Rule of the Dice

I am somehow at a time in my life where I'm running, or playing,  all the games. So, now I get to bore everyone with all the weird ideas I have for campaigns. Here goes... Mythical/Heroic Ireland System: D&D There is a lot of fodder for a good campaign in the myth cycles of Ireland. Giants, wizards, kings with silver arms, gods from weird magic islands, who fly around in spaceships, and of course, a huge bucket full of fey folk, curses, geas, and all the other wacky Celtic shit you can think up. Renaissance Call of Cthulhu System:  Call of Cthulhu, or Harnmaster with insanity rules. Kind of a wacky Leonardo Da Vinci investigates fucked up horror stuff in the Italian city states vibe.  Most likely a bunch of  church corruption and conspiracies, secret cultists, and all the usual good ol' Cthulhu stuff, mingled with a bit of X Files monster of the week. Apocalyptic Nazi's in space System: d6, or BRP Nazi's destroyed the world and moved to sp...

As I posted about here , I had been toying with GMing a new game.  Well it has come to fruition.  My group has started a PBEM (play by e-mail) game, set in the world of Robin Hobb's Farseer books . We've only been going for about 2 weeks now, which isn't very long in PBEM time, but I'm already having doubts.  The problem is, I can't tell if my players are having any fun. The start of an adventure is always tedious.  Players aren't sure who the other PC's are, or where they are supposed to fit in.  As GM, I never know how much infomation to give.  So far my adventure is pretty open.  The King has given the party a task, but how they go about it, and what they discover along the way is up to them.  I do have a general story in mind, but if they take a left turn, I'm happy to adjust and improvise.  And as a PBEM, that's much easier for me as I have time to think about any changes. Where I think I might be going wrong is that I haven...

I've been considering running a couple of new RPG games, one as a PBEM , and one with a live group.  I've mentioned in the past that I know I'm better at running PBEM's than live games, but I'm hoping they both work well.  But that's putting the cart ahead of the horse.  What I need to do first  is find a system, a world setting, and a campaign. While I have a bunch of 2e and 3.5e adventure modules, I know I prefer unique worlds in the games I play.  My usual GM has an extensive world he has created and sets most of his games in it, which I really enjoy.  I hope to be able to give my players a similarly satisfying experience.  I know I don't want to go the extreme route of creating my own system the way C.D. has with Splatter-Elf .  However I am considering adapting one of the systems I know well to a unique world. Likely the system will be 2e or Advanced Labyrinth Lord  (hooray for free!), or with a bit more work, I can make my ide...

Map from Fantastic Maps, where the maps are fantastic Street names are a great way to add a bit of depth to any city setting, but aren't really worth detailing in full - unless you're boring, or obsessive, or both. I happen to be lazy, and find that coming up with names on the spot, is kind of annoying. I've been running a city based campaign for a while now, and after using the name Smith Street for the 100th time, I decided to come up with this handy little random table. Now I just detail the main streets, and consult the table for the names of any side streets I might need. So far it's worked pretty good, and I figured maybe some other people might get some use out of it. Here is a Link to the pdf you can download.