The Seven-Sided Die

Few fantasy settings detail what the religious faithful actually believe. Here are three ways you can add depth to gods and their followers’ faiths in your game world.

In a recent comment, Jonathan linked to his collection of articles on Gygaxian Naturalism. Reading ravyn’s Ecology for World-Builders from that list, I suddenly understood why the first edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide has so many rolls for random encounters in wilderness forest: prey animals.
I always thought that the number of encounter checks listed for [...]

I’m not really starting a series, just echoing the title of J.D. Wiker’s post Sacrificing Sacred Cows: Random Encounters. I really like random encounters and the events they precipitate, and I have to take issue with the points against that he makes.
“Random” means the GM literally doesn’t have any control over what happens from encounter [...]

I love little details in settings that add to verisimilitude. The problem with this predeliction is that when I do my own world building I often let these details bog me down. It’s hard to tell what sort of thing is going to add enough to the setting (and play) that it will be a [...]

Since I got so much interest in and suggestions for the area I’m working on with the last WIP map, I thought y’all might like this: Cities and towns of the Iron Valley.
I’ve only written anything for Cantos yet, but I’ll be adding more as inspiration strikes. There is some undercity to Cantos that I [...]

I’m almost finished the map I was working on using this tutorial. It still needs a compass rose, title banner, nice border, and other finishing touches like that, but the natural and societal geography is done. For some reason, when I export to PNG it gets a shade darker than what I see in the [...]

I’m no artist, but I’ve always wanted to make nice-looking maps on the computer. That’s why this mapping tutorial for the GIMP is awesome. Using it I’ve managed to take this:

And turn it into this:

Rheall should recognise it, since it’s the land I used for the solo game I ran for her recently. (Actual play [...]