Stranger than Fiction: Blue Holes

Imagine a hole so dark that it consumes light–but not in space. Blue holes, unlike their space-time cousins, are really “just” holes–sinkholes, to be precise. I’ve always been fascinated by sinkholes, and sinkholes have apparently been around far, far longer than I’ve been fascinated by them. Once upon a time, much of the earth’s water…

More April Tools: Links for the week of (April 3) minus seven

In honor of the radical concept that blogs can provide useful game-ready content, even on the week of April Fools Day, today’s post is in recognition of other sweet game-ready content published in the last week. In other game-ready news, I’m featuring several Kickstarter projects that I’ve decided to back, and give mad props to…

April Tools Day: Houses of the Paranoid

I’m embarrassed to admit that some of Intwischa’s best hits come from last year’s April Fools coverage of “D&D 4.5.” I hope people know we’re kidding, and at the same time, am setting a personal goal of not doing another April Fools post. Instead, I’m hoping that this year witnesses the inauguration of “April Tools…

Alternatives to Vancian: How to Use Aalinean Magic in Your Game

Last Friday, after a rant on Vancian magic, I described the history and nature of the world of Aalinos, and described the flavor of Aalinean magic. Today, I’ll describe some core principles of Aalinean magic, and then outline how it can be used in FATE, d20 games, or D&D 4e. Core Principles Aalinean magic is…

Alternatives to Vancian: The Magic of Aalinos and the Romantic Magi

We’ve all been in situations where one party alleges that another pronounces a simple word incorrectly such as “milk.” This invariably leads to the other party saying, “Milk.” And the prosecutor says, “No, it’s ‘milk,’” and the defendant says, “Yeah, milk.” This exchange continues for a long time, longer even than it takes a fighter…

From the Archives – 2d4 Tips: Increasing Immersion

Team Intwischa is currently playtesting Zeppelin Armada, an upcoming game from Evil Hat Productions. When the playtest files were sent to me, I dutifully printed the cards on sticky name tag labels, then set about finding an old deck of cards. Only to find out my wife “cleaned” the games closet. So, here I was…

Plotting for Flexibility: How GMs can tell dramatic stories without knowing the plot outline ahead of time

In a post on a recent Dresden Files RPG game, I spoke about varying the intensity of encounters over time to give a dramatic flow to the evening. I mentioned that the shortcoming of this was that I had kind of railroaded my players in order to sequence scenes of appropriate intensity. Since I’ve run…