As the Variant Roles Dragon Heist "mega campaign" has ended, I've started to think about what I want to do next. While we're still planning for Dungeon of the Mad Mage, that doesn't stop me from thinking about a homebrew dungeon-focused campaign. Principles In the meantime, planning has begun! I don't know yet if this will consist … Continue reading Principles and ideas for a dungeon campaign
I started playing Dwarf Fortress again recently, partly inspired by the videos produced by Kruggsmash. He does a wonderful job of extracting the story from a fortress, illustrating it in a cartoonish way, and pulling out a narrative. But a lot of that narrative comes from the game systems, influenced by player actions, through procedural generation. That … Continue reading Coming back to procedural generation in D&D
In parallel with my campaigns based on official adventures from Wizards of the Coast, I also spent most of the year running a campaign for friends based loosely on the world of Dwarf Fortress. (This was the same group of friends in the Weyward Scions campaign, plus one addition.) This post consists of two parts: … Continue reading Dwarves & Dweomers Campaign Review
The previous article in this series discussed my reasons for generating a new campaign setting. This time I will discuss the maps that Dwarf Fortress generates for a new world. DF allows users to export the world maps and history in Legends mode. This creates great depth via procedural generation without requiring the world builder to design everything by hand. (I … Continue reading Using Dwarf Fortress as a map generator
D&D Fifth Edition appears to use the Forgotten Realms as the default setting. For me, however, FR just comes with too much baggage: an intricate history, many novels of existing lore, and the sense that this world already has its heroes. Players will tend to see the world through their own lenses after playing through … Continue reading Generating a campaign setting: Motivation
I've noted here before that I have played MMORPGs since at least 2005. Actually, though, my history with computer games goes back about 30 years before that, including online gaming most of that time. BBS door games like Legend of the Red Dragon and Solar Realms Elite occupied huge amounts of my time when I was … Continue reading Gaming and operating systems
Technoskald's Forge 