Troll in the Corner

My zombie infested, post-apocalypse high fantasy campaign is starting to take shape

Over the past few days I've been putting a lot of background thought into my world - Aruneus. I've got my map, I've got my zombies and I know where I want this world and campaign to go. Now I have a time line that tells me and my characters what has transpired before the zombie apocalypse.

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Contagion Infected Human Zombies, Head Strikes and High Fantasy – so it begins

Here are the first three unique elements I've come up with for my Zombies in Fantasyland campaign. Here you'll find a new attack method: The Head Strike, the Contagion Infected Human Zombies themselves and The Contagion. Speaking of which, I really need a name for this campaign and the world in which it takes place. I've taken a long hard look at the systems I'd like to develop this for and I've decided to go with D&D 3.5, which also follows the d20 SRD standard available here. 4th edition had far to many limits and would require massive house rules just to be worth playing in. 3.5 has a great base system from which I can work to develop this.

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Zombies in Fantasy land initiative takes a big bite out of my life

A while back I mentioned my Zombies in Fantasy land campaign initiative. Since then, I've been letting the ideas percolate in the back of my mind while I take care of real life. That percolating has done a lot of good. I've come to a few decisions about this and am now starting to amp up the creative output. I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of the below points. Or on anything to do with zombies and fantasy RPGs.

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The Shield, Sword, And Crown: Great Fantasy Without the Elves

These are the best young adult (the jacket recommends the book for ages 8-12, though I would recommend it for anyone 8-120) fantasy books I have read since Artemis Fowl or Harry Potter. I would hasten to add, however, that the trilogy is meant for more than just fans of fantasy/sci-fi, as the fantasy elements are extremely subtle, especially in the first two books. It is fantasy like the Princess Bride is fantasy, good clean fun for everybody.

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Building Cities

In most world building scenarios your players will end up in cities frequently and if you don’t do enough prep work all your cities can end up looking about the same.  There are many different GMing philosophies on this but I’m going to share what’s worked for me. When I first started I tried to map [...]

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Getting Your Players to Work Together

When I first started GMing I was fairly against obvious hooks in a campaign. I mean, how frequently does your party composition make a group that would all randomly come together at some tavern (and all happen to be at the same tavern) and group up to do whatever the story is. Not frequently enough for a GM's taste.

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Making your PC’s think

Many times players can end up playing on autopilot. Every encounter, in and out of combat, is like every other. It's easy to fall into a formula. As GM's it's our jobs to try to keep things interesting, to keep the players on their toes.

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Review of 4th Edition PH3 Playtests

I've had a chance to tryout four of the playtests released from WotC for their upcoming Players Handbook 3. I'm not sure if I should be excited or afraid of this next release. It plays around with how a normal turn works and how a normal character acts which could be a really interesting development or something that adds way too much complexity to the game.

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Sandman Slim a magic noir revenge novel that contains no effing elves

Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim kicks ass. I mean, the protagonist literally left the text and physically kicked me in my ass. Yeah, it’s that much fun. James Stark spent 11 years killing monsters in Lucifer's arena for the entertainment of fallen angels, but now he's back in seedy, magic-riddled L.A., trying to avenge his girlfriend's murder and hunt down Mason Faim, the black magician responsible for getting him sent downtown. After that it really starts to get interesting.

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Economic stress, job stress, life stress, STRESS – the value of escape into Science Fiction and Fantasy

Whenever I think my life is hectic and a bit unreal I remind myself that Ender had it a lot worse. Most of the folks in the Culture Universe that I know, although vastly more advanced than I am, are in general a lot worse off. Having a group of highly advanced aliens plotting your downfall can be a real bummer, as can angry orcs charging with drawn swords.

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