Cast of Characters
Shen Mao – White Hat Shaolin Monk
Jesse – Young White Hat Traveler, accompanying Shen Mao
Johnathan Williams – White Hat Scholar and Scientist
Buck – Grey Hat Fighting Man, and hired guard for Williams
It’s 9 years since the end of the Civil War and 5 since the valour of the 10th Cavalry Regiment and influx of investment from Chinese Merchants led the government to extend voting rights to all free men. It’s only been a few months since stories of strange animals and missing miners have made their way out …

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry for our Design A Dungeon Room contest! I’ll be distributing the submissions to the team of judges shortly and we can get started delving through your dungeon entries.
I had an incredibly busy week doing freelance work and getting ready to launch some new websites, but I think I’ll be able to get back to more regular posting of content here. It was really nice to hear from people emailing to say they’ve been enjoying the Weird West articles and were looking …

We’ll be kicking off the Weird West game in a few days, and to help my players out I’ve put together a list of random names. Players can roll on the table, pick a name they like, or just use it for inspiration.  I’ll probably make use of these lists as well when someone asks that random NPC walking down the street what their name is.
This table was created in part from the much more extensive list of names for Western characters created for the Aces & Eights game by …

I tend to prefer running RPGs where characters start “at the beginning” and find the tension of vulnerable PCs exploring dangerous environments makes the game a bit more exciting than what you sometimes get when the players know their characters are guaranteed to be able to soak up some punishment in the course of their adventure.
Having said that I’ve decided that sudden and random character death, even if it’s the result of a player missing a clue hinting at danger, isn’t all that much fun. Surprise attacks or situations …

For a few years now I’ve been working on my own RPG system that reflects the things I like about tabletop roleplaying. I had thought to wait and release this as part of a finished game book, but since I’ve already been sharing bits of the rules here on the site, I’m going to go into a bit more detail about how the system works, and talk about some of the design goals and inspirations.
When I first started playing RPGs in the early 80s I was fascinated by the “funny …