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Role Initiative

Home Console RPGs – The First Ten Years (Part 2)

Welcome to Part II of my examination of the first ten years of Home Video Game Console Role Playing Games, or HVGCRPGs. If you missed the first part, click here. We looked at the first five years of HVGCRPGs from ...
Campaign Trail

4 Ways to Use the Law in Your Tabletop RPG ...

The last thing players want on game night is to be forced to read a bunch of boring laws. What if the laws are weird, unfair or just plain evil. What if the guards are corrupt or have taken control ...
ColumnsD&D 4eHistory of the Classes

The Rogue Class, Part Five

In last week’s History of the Rogue, we saw the shift from fragile rogues who should stay clear of combat as much as possible to agile murder-machine rogues. This shift isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I think for most people ...
Role Initiative

Home Console RPGs – The First Ten Years (Part 1)

Up until today, almost all of my studies and articles in roleplaying have focused on Tabletop RPGs such as D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars, and so forth. But I believe that the time has come to branch out a bit further ...
Thoughts & Things

D&D 5e Character Optimization – Ranger

So a lot of the character optimization posts were deleted when Wizards of the Coast’s closed their community page this week. Fortunately, I saved several of the ones that I liked. What follows is the character optimization for the Ranger from ...
Columns

5 Franchises That Should Have an RPG (or Have an ...

This weekend we have a guest post by author, freelance writer and editor Anthony Jennings. ​It’s strange to think that some of the most popular franchises of the last 30 years are still awaiting a publisher to license them and ...
Campaign Trail

Writing a Player’s Guide for Your New Campaign

I thought it might be a good idea to look at creating Player’s Guides on this week’s trip down the Campaign Trail. I’ve written more than a few Player’s Guides for my campaigns over the years from simple bullet lists ...
D&D 5eTribal Knowledge

Tribal Knowledge: Training as Treasure

There are two little paragraphs in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, plus three bullet points, that offer a wonderful amount of room for expansion: Training, p. 231. In the 4th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide II, there are a few pages ...
D&D 5eGM ResourcesThe Game Room

A Writer’s Guide to Roleplaying: The Price of Magic, Part ...

Though I love Pathfinder for its crunchy goodness, the massive and almost incomprehensible number of magic items makes it hard to believe that magic is something rare and mysterious. Settings like Eberron embrace magic-as-technology, but I miss the days of ...
Role Initiative

6 Real World Locations To Inspire Your Roleplaying

Every so often I get captivated by a beautiful piece of fantasy art work and some of my favorites are the ones that just show a massive landscape of epic proportions with usually a few characters or creatures in the ...