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 …

The Traveler is the last of the character classes I’m going to be posting for the Weird West campaign. At least for now. I’ve decided that a Thief/Rogue class doesn’t make much sense when several of the other classes share that role. Pick-pocketing and Back-Stabbing doesn’t seem to fit the genre very well either.
The Traveler class doesn’t have as many class abilities as some of the other choices, but their general Luckiness which allows them to reroll the dice could make them a good choice for anyone nervous about …