Recent content by Von Ether

Deepest condolences to his family. Loved his columns here and on Forbes.

I ended up having some generic locations prepped with maps and then a section of generic NPCs to quickly pull out. I could have quickly created a random encounter chart if I needed it. The big thing is that I didn't do it all at once. Just a map here or there over the weeks.

For fiction, I've often heard of the bottom-up also called pantsing. As in, "By the seat of my pants." I imagine some genre authors do a bit of both. World building as top-down and then the plot is pants, or visa versa.

The update now has its own EN World article. https://www.enworld.org/threads/psion-receives-updates-in-new-unearthed-arcana.715563/

I’d also nominate Savage Worlds which has detailed vehicular combat rules to include a turning template.

In Dragonbane, poor sleep is NOT a minor inconvenience. It haunts you until you get some rest.

Watched the unboxing. LOL! Honestly, I like the stat block better than in 5e proper. It's been one of my long standing pet peeves through various editions the challenge rating is buried in the middle. As a GM, I want to see it big and bold so I can make a snap decision as I'm flipping through...

According to some friends of mine who still play AD&D and Battletech, not memorizing dozens of charts is for losers. :ROFLMAO: P.S. Some people get offended if their system mastery is undermined.

Nothing was better than the Hackmaster GM screen. The picture on the front even changed as you flipped more panels to the GM side!

Oh, definitely. And as a reader of 1970/1980s genre mash up fiction, I get the "Well, Middle Age folks would call an alien a demon," vibe. It's just in my head, either commit to the bit or don't. DB pretty much writes up their demons as just demons. Even in Forbidden Lands, the obviously psychic...

The challenge for Hot Springs is for a system agnostic setting, it really goes deep for a whole hierarchy/civilization of elementals. From floating spheres of leadership to mud/steam imps made of mixed elements, only D&D/adjacent has that much elemental variety due to needing monsters and their...

Now that I remember, it also probably doesn't hurt to have Ben write for your game as well, as he did a Forbidden Lands adventure. Hexenwald in The Spire of Quetzel. That is cool and I assume it's because the Nordic Skalds feel DB's OSR vibe as well. I really want to take DB for a spin in a...

He's even covered the play-doh wargame. So while he has a focus, he's also shown things he thinks are super cool but less adjacent. He'll probably get to it one day - and getting a free copy probably wouldn't hurt. :ROFLMAO: