual of Exorcism “And they cried, ‘Dominus, in Thy name, even wicked spirits are under our dominion!’ And He replied, ‘I saw the Enemy hurled from Heaven like a thunderbolt. You know I granted you power over all the powers of wickedness… Nevertheless, take not pride in … [Read more…]
I will confess that I specifically saved this one of the Archetypes for this month. It has been something of a tradition to cover subjects related to game magic in October, begun inadvertently when I addressed the objections to Magic that first year and then returned to it a year later when I recommended Fantasy … [Read more…]
“Magic is a matter of symbolism and intent.” —Randall Garrett, Too Many Magicians Most role-playing games (RPGs) include some kind of magic or occult phenomena as part of the game. This fact makes some people uncomfortable. Some Christians go so far as to insist that any activity—games, movies, whatever—including the portrayal of magic must be avoided in … [Read more…]