Robot Viking

Iron GM’s competitive RPG events are insane fun, and they tour the country offering competition at all the biggest game cons. But what if you want to throw down an Iron GM challenge at your local game store? Or want to test your skills before you step up to the big leagues? Iron GM has [...]

Into the Unknown is a book in a strange place. The edition it’s part of is on it’s way out the door. All the attention is on D&D Next, but 4E books are still coming out. The last one wasn’t so hot. This one is much better by virtue of being less about 4E and [...]

Now that the D&D Next playtest has been released into the wild, there’s no shortage of talk about the future of the new edition. Who better to ask about it than the lead designer himself, Mike Mearls?

D&D Next is still in the testing phase, so we don’t know how the final version will look. One thing seems pretty concrete though — a concept called “bounded accuracy.” What the heck is bounded accuracy? Nothing much. Just the solution to the biggest flaw that’s existed in every edition of D&D so far.

A closed “friends and family” playtest of the new D&D edition has been going on for a few months. Only certain <ahem> select people and sites were allowed to participate. But now they’re throwing the gates open and letting any old riff raff try out the new rules and offer comments and suggestions. Are you [...]

Long time J. Michael Straczynski fans will recognize the title of this article’s quote as from the 3rd season of Babylon 5. A lack of information can cause shadow ships to kill your fleet. And it can also cause an RPG publisher to go under.

If you think you’re one of the best GMs in the world, your next opportunities to test your mettle will be at Phoenix Comicon and at Dexcon 15. The top contender will win a trip to Gen Con to compete in the Iron GM World Championships.

Imagine a book filled with essays on the art and science of designing role-playing games and RPG adventures, all written by some of the biggest names in that eldritch field of endeavor: Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Rob Heinsoo, Michael Stackpole, Ed Greenwood and more. That’s exactly what this book is, and it’s pretty damn awesome.

Well, it doesn’t literally bring them to life. That would make for a pretty terrifying book. There are things in here you absolutely do not want to ever encounter in real life. You’ll want to encounter a lot of them in your Pathfinder campaign, though!

Taking a cue from Gavin’s version of the variable inn and tavern name table, I put together this table with variable name parts. With a few random rolls, you can whip up an interesting character (or NPC) name on the fly.

Some variant rules can turn an RPG system on its head. With wounds and vigor, from Pathfinder’s  Ultimate Combat, hit points are thrown out. Instead, you have essentially a stamina and vitality system.

Instead of rolling a premade inn name on a table, this table lets you roll up a bunch of random elements that can be combined into thousands of different names. Some of them are weird, some fit perfectly, some seem to make no sense at all, but each one invited to create a story around [...]

If you’re near Reading, England and have £119.00 to spare, you can spend a few hours in an actual shopping mall filled with groaning zombies. Fight for your life using airsoft weapons while completing missions and avoiding the walking dead.

Have you ever played a dark hero? Maybe someone who throws dead bodies down stairs to see if they set off any traps? What alignment is he? That might be chaotic, or even evil. What if he squeezes every copper from a mercenary contract? Technically that’s pretty lawful. But then, what if he sets aside [...]