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... Thieves are a colorful, well-known subculture in my settings, one that merges at the boundaries with mercenaries, sailors, militia and other occupations. Thieves are very much a known quality in the balance of power in cities. Here are some examples of what I mean: Broken Wheel ...It is...

... The Lantern in Darkness Across the Temple Plaza from the steps of the Temple of Three, the Lantern in Darkness is a cellar tavern favored by petitioners, Temple Guards and the fisherfolk who land catches at dawn. The cellar air is always thick with smoke from sputtering fish-oil lamps. The...

... In my Enclave setting, the otherworld - the Farthest - impinges on the real world everywhere: ----------- Tales of the Farthest The Datarii call the place beyond all places "the Farthest." The long-departed Draugh, from whom the Datarii inherited myths, fragments of language and little...

... Well call me an old-fashioned Real Roleplayer, but "non-combat, non-trap, non-magic encounters" describes something like 99% of my game time. The fun in gaming comes from the way in which PCs wander through the social ecosphere, upsetting the applecart, changing balances of knowledge...

... I'll shill for any of the free publishing software - much of which you can run on your own machine if you so desire. Anything that lets you categorize and search is good; that means you can just drop information in any old way, assign categories to your own best advantage, and benefit from...

... Another thread, another chance to tout the benefits of using blogging software for this sort of stuff :) I find it works quite well for my Enclave setting in any case. I put up information as the inspiration strikes, and let the software do all the hard work of ordering, presentation...

... The common folk make frequent, largely ceremonial blood sacrifice to the soil; the blood of thousands waits beneath the ground for the call of sorcery and ritual. Reason Principia Infecta

... Yes, it's a problem; if you stop to think about it, a setting in which immortality is a given would have a radically different society, philosophy, etc to our own. That's why I prefer to run settings in which the afterlife is a whole lot more uncertain: -------- In the Ammand, the Ammane...

... Running a tavern must be so much easier in a mundane world...or maybe it wasn't. Hard to say, what with people being people. (Scroll back up the thread for a description of the Wayward Visitor). An Evening at the Wayward Visitor Blood! I wasn't gone for longer than it took to scare those...

.... Definitely the details - the flavor you'd never think of yourself, what's on that wall over there and why, what sort of curse greets bad pipeweed. Things that really convey the feel of day to day living in a setting. Unless you're RPing a crowd of rowdy demographers and their followers...

... Huh, I went with creatures (the Neth) that make peoples' skin crawl just to look at. I think that's just description emphasis though - people here forget the sort of horror that common folks have for murderers, spiders, snakes, etc ... and a DND goblin is something like all that rolled into...

... One effect of removing overt magic is that it becomes a lot harder to definitively prove someone is/is not a wizard. Or rather it's a lot easier to fake it. e.g. from my Enclave setting: ------ Wizardry of Seafarers and Islefolk Only tales and seafarers' songs remain of the old, potent...

... The Cordage House The Cordage House is a rough tavern in one of the narrow cobbled streets behind the Berths and dockfront. Seafarers' Guildsmen, fisherfolk, dockside toughs, thieves and their hangers-on are the usual crowd. Every battered item of furniture in the Cordage House - up to and...

... Unbroken Casks There's ten spears here, more than enough to make it to the old tombs in high summer; we've half a season to find coin for mules, bows and provisions. We've all killed Neth in winter snow - they won't trouble us in sun and heat. The sage won't come, but we don't need her. A...

... The problem is more that GMs tend to allow players to get away with doing things and providing answers that actually require some specialized knowledge of rope. e.g. how thick to support a man, or a man in armor on that cliff? Is the rope safe or rotten? How about in the rain? How about...

... The Broken Wheel Once a boathouse on the dockside, the Broken Wheel has been adopted by Harand's thugs and other rough types as a safehouse and drinking establishment. The ale is poor and watered, but Harand and his trusted thieves drink only the best grain spirit. Commoners give the...

... You can make a good locksmith/trap-aware fellow out of a wizard with the right picks. Characters with "suboptimal" skill picks representing unusual interests and jobs on the side (fighter with high cooking skill, anyone?) are usually much more interesting to play. Reason Principia Infecta

... Seafarers' Needles The Magi of the Vanished Isles employed enchanted needles to guide their great ships across the Unending Sea, the needles pointing this way and that as the currents shifted. This lesser wizardry was one of many given to the Datarii in trade in older times, and the...

... First for the sheer employment of creativity - the ideas are going to be there anyway, so I should record and make use of them rather than let them go to waste. Very utilitarian, I suppose. Later on, I had this mad urge to get something into a publishable form, since it seemed to be a...

... One would imagine that a poor understanding of great wizardry will produce much the same effects as a poor understanding of engineering or architecture...you can have a hundred souls chant for twenty days to raise a temple from nothing, but not realize that the earth spirits must be kept...