Religion For Roleplaying Games

A crucial early stage in creating a fantasy roleplaying game setting is designing its religions. A religion’s role in the campaign setting work on two levels: the deities themselves and the followers.

The deities themselves may or may not be an active part of the story, depending on your preference.

The followers are often more interesting than the gods themselves because now the mortals enter the picture, and faith, heresy, sin, and redemption become part of your story.

This post is a follow-up on a previous post Writing Fantasy Religions with gaming in mind, and focus on the nuts and bolts of making religious deities, characters, villains and nonplayer characters work in your campaign setting. Continue reading “Religion For Roleplaying Games”

Planar Adventures

Planar adventures are fantasy tropes that build on a rich tradition: religion, myths, medieval sources like Dante’s The Divine Comedy, celestial spheres, and modern sources like Moorcock’s Elric or Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Everything was poured into fantasy roleplaying in the 1970’s and remain part of the genre.

These sources build on the idea that the cosmology is a multiverse, meaning the universe is part of a larger multiverse of multiple planes and parallel universes. Continue reading “Planar Adventures”

Create Fantasy Roleplaying Game Adventures

Creating a fantasy roleplaying game adventure is both easy and daunting, and you need to prepare smart to get the best results. This post is about organizing your ideas for excellent results with minimal effort.

Continue reading “Create Fantasy Roleplaying Game Adventures”

Create Roleplaying Game Characters

Creating a new character for a roleplaying game is one of the highlights of the game. You both get to create a new alter ego – good or bad – for yourself, and enjoy figuring out the character’s relation to the other characters.

This post is not about creating the characters themselves – your system of choice will explain that – this post is about making the characters fit in the story. There are many things to consider, for players and game masters alike, so let’s get started. Continue reading “Create Roleplaying Game Characters”

Creating Roleplaying Game Campaigns

Creating new roleplaying game campaigns requires three decisions: create characters, pick a setting, and pick a story or at least a theme. You can do this in any order you like, or all at once. I’ll discuss one possible way to do this in the following post.

Outlining is the most exciting stage of creating a roleplaying game campaign for me. The group collectively picks a theme and hook. I create a possible ending for the campaign, then bullet-point three acts, where most of the first act focuses on resolving semi-random character background. The middle part should be dark and disastrous, and usually, fall into place quickly last.

Continue reading “Creating Roleplaying Game Campaigns”

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