Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Preface: I don't know how to Twitter very well. I'm a "twitiot." Recently (last friday) I took a few minutes to follow every RPG related twitter feed I could find. I figure if I followed someone that posts things that aren't sitting well with me I can just unfollow them and no harm no foul.  I follow a mixed bag of scientists, freinds, pro wrestlers, local news reporters, some comedy feeds, but now my list of twitter follows is predominantly RPG's. Something I find strange and I guess this is due to  twitter's algorithms controlling what they show and when, I don't see all that many RPG related posts in my  feed. (though I do chat with  Charles from the Dyver's Blog  quite often, and had a nice exchange with the person behind the Goblin Stomper Blog) Here's my question: How do you utilized twitter to expand you RPG circles?  All I really do is  post once a month or so that I have this blog. Or don't you? is  twitter useless for this  kind

Giant insects are a D&D  stand by. It's hard to find a dungeon that doesn't at least have a few giant beetles spewing toxic fluids around. Admittedly they are one of my own favorite go to monsters. One thing I think has been slightly overlooked of the the years are the myriad of  real hunting and defensive mechanisms insects employ. If by  making any old insect "giant" it becomes that much more dangerous why not  extrapolate some of their more exotic abilities into the realm of fantasy as well. Now I'm not crazy enough to think I can write about even a small percentage of insects  in this format. Instead I'm going to try and  hit on some of my favorites. Wasps and Hornets: I love wasps. Few things interest me more than all the different ways they have found to survive. Aerial hunters extraordinaire it seems that these gals have evolved hundreds of ways to attack and  kill prey. One thing to think about is wasps are in many cases ambush predators, waiting a

The goblin slingers have quietly emerged from the briers on the far side of the  field. The party, distracted by the writhing wall of spear wielding goblins in front, have not seen the new group, Positioned off to their left flank and slightly to their rear, the  goblins start loading their slings. Each slinger takes aim and hurls their payload at an unsuspecting adventurer before quickly retreating back into the thorny undergrowth. Roll for sling payload... Bag of stinging ants: Characters in a three foot area must make a constitution save or succumb to the  pain of ant stings. Resulting in a penalty (disadvantage for 5th ed) on all rolls until the  character takes a round to clear the ants. Imp: The imp lands among the party screams "For the  resistance" then back stabs a random party member with a poison dagger.  Poison paralyses poison sleeps poison causes  victim to lash out at all nearby targets friend or foe. poison does extra necrotic damage Poison causes vomiting and

I would like to share some links and  a few other things that have been giving me inspiration lately. Just some of the things I have read on the web to riff ideas off of. I read a lot of strange things out on the Internet while working on game  ideas... why not share the madness. Here is a an excellent  decaying architecture Flickr account. here are some links to geological maps from around the country. USGS map view map data base for you geological types. Why New York?  cause I live here. New York sate Geological survey site. Sort of an RPG link nice looking dice. Artisan Dice Trade: I find this subject super interesting. http://www.livescience.com/44703-turquoise-trade-network-revealed.html Prehistoric mining , which is a good read in it's own right , has a great reference section. Trade routes between Asia and Europe in antiquity ,  from the met Maps of mines: real mine maps form Pennsylvanian , it's honestly kind of mind blowing A ton more of that kind of thing, mine maps f

I have to be honest, and if not here where? I'm not sure if it's the winter weather, or the holidays. It might be age or it might be frustration over work. I don't know what it is but I have honestly had no interest in running  RPG's in the past two months. I suppose the players in the game I run deserve a better explanation than that one, but I don't have a better reason to offer. In an effort to get my mojo back I started scribbling in one of my notebooks about a setting. The only rule I gave myself  starting out was "no D&D Fantasy." A bit on process: I play video games with my  friends on weeknights. I watch TV with my wife.. I stream videos to my  computer.. It's a lot of empty time. All the while I keep a composition note book, one of those old style black and white jobs on my desk. While nothing else is going on I scribble in any and every game related idea I have. That's my process, as simple as that. when I need something for a game I

Not for nothing but I haven't run a game since 11/12/16  or so. Being an adult gamer, with work and holidays and all that have meant that our group has just not been available for  around a month. Chances are I'm not going to get another game in for quite a while still. I know what the real life players are doing, I wonder what I should be letting the characters do. This post is going to touch on things that deserve posts of tier own... Like  talking about  supplementing the hp system with  wounds and recruiting  ship crews. Fact is many  of these subsystems can be found on other blogs. At some point I may revisit this post and flesh out some of the concepts touched on. IN other words this post should be part of a greater series of posts but I'm not sure it will be. At the very least I hope to inspire some ideas for anyone reading, so that they might fill in the blanks in what ever why they see fit. In our D&D game the characters just solved a literal murder mystery , f

Here is a question thrown out to the  internet void. Set up: I know there are many great RPG blogs out there. A quick Glance at the Dyver's blog "Great blog roll call" from a couple years back will prove that point. Like many others I have a small blog roll on this blog right over on the left margin. I use other people's blog rolls all the time to find interesting things to read. One thing I have noticed however is that most of the blog rolls I see look pretty similar to each other.  The same blogs listed over and over. I understand that blogs show up on blog rolls because they are quality, have followings, good reputations, and have earned enough admiration to warrant a blog owners desire to track it's blogs posts. While I enjoy those same blogs, I think I have seen enough  links to Tenkar's Tavern to last me a life time. (Heck, I have one to!) Here is my question: Have any of you stumbled on recently started, or very low follower blogs that are kicking out

Well here we are 2017. A constant in RPG blogging that has always amazed is the longevity of other blogs. This blog had a down year post wise.. My 2017 post count was in the 40's Down from in the 70's the year before.. Which for the record was down from over 100 the  year before that.. On the  plus side I  broke 100000 page views (As of this writing sitting at 100,158.) A big  thank you  to all of the humans who has actually viewed the blog. Which is a debatable thing considering 12k of the views are from the web crawler linked to the Russian equivalent of Google. The post with the most views from 2016 was " Packing it all away " Which was about how what we play in our formative years can shape what we are comfortable with well beyond that. I was surprised it received as many views as it did. I think my favorite post of 2016 was " Adventures in the Canopy " A system neutral post about  the myriad of ways characters can die in a jungle. It was may favorite be