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A huge (fake) diamond
Sometimes, just for a laugh, an evil GM likes to mess with player’s loot expectations. This is an example of one such nasty trick. Item description You find a large flawless diamond (7,000 GP). Appraisal Check A DC Appraisal Check will reveal that this is a fake made of cut …
My unbeaten head-scratcher
Some time, not so long ago, I released a puzzle. An “easy” puzzle – or so I thought. This puzzle has actual real world prizes if you can crack it. No one has. Building an unbeaten puzzle Conceptually this puzzle is very simply. There are two steps to replicate it …
Power curves and game design
If you plan to create a tabletop (or computer-based) game, you need to know about curves. You need to understand the power curve and how to use it. Don’t worry. It is quite easy to do. Here, is an example of baseline damage per spell level when the dice are …
The Fictional Dictionary now available on Amazon
Long time readers may, due to being total legends, remember that I periodically released newer versions of The Fictional Dictionary of Bad Language. You can find PDFs of older versions if you hunt arround this website. What you will not find is the most up-to-date version with the slightly (extremely) …
Writing about writing challenge
Over in the Thanet Creative Facebook group, I have been taking challenges for topics about writing to research and write about. These challenges have all been posted on the Thanet Creative blog. In no particular order, here is what I have been writing about. Tenses and viewpoints Character and Dialogue …
Kill “very” before it kills your writing
The word “very” is used as an intensive emphasizing superlative. Which is a fancy way to tell you that “very” is the most useless word in a writer’s armoury. Any time you use “very”, as in “very interesting” or “very cross”. it is a sign that you missed an opportunity …
TPK: A crime they did not commit
What happens when your party are accused of a crime they did not commit? What happens when they do not see the accusation coming – say during some well-earned rest in a tavern? This tavern based encounter can be tuned to the party’s level. Use the form below to make …
Loot tables and underestimating coding complexity
Long time readers might be aware of the auto-randomising nature of my TPK encounter and loot posts. What you might not know is that this is powered by a PHP class I wrote that provides a lot of shortcodes. Why shortcodes, I hear you ask. Because blocks were not a …
Midnight Encounter
This TPK prelude is a midnight encounter which should serve as an introduction to other goblin encounters. This is a surprise attack that turns the usually uneventful act of getting a full nights sleep, recovering HP, and gaining back spells into a story driving moment. Where the encounter should …