Category: RPG Resources (Page 7 of 11)

Tim Bannock writes useful articles filled with tips, tricks, advice, house rules, and compilations of links from all over the web to help you improve your roleplaying game sessions.

Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer Western Frontier Hex Maps

04/15/2020 / / 0 Comments

Want some different versions of the Western Frontier map from Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition? Here ya go!

These maps are great for building your own hexcrawl campaign. We’ve got labeled and unlabeled versions, and we’ve also provided the raw Worldographer (AKA ‘Hexographer II’) file for you to manipulate to your heart’s content. You can pick up Worldographer here from Inkwell Ideas.

Get all these maps and the Worldographer file from this Google Drive folder. Check out the maps below:

Labeled map:

The Western Frontier hex map

The Western Frontier hex map

Labeled map with light grid:

The Western Frontier hex map (light grid)

The Western Frontier hex map (light grid)

Unlabeled map with light grid:

The Western Frontier unlabeled hex map with grid

The Western Frontier unlabeled hex map with grid

Pick up Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition free or PWYW at DriveThruRPG or itch.io today!

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of MYST and Beyond
Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of MYST and Beyond

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond: Age Creation Checklist

04/13/2020 / / 0 Comments

The following post has been ported over by my now-defunct site neuronphaser.com. It was originally posted November 19, 2015.

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond features a fantastic set of tools for creating Ages: alternate realities and worlds featuring unique natural resources, a single altered physical law of reality, or some ingenious, steampunk-inspired piece of esoteric machinery worth exploring. Like so many Fate-based games, there’s a great discussion of creating these sorts of worlds and translating them into location Aspects.

What follows is a stab at expanding the Age creation system, with an aim at providing more specific locations and conflicts to be explored. Additionally, there is a simplified framework from which improv-lovers can develop semi-randomized Ages. Players get a chance to really shine in defining Aspects of an Age, or using the Deduction rules to add details and variety to an existing Age.

Read on for the guide, or go here for this entire guide in a Google Doc for viewing/downloading.

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Medallist icon by Game-icons.net
Medallist icon by Game-icons.net

Dungeons & Dragons Simple Question and Answer Experience Point XP System

02/03/2020 / / 1 Comment

Updated from an original article published Nov 19, 2018.

An easy way to stress the three pillars of play (combat, exploration, interaction) in Dungeons & Dragons is to award experience points in a different manner. Older editions awarded them based on gold piece values of treasure procured (or secured in town after selling off loot), and other games have tables you can reference that provide XP values for different tasks performed, goals achieved, and so on. Unearthed Arcana addressed this with the Three-Pillar Experience system, a set of variant rules that intersects with the Challenge rating system and the different tiers of play: first tier (levels 1–4), second tier (levels 5–10), third tier (levels 11–16), and fourth tier (levels 17–20).

Here’s a simple system that uses a series of questions and answers to award experience. Based on the questions you use — the lists presented below, or something of your own devising — you can easily tweak the system to stress different types of conduct during play, and thus stress the pillars of play in different ways.

Read on!

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Forging Bonds artwork from the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game
Forging Bonds artwork from the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game

Random Party Bonds for Dungeons & Dragons

01/29/2020 / / 2 Comments

Updated from an article originally published Nov 20, 2018.

Player characters receive bonds from their chosen Background, descriptive traits that tie them to the campaign setting via some sort of relationship to people, places, or things. An alternative method of using bonds is to more directly create ties between the individual player characters themselves, creating relationships that help them forge a team identity and a reason for sticking together through whatever adversity they face in their adventures together. Here are some additional ideas for bonds.

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ALIEN Roleplaying Game
ALIEN Roleplaying Game

ALIEN The Roleplaying Game Resources

11/05/2019 / / 0 Comments

Not too long ago, I posted my version of a GM Screen (AKA ‘Game Mother’ in ALIEN RPG lingo). Since then, the game’s publisher, Free League, has released some better resources themselves, including official print-friendly character sheets, maps, and so on. Of course, being who I am, I saw some opportunities to make some better (form-fill character sheets), and to create some other resources for myself.

Here they are!

Form-fill, print-friendly version of the official character sheet (PDF) – The official Free League character sheet, but with form-fill function.

Cheat sheet / GM screen inserts (PDF) – My GM screen inserts, creating a 3-panel easy-to-use reference for the most often used game rules.

Alien Life Cycle compilation (PDF) – A nicely formatted dump of useful images and information culled from various ALIEN-related wikis and fan resources.

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, DriveThruRPG, and itch.io. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

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