Gold for XP in B/X and REAVE

    Over the last week I was in a discussion on forum about the topic of dividing XP in B/X. When I've run the game, I handled XP by splitting the value into shares, then half shares for hirelings, and split any additional XP back into shares and repeat the process until no substantial value is left. It made since to me logically to fully account for all XP available, But this was wrong.

Alchemy Mechanic

    I enjoy the idea of players being able to create magical items like scrolls and spells in my games. Posted below are my rules on potion making, but these are for the DM only. If you play in my games please do not peek behind the curtain! 

Hex Scale

    In a previous series of posts I described how to write a hex crawl campaign, up to the point of starting the first session. I purposely left out talking about the scale of your hex map, as I was debating the subject myself. For a long time I agreed with what many blogs say, that the 6 mile hex is superior to the others. There are a few reasons that I used this scale, like that at sea level the human eye can see ~3 miles meaning from the middle of the hex you can see to its edge if you had a clear line of sight. Another good reason to use 6 mile hexes is that B/X movement rates correlate nicely to miles per day according to the following table from the book, but the issue is that with a little thought these reasons fall apart.

Push & Pull

    I have always described my style of game mastering as a "Push and Pull" between me and my players. The more they push my game around by interacting with NPCs, exploring locations or seeking objects in the world, the more I can pull the game in the direction they want to see it move. On the surface this sounds simple enough, but how does this look at the table?

Investigating Initiative

    Initiative is an odd subject when it comes to most roleplaying games. It is kind of a jarring mechanic, removing entirely the pretense of being your character for a game rules. Most board games feature a roll off to see who starts play, from Settlers of Catan (First edition 1995 - Fifth edition 2015) to Backgammon (Origin ~3000 BC). This is done to randomize one of the few ways you can earn an advantage in turn based play, the first move. I won't be explaining rules in detail with all the intricacies but we will cover some rules and how I view them from both sides of the referee screen.

Prefix-Suffix Naming Tables

"Oh hi Mark." - The Room (2003)

    For years I've struggled with an easy way to name NPCs quickly at the table, even more so to have them keep a similar naming convention. It was while digging through the UESP that I found an easy solution to come up with possibly thousands of names quickly.

Step Four, A place to rest.

    Over the last few weeks we have developed a hex map, a dungeon, and now all that is left before we actually run the game is our town. With my style of design starting big and getting smaller this will be an important time to pull all the strings we left loose in the previous steps. I purposely left questions when designing the hex map, Why is the temple abandoned? What kind of people used to worship in the temple? Who built the fallen tower and why did it fall?