One of the most heated topics in gaming is the arguments about player character death. Should the GM and the Players be antagonistic with each other? Should the results lay like the dice? What about story continuity and the investment in time and effort into the characters. Everyone seems to have strong opinions about this.

The journey of 1000 metaphorical miles begins with putting your hands on keys and typing away.

Shelandra looks the part of a powerful Necromantic Sorceress. She is tall, pale, and coldly beautiful. She has a castle that always seems to have a storm over it. She has pet monsters. She has a small personal army of Skeletons. She scares the peasants and makes the local nobles uneasy. However, if pressed, nobody can actually recall her doing anything really Evil.

There are two “villages” here. They are totally different, yet totally linked.

Avalon is set among the beautiful green rolling hills of the biome. The homes here are right out of a Maxwell Parish or Thomas Kincaide painting, little Tudor styled cottages and a quaint temple.  They cluster around the central plaza, which is really just the intersection of three undertravelled Imperial roads (South to Antioch, East to the Villages, NorthEast of GreatRidge road).

This is the Arth component of the Random Villages thread. These are not so random, but the named ones and with a smattering of real randoms

Everyone has their own take on what roleplaying games truly are. This is mine.

Falconry or Hawking is the sport of hunting with a trained bird of prey, usually a hawk or falcon. It has been practiced by a number of cultures through out the centuries.

History is full of interesting and exotic people who can help to populate your world.  They can help illuminate the range of what people think is possible for your world (or you can consider them PCs run by players not in your game).

Most of the people who “spell components” really don’t know anything about magic. Components are used as tools, symbols to help focus the concentration and associations for the spell caster. Rarely is anything “consumed” in the casting, unless it is a sacrifice or burned.

You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?

Steamery is a type of learning, like Magery and Lettery (Magic of Written words, Scholarly works), akin to Alchemy which combined elements of the two. It is considered a type of magic, the use of the four basic elements to produce “magical” power.

The Kythrythe are a different kind of people. Given their worship of the Insect God Kythrellemen, they are more than just Humans. These people, except for their eyes, will be normal people at first glance. Some might be quite big or small or graceful, but they look like people. At second glance you will notice their small antena peeking out from their hair. Every now and again, you will see one that has been "blessed" by the God and granted "Marks of the God", insect like physical abilities.

Did you, like me, sit in the cinema thinking “Now this is what I want to achieve for my campaign climax”? Did you sit around afterwords trying to figure out how? Well I did, and here it is.

Let’s face it. GM’s need to be organized. When dealing with organization, one should look towards business… as an efficient business is a more profitable business.

Every kind of gamer has the dark potential to disrupt the game if they take their natural interests to extremes. Roleplaying, taken to extremes, can destroy a campaign for a troupe just as easily as any power gamer, rules lawyer, or munchkin.

Every kind of gamer has the dark potential to disrupt the game if they take their natural interests to extremes. The most common and dreaded extreme is the Power Gamer.

A very short piece

A standard roleplaying environment: the tavern. This is another easy one to create in your own home, providing you have a large enough group of roleplaying friends. Let us assume your PC group is no larger than five, and that the rest of your friends can be NPCs. Let us also aim for an exceptionally seedy and unscrupulous city tavern.

Every city and village in this region has a flag tradition. The tradition started here.