An Abominable Fancy

I've started a D&D campaign for kids and parents. We're running 5e (the kids have the books, and want to use them), but we used tools from Beyond the Wall to generate characters and their home village. Ballyjack is a village that grew up around the stump of the giant beanstalk that was chopped down centuries ago in a dispute with a local cloud giant. It is now mostly known for pig-farming. Significant NPCs Honeywell Ballyjack, Mayor, owner of a large pig farm at the edge of town Dirk the Reeve, oversees the town for the mayor and enforces the mayor’s decrees Butthog, Dirk’s lackey, recently kidnapped and beaten by goblins Filfory Hogsbottom, brewmaster, owner of Hogsbottom Inn and Brew-works Tatter Helga, a hedge witch who lives in town and makes petty charms and potions Jerrod the Bard, lives at the Inn, one of the better-traveled and more knowledgeable citizens of the town Sylvarus Nuthing, a hermit who lives near edge of the Thousand Acre Wood Timmor

I have compiled a campaign document for 21st Century dungeon-delving using Into the Odd. In the spirit of Into the Odd, it's brief—4 pages—but contains everything a player needs to get started. UNDERGROUND (free PDF) I also redrew a map for one of  +Chris McDowall 's adventures from the Oddvent Oddpedium , SUPERCAPACITOR. Not that there was anything wrong with the original map. Just keeping my hands busy.

I love to read and fiddle and hack all sorts of different rule sets. But the game I actually play is Beyond the Wall. It’s pretty great. Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures is set up for quick, low-prep games. You can sit down with your friends and some dice, and soon have rounded, interrelated characters, a detailed-enough base Village, and an adventure knocking down the door. There’s no reason to limit such an appealing system to one-shot sessions. And a big new supplement is here to take the strategies that worked so well in Beyond the Wall and apply them to long-term campaign play: Further Afield. I want to go to there. I’ve been playtesting Further Afield content for several months. Here’s my take: Collaborative Sandbox Design Beyond the Wall makes play out of chargen, generating not only character abilities and history, but also relationships, significant NPCs, and the Village that serves as the base. Further Afield uses this same collaborative approach to

Here's the deal: there is more fun and a better game if the GM doesn’t over-prep their campaign backstory, and lets the world grow out of discovery and interaction with the players. But if you leave things too open, every campaign ends up in the same Tolkein -cum- Gygax fantasy world and people starts saying things like “dwarf cleric” and “elven assassin” and you could not be more bored. Here’s a tool which will, I hope, help tread the line between special snowflake and rote boilerplate. The Campaign Precís. (Link to an Excel file) The idea is that this contains all the information you prepare ahead of time. You can put as much juice and color into your answers as you want. Your answers can imply larger narratives. But you can’t go past the précis. It’s focused on things your players will need to know in order to imagine their characters. These are the weapons they’re familiar with, the authority they need to contend with, and the monsters they’ve heard stories ab

1. Spend a season working as City Guard, solving medieval crimes. 2. Defend a dungeon from outside invasion. 3. Travel the Ptolemaic solar system. 4. Harrow Hell. And I'd like them to 5. Do it while dressed like an upper-crust hunting expedition from the Thirties.