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Any change you make from the real world will have consequences, possibly massive consequences. If you want your world to hold together, you have to figure out those consequences, which is hard to do. Please Note: This article contains spoilers for the Blood in the Stars and Star Wars series...

Character names and where we might get them from are today’s topics. This is important insofar as we don't want to delay the start of the actual adventure because someone is trying to think of a name! Picture courtesy of Pixabay. A book often referred to among the founding works of American...

Players who say they don't run away because they would be caught, sound terribly unenterprising. With magic and magic items, you ought to be able to figure out a way to get away. Of course, would all monsters pursue (in a reasonable world)? No, they're probably scared spitless just like the...

Yes. I give only mission XP, not XP for treasure or for killing. Makes a big difference in player behavior. Subject of a future column.

Yes, running away in a normal battle, after battle has been joined, can result in heavy casualties. I was thinking in terms of running away immediately, no battle. But with magic-equipped adventurers, who are much tougher than ordinary soldiers, running away after battle has been joined is still...

How often does an adventuring party avoid an encounter, even run away from one? This used to be common in earlier versions of the game, but less so now. What changed? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. “Run away, run away!” King Arthur, fleeing the carnivorous rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy...

No one knows for sure. But there seem to have been several causes. Climate, earthquakes, too big a gap between the rich and the non-rich, "Sea Peoples", Phrygians, and so on.

Nations in the ancient near East fought over trade routes. A well-known route was from Assyria (where textiles were produced) to the Hittite Empire (copper, I think). This was at least partly trade by donkey etc. But it was still valuable to those economies. Part of the reason for the Bronze Age...

This is related to world building, and also related to player characters when they choose to invest in or participate in trading activities in your world/campaign. In some rulesets the characters need lots of money, in others they don’t. Trade has the potential to make lots of money. Picture...

I will be writing some columns about that. I once wrote a LONG (4400 words) article called "Fights of Fantasy" (Dragon #79). It will be in one of my reprint books, when I get around to it. Thanks for the reference to How to Host a Dungeon.

When D&D originally came out Gary Gygax more or less taught GMs that they should make huge multilevel dungeons that the adventuring party would enter and loot, killing the monsters who were guarding it. But in my case we were eager to play, so as GM I made what gradually became a big, sprawling...

In April 2020 my column was titled “Is Fighting Evil Passé?” Readers pointed out that it was a misleading title, and that's because the editor changed it [Ed note: Yep!]. My original title was “Is Fighting Evil the Focus of Your Campaign?” This time I want to address what my proposed title...

I meant, an example in an FRPG. Of course there are some in modern times. Including many games that use connectivity maps (esp many space wargames). I recall making a connectivity map for my design Britannia once, it might be on my website somewhere.