Religions. Sigh. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.  They have been such an intergral part of Human existance, that ignoring them is something you do at your own peril.  A lack of religion (even hidden away in the background) can completely destroy the verisimiltude that a world designer desperately works so hard to achieve. So here is brief outline of various kinds of theisms.

Yesterday, new magic appeared upon your world. What happens next.

Magic should be just another form of technology, a means to do things.  In most games, it is nothing more than another weapon. Others utilize it as a tool of everyday life.

The desire for immortality is a common one, given our innate fear of death. We share the same desire for immortality of our characters. Potions of immortality are often fakes, while spells of unending life invariably turn the caster into a vampire, or a liche or some other evil creature.

... some invaders come full-force, and are a previous unknown to the current inhabitants.  Either way, the world will change.

Imagine a blight that killed off the grasses and grains. This is not an unheard off event. Mutant spores, molds, and diseases have killed off a wide variety, even who classes, of plants in the real world. Something that kills off grasses, sounds like science fiction (and the premise has been used in many “end of the world” movies and stories), but it is very applicable to a fantasy world… especially because they are mostly agrarian.

“Mass Produced Books” was one of the most important shift points in history. This one invention profoundly effected all aspects of life, not only locally, but eventually the entire world.

What would my world be if…. This is a question that many GMs should ask. It will help them flesh out their world. This is a series of articles to expand upon the idea.

The weather is something that everyone always notices and talks about, but can’t do anything about.  It is an important part of everyone’s life, yet it seems to be ignored in games. And everything important in a game is best thought of as a character of some sort.

Language is an essential part of any culture. Culture wouldn’t exist without some form of communication, and humans communicate by speaking. But the connection is deeper even than that. The language helps to define the culture which uses it, and is in turn affected by that culture. This dynamic process is what keeps a language “alive”: Latin is a dead language because the culture to which it belonged no longer exists.

But I don’t have that book! Have you heard this before? You want to run this great new game (new setting) but your players are balking partly because they don’t want to buy the game you are so enchanted with “this week”.  There is a solution.

Running a Game, the MoonHunter way. It is pretty bare bones, but it is pretty self explanatory.

Starting a Campaign the MoonHunter way, what more is there to say?

What makes great entertainment for Gamers? Movies. They love action movies, even if their favorite pastime is reading books, writing websites, learning ancient languages, or gaming like madmen. If you pattern your games and campaigns after movies, you are sure to have an entertaining game.

Pieh asked:Its around midnight, you are scheduled to play some RPG at about 10am. All of a sudden you find out the DM is sick (sore throat, ect) and he knows you’re planning a game. The problem is you only have a world map. You don’t want to disappoint everyone by letting them show up with no game to play, what do you do?

Come down from the mountain with your stone tablets. Give forth your wisdom in the format of 10 statements that pertain to gaming.

Excalibur. Stormbringer. Sting. I blame fantasy authors and history professionals that have over simplified things for this preoccupation with swords.

Getting a campaign setting sourcebook published is for many game masters the ultimate dream.

Starships, Laser Beams, Computers, and Aliens do not Science Fiction make!

The research reported on in this essay seeks to understand more about the judgment that there is “the time for war” in the belief that only such understanding will enable us to more effectively constrain the use of warfare.