Last week left the Blarg! feeling nervous about the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons 5e game planned by the gaming group. Our game, a straightforward march through the jungle to retrieve an artifact, nonetheless kicked ass from beginning to end. Here's a few reasons why: 1.) Backgrounds Character gen in 5e goes very quickly indeed, producing PCs that are balanced and maybe even too similar. Our pre-gen characters, though, came complete with "backgrounds" already added--quirks

The Blockbuster Fantasy Hit of 1989! The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon. Published by Baen Books. During my adolescence, I read and re-read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy multiple times until I could recite dialogue, knew the history and geography of Middle-Earth like it was my own neighborhood, and even learned to write dwarfish and elfish runes. One thing I never did? I never wondered about the citizens and subjects of the kingdoms that the heroes were defe

I want to share with you my favorite map of all time. It's a map of the Fuqua School of Business (no, really, that's its name, pronounced FOO-kwa) at Duke University, that I obtained as a student in the late 80s. I worked in the IT department at Fuqua, backing up hard drives on to large tape cassettes and had to visit every office in the place. Check out the notes on it. Things like "Gas Impermeable Force Screen" and "Huntsman Lift Tube" and "Used As the Knowles Institute".

I’ve started coming up with game ideas for my role-playing group. The following conversation is adapted from the notes I write as I think through the possibilities. Annotations are in italics. Jon, Brian, Doug—warning, spoilers ahead! Everyone else--geek alert! Jeb: I want a new campaign for my group. What would be cool to run? Ordinarily, I would involve my players in this discussion, so that it would be something they would find cool to play—but I can’t fit everyone in