Using a Ghost in the Machine as a Player Character

Steal This Idea: Fringe Season 4 “Steal This Idea” is an ongoing series in which an element from the media is examined for use in games. These articles will provide a basic description of the scene in which the element occurs is necessary to introduce the idea for gaming, and hooks to use that idea…

Casting a Player Character in a VIP Role

Adventure stories that fuel roleplaying games often focus around people who can change the world. From the starship captain to the prophesied return of the king, we like to tell and participate in tales of epic proportions. However, this competes with the egalitarian concept of player balance. RPGs generally try to balance player ability according…

On Making a Messiah: The Machinations of Zaim al Tahir

Team Intwischa has another cabin trip coming up. This trip will present the post-penultimate (the way folks in academia say “last”) adventure of “The Krystoran Quest for Purity”–an adventure in a Middle East-type setting featuring characters from a variety of castes. The quest has us searching for many things: personal redemption, a disgraced Sultan, and…

Straightening Out Your Alignment

The recent case of Jerusalem Jax generated some discussion here at the Intwischa office.  Not quite the lengthy philosophical debate that kicked off the White Crown quest, or our ongoing argument about who’s the best Batman.  However, Matt’s response to that question of my greedy character’s alignment really brought things into focus for me:  Alignment…

Character Court: Finding Dr. Kilgore

Faithful readers have encountered the exploits of the ambiguously-aligned Jerusalem Jax and the born-of-luck Ailmar Ploughman, two of the PCs in our recent Pathfinder campaign. Both these tales mentioned the Rev. Dr. Abraham “Doc” Wallace Kilgore, Esq., although I will note that neither got his name right. What you haven’t heard is how “Doc” Kilgore…