Well… perhaps empire is a bit grandiose, seeing as how my business only grosses a few hundred dollars a year. But Blue Max Studios (my publishing house) has put over thirty RPG titles out in the last six years, for a multitude of different games. What’s more, I have never lost money publishing RPG and supplements. What’s my secret? I actually can’t lose money as [Read the article]
Click to check out Part 1 here… Animated objects have been around forever with the flying rugs, levitating rope tricks, swords that swing themselves and the Golem portrayed in Jewish mythology. More recently there have been the story of Frankenstein’s monster to various self-animated robots and the castle staff in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” For the most part these have always been portrayed as [Read the article]
Animated objects have been around forever with the flying rugs, levitating rope tricks, swords that swing themselves and the Golem portrayed in Jewish mythology. More recently there have been the story of Frankenstein’s monster to various self-animated robots and the castle staff in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” For the most part these have always been portrayed as rampaging monsters or played off for comedy. [Read the article]
“This ever happen to you, chummer? It’s 4 a.m. and you find yourself in front of the SoyFroYoGo machine (again), choosing between pink-blue and orange-yellow (tan? really?). It must be the Stuffer Shack. Suddenly, the door’s AR chimes, and behind you enters a trio of Halloweeners, armed with all manner of ballistic beat-down. Your finger finds the trigger of the sawed-off shotgun beneath your coat.
Chris Stevens recently asked me if I’d like to write something regularly for his site, the STUFFER SHACK. He didn’t have anything specific in mind, so I gave it some long thought, and this is what I came up with.
Most DMs don’t have many encounters with plant monsters, slimes, molds, and puddings. They’re oftentimes relegated to things that players stumble into like traps, side quests, and areas of heavy overgrowth. With a few simple solutions, they can easily take the spotlight…
It’s no secret… Shadowrun (any edition) has not exactly been a rules-lite game. It’s a meaty cyberpunk-fantasy dystopian setting with a very solid fan-base, and it also comes with a hefty set of rules for a very “simulationist” feel. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing (I have my favorite edition and have played many, many hours of it); I’m saying that that type of [Read the article]
Mapping out your campaign world and key locations can be a hassle, and that battle map that took hours to plot out might never get revisited. Simpler maps work fine, are fast to make and get the creativity and improvisation juices flowing. I’ll show you a few simple methods that will get you going in no time…
![Anticipation in your Games [mature]](https://stuffershack.com/wp-content/uploads/thumb-cache/KB-69-215x300-e191651f285abe739aff396ed2fbe7ec-143x200-75-nocrop.jpg)
Creating a sense of anticipation is a worthwhile technique no matter what genre or artistic vehicle you choose. However, this blog post is about erotic anticipation (I can get away with using the word “erotic” here because I haven’t gotten to the really sleazy parts yet). I’m talking about my own space opera RPG Alpha Blue, specifically. Although, any game can benefit from occasional titillation.
Combat in D&D is an abstract affair. It has been this way since day one. And, probably since day two, there were those who preferred a more concrete, blow-by-blow, experience, and came up with various house rules for making combat more detailed. This isn’t just a figure of speech; the Perrin Conventions, for example, suggested 10-second rounds and rules for knockback and knockdown in 1978.