Tag Archives: NPCs
Guard Duty
If you have ever worked a boring job, you know the monotonous mental fortitude that’s required to keep yourself on-task. Few occupations are more boring than guard duty and it can be expected that any seasoned member of security that isn’t currently on alert or being actively monitored by a supervisor will begin to drift into inattentiveness. Adventurers who are trying to slip past such distracted defenders may be watching for these lapses. To help adjudicate such surveillance situations, I have created a random table that you can use to see exactly what your witless wardens are up to when they start to slack.
Video Village
Fantasy games are set just far enough away from our modern reality to feel exotic. But presenting a realistic feel for your unrealistic setting can be difficult if you didn’t happen to ground your imagination with a foundational major in Ancient History. Luckily, we live in an age of digital knowledge! Travel with us through the Video Village to find educational and entertaining examples of how things used to be.
Five-Minute Languages
J.R.R. Tolkien spent years developing his fantasy languages and then wrote a handful of books to test them out (you’ve probably never heard of them, they’re pretty obscure). Klingon and Dothraki were developed for film and TV – carefully encoded over time with great care. But you’re you. You need to crank out some gobbledygook for game night and you need it fast. Well, hold on to your diphthongs and protect your predicates because we’re doing a crash course on fast-and-dirty language creation.
Barroom Blitz
Designing Your Tavern for a Tussle
It’s a classic. The bar brawl. And with a little prep-work when world-building, you can make your ale houses, pool halls, and common rooms uncommonly perfect for a proper fracas or a beer-fueled brouhaha.
