Category Archives: World-Building

Magic Monday: Undoing, part 2ing

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Confanity

So last week we talked about counterspelling and dispelling rotes (normal “spells” in the D&D magic paradigm). This week we’re talking about the same for rituals and gnosis. Rituals This is magic-as-natural-philosophy. Like a chemical reaction or a Rube Goldberg … Continue reading →

Posted in Rules | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Magic Monday: Undoing

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Confanity

Unlike Necropraxis, I’m not building this system on a base of Vancian magic, in which (even without spell levels) each bit of magic is like a bullet that you load, fire, and are left without. So while the post linked … Continue reading →

Posted in Rules | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Magic Monday: governed by skills

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Confanity

One of the funkiest tasks in making a fantasy game has got to be the magic system. Rules for travel, combat, and any number of other mundane tasks can be modeled on real-world data, as in Justin Alexander’s famed breakdown … Continue reading →

Posted in Rules | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Magic Monday – opening thoughts

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Confanity

So my current “fantasy heartbreaker” is YAOSC. As a grad student with a baby, I don’t have time to do more than take it out and putter around with it a little every now and then. But recently* this post at … Continue reading →

Posted in Meta, Rules | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

On spicing up your dungeon crawl with… sensory output!

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Confanity

Noisms just put up a thought-provoking post about “consequences” in the dungeon. Not the social consequences of PC actions within the fictional world, though (although that would be an excellent topic to explore in depth, if you’re up for a certain kind … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellaneous, Musing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

A quick link about combat arrowing

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Confanity

Next time you encounter fictional archery, whether in a movie, book, or in a game (especially a fantasy-themed game that involves characters using magic or performing feats of legendary strength and skill), here’s something to keep in mind: 

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Tale from Clevaria

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Confanity

In the time of the god-king, lord of the sky, director of rain, clouds, and wind, whose name was secret, emissaries came from the plains to Clevaria. They worshipped strange gods of earth, and carried one with them in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Setting, Short Fiction, World-Building | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A sliding scale of stabbing

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Confanity

Tabletop RPG idea of the day: a system for resolving attacks in combat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything exactly like it. Background: One standard for making an attack is the attacker rolling dice to overcome a static defense … Continue reading →

Posted in Rules, World-Building | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Poem – “Litany”

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Confanity

A poem, in the voice of a character from a story much planned but largely unwritten. by Davis van Zandt Please report any of the following to the proper authorities: When you see people who aren’t, in all objectivity, there … Continue reading →

Posted in Long Fiction, Poetry, World-Building | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A How for Pow (RPG magic)

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Confanity

What would you give up for magical powers? Your health? Your physical strength or speed? Your sanity? Your ability to connect with the people around you? Here’s an idea for an alternate, relatively system-neutral rule for magic in RPGs. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Rules, World-Building | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment