Recent content by JonMonster

I'm trying to put together a different sort of character for my next campaign. I have this vision of a gnomish tinker-type character. He's a blundberbuss wielding alchemist. So you've got your typical gnome tinker running around in a leather smock with aviation goggles and fingers black from...

A 128-page advertisement for WotC's Digital Initiative. Or would that be a 128-page advertisement for Paizo's Pathfinder?

Card counting throws an interesting loop-hole into it as well. If you can remember that those other aces have already been burned you know that you've got one auto-win card in your hand. If you can remember how many face cards have already been thrown then you have a better idea of how...

If you do decide to make the sea large enough for wind, give some thought to where the air comes from and where it goes. This being fantasy I suppose you could change things up as much as you want and hand wave the explanation, but you'd get a lot more versimilitude if you pick a fairly...

If they live on the border of monster infested hills they would wind up with the bones of some pretty fearsome beasts. I'd suggest that they incorporate the bones in thier weapons. If you want to demonstrate that these ogres are tougher than average everyday ogres point out to the players that...

If they repeat the same tactics over and over have the bad guys figure out a counter strategy. In my campaign they'd get to use this three or four times before it started to backfire on them. Here are two ways that jump to mind. Have your bad guy doing some scrying and communing to find out...

Sure. That's part of the give and take of the game. I can't tell you how many times I've tossed a throw-away item into a hoard just to add some non-gp value and then had a player latch onto what I considered fluff and turn it into something really cool. While part of the fun of the game for...

You say that like its a bad thing. But I'm not sure this is railroading. Is it railroading if they find a key today and the chest that it opens next week? Hardly. Perhaps I was a bit overdramatic in my suggestion that you tell the players that a lot of the niche magic items they encounter...

Let 'em sell it and then almost immediately hit them with a situation where they'll wish they had a flying combat mount. If your players are anything like I am as a player you'll have to do this three or four times and then explain to them what you are doing. Then explain it again using small...

Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess it is. Huh. That make a lot more sense than my own take on it being a version of the trials of Odysseus. Either way, it's not a perfect fit as The Warriors is more of a journey from point A to point B and I see a revised KotB as more of a playground for...

I've always wanted to run KotB as a modern day adventure in the spirit of the movie, The Warriors. I picture a neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks. A neighborhood of large squalid housing projects, each of which is the turf of a violent gang of thugs. The orcs and hobgoblins become...

Small Press United

Generally speaking, the location of any city built before 1950 was based on real and tangible terrain benefits. New Orleans and Philadelphia were perfect harbor towns., San Francisco is perfectly poised to control all of the Bay Area commerce. Denver (I believe) is positioned as a gateway near...

I seem to recall something about an ocean of blood caused by the grave of a god. You could twist this a bit and make it an inland sea. Perhaps a water titan was slain there and now it is the center of a large desert. The only things that live in the area are too dark and twisted to care much...

The temptation you'll face is to make all of the NPC organizations different crime syndicates. Resist this temptation. Once you have two or three of them fighting for control over the various markets any more just becomes needlessly complicated. Instead create two or three unique...