Tag: TTRPG

Masterplan Library Updates: Traps and Hazards

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I made several updates to the Masterplan libraries. You can find them at my D&D 4e Resources Page. I went through all the libraries and cleaned up all the traps and hazards. Not all libraries have revised copies uploaded. I’m holding off on those until I get around to cleaning up their monster stat blocks.

This clean up process is going far beyond the libraries. Luddite Vic has been cleaning up the application itself and at my request has added some minor support for Gamma World 7e. With that in mind, I also uploaded the library for the Gamma World 7e base rulebook.

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Wizards of the Coast has neither endorsed nor taken part in this process.

Gamma World 7e Character Generation Using AI #GammaWorld #AI #RPG #TTRPG

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I did yet another thing. I created a ruleset for Gamma World 7e character creation in a format suitable for AI to generate characters. Just head to this page for instructions: https://gsllcblog.com/randomcreationofplayercharactersingammaworld7thedition/.

This doesn’t render my Gamma World character generator software useless. That software contains a bunch of GM tools as well, and eventually will be usable for running games via the internet. It certainly doesn’t render my Star Trek character builder software useless. There’s no way publicly-available AI could possibly create a character builder for such a complex system. It took over a week to get the Gamma World prompt to work, and I doubt even it is foolproof.

I’m fully aware of how controversial AI is among gamers, but I’m not going to get into that. It’s an incredible tool, and it represents our future.

Whether you’re on board or not.

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The Night Before Deadwinter, A Christmas-Themed Adventure #DnD #RPG #TTRPG #4e #holiday #Christmas

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A few weeks ago, I had a memory pop into my head. It was a stupid song parody my middle school friends and I used to sing around Christmastime.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse.
The children were hung by their stockings with care,
in hopes that Count Dracula soon would be there.
Mommy was screaming, and daddy was dead,
and Junior was splattered all over the bed.

That led to another memory of a friend, John, who wrote a Christmas-themed adventure during the 4th Edition days involving (Drow) elves working for and evil Santa Claus. (Santa might have been under mind control. I don’t remember.) I also recently observed that Jacob Marley is a Kyton (a.k.a., chain devil). These three memories came together to encourage me to write my own Christmas-themed adventure replete with carnage. While I intended to use the poem, a Visit from St. Nicholas, for the narrative, the fact that there were four encounters in a Christmas Carol made that story the better source material for the adventure. The goal was to write the second encounter in 1st Edition D&D, the third in 4th Edition D&D, and the fourth in Gamma World 7e, which is based on the 4th Edition D&D game engine (I hadn’t decided which to use for the first encounter). This in turn would mirror an adventure three of my friends and I wrote called “A Brief Tour of the History of Dungeons & Dragons” in which each of us wrote two hours of adventure each in a different edition of D&D, but all part of the same story. Each encounter was designed to exemplify the general feel of those editions. That was a fun adventure to write and run.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to write the encounters in the different editions, so I decided to write them in 4th Edition because I have a group playing that edition, which increased the chances I’d be able to run it. Whether not anyone will have time in December to play remains to be seen, but in any event, I’m publishing it for everyone.

If you prefer another edition (or game system), you’ll have to create your own stat blocks and perhaps modify the poetry to reflect the abilities of the enemies. “The poetry,” you ask? All my box text is written in verse, and it was surprising how much the beginning of a Visit from St. Nicholas synchronized with what I was doing. It inspired me to write everything in verse. So, when a player makes a successful knowledge check to determine what their enemies can do, even that information can be delivered in verse. However, moving from one edition to another may force you to change the enemies’ abilities and thus the verse describing them. On the other hand, you could just dispense with the verse and recite what they know without all the rhyming. For all I know that verse will quickly get annoying.

Despite being written for 4th Edition, I didn’t reproduce my Dungeon Tiles maps. Wizards of the Coast owns the copyright to the images on those titles, and while their use is almost certainly fair in this context, WotC is always looking for an excuse to threaten people. So, without the software to make my own maps, I’ve created some terrible ones based on my Dungeon Tiles maps, then told you the sets you could use to recreate them.

Also of note, I acquired the Krampus stat block from Kobold Press as envisioned by the Dread Gazebo.

If you have any doubts as to the legality of what I’m publishing here, or you’re publishing elsewhere, please visit my post here linking to relevant materials.

EDIT: After running the adventure on 12/13, the PCs are being tweaked, but the adventure is getting a major overhaul. In short, this was way too easy. While that doesn’t bother me completely — the primary purpose is to impart a moral lesson — this is D&D, and D&D should be a challenge.

I hope you enjoy the adventure. I had fun writing it. You can download it by clicking here (unless you may be playing it soon with me). The adventure is suitable for 5, 11th-level characters. James generously created pregenerated characters.

  • The Adventure in PDF format
  • The Adventure as a Masterplan Project File. You’ll need to delete the extension “pdf” from the end of “The Night Before Deadwinter.masterplan.pdf,” which will leave the name of the file “The Night Before Deadwinter.masterplan” (to be updated soon with the pre-generated characters).
  • The Masterplan Library with the monster stat blocks. You’ll need to delete the extension “pdf” from the end of “The Night Before Deadwinter.library.pdf,” which will leave the name of the file “The Night Before Deadwinter.library.”
  • Pre-generated characters and tactical advice for their play.

Of the pre-generated characters, Cameron is the most complex, and Argus and Fellick and the easiest to run.

Remember, the maps suck.

Disclaimer: Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this publication. (Okay, jackasses?)

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You Learn Something New Every Day, Even When It’s in Plain Sight #DnD #ADnD #RPG #TTRPG #gaming #football #NFL

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How have I, a rabid (American) football fan, never noticed that these typeface are identical until today, November 24, 2025?

Quentin EF Font

Seriously, I never noticed this until tonight while watching San Francisco beat up on the Carolina Panthers.

There’s something wrong with me.

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Organized Play Ain’t What It Used to Be #DnD #TTRPG #RPG

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A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about my glory days of Dungeons & Dragons (“D&D“) living campaigns. I left D&D in 1982 due to the Satanic Panic and didn’t return until 2005. When I came back, Living Greyhawk was ongoing, and the TTRPG culture surrounding it was great. A little later, Living Forgotten Realms came along, and not only did Wizards of the Coast (“WotC“) up their game, but so did my friends and I, running weekly games at up to six Washington, DC area sites for 250+ RPG Gamers’ Syndicate members, plus weeknight stuff (i.e., D&D Encounters), and for two years, a convention. The entire experience was robust, which I think is a perfect word to describe it. Because I quickly grew tired of 5th Edition D&D, all of that fell off the radar for me.

Fast forward to this past week. A new coworker saw a d20 on my desk and asked if I play D&D. The conversation turned to those glory days, and she asked if that stuff was still going on. I told her I’d look into it. I asked around my old channels and got no reply. I went to the WotC store locator, and long story short, there were no official D&D Adventure League retailers in Northen Virginia. Huzzah Hobbies still exists, but there are no D&D games on their events schedule. Everything I came back to in 2005, and last dealt with in maybe 2019, is gone. The only infrastructure is online through social media sites in which my coworker isn’t interested (e.g., Facebook), and as I mentioned above, reaching out to Facebook groups resulted in no responses. She and her husband are in a single online game via Discord but want to sit around a table and throw dice. When I explained how living campaigns worked, she found that incredibly intriguing.

Something wonderful is missing. The community seems disjointed because more than just the game itself has been relegated to technology. TTRPGs have always been social in nature.

You’re probably prone to think this is a function of my age; however, before I was an attorney, I was a database geek. Not only do I not fear technology; I love it. After all, I’m currently creating digital character builders for various games. Applying technology to game play itself is a great thing. I don’t like playing games without digital character builders (hence, my projects). Moreover, my coworker is probably 25 years younger than I (maybe more) and has been playing D&D for less than a year. She has no nostalgic ties to the early 2000s culture. She simply knows that she wants what I used to take for granted, but it’s no longer available in Northern Virginia. Despite not personally needing this real sense of community, I find that sad. Maybe there’s a timely lesson in this that applies to more than just TTRPGs.

You don’t know what you’re missing.

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Happy 25th Anniversary, Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition #RPG #TTRPG #DnD #3e #1e #ADnD

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I returned to Dungeons and Dragons in 2005 after 23 years away due to the Satanic Panic, then starting a new career, then law school. When I came back, Living Greyhawk was my way in, and before you knew it, I was running gamedays all across the DC area, and even ran a convention, synDCon, for a couple of years. I went to my first Gen Con during those times, and like most of you went to plenty of smaller cons. As much as 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“3e“) turns me off now (which is a lot), I still enjoy thumbing through the books for nostalgia, and of course I’ve played it in somewhat recent history to connect with friends that remained with it. More importantly, whatever my criticism of the crunch, the flavor was as good as any edition.

Damn right.

Nothing demonstrated the disparity between crunch and flavor better than the Truenamer from Tome of Magic.

Prepare to vanish.

Because it’s primary abilities were based on skills (cool idea in theory, Rob Schwalb), the character’s power slowly diminished for three levels before it suddenly got a boost on the fourth that overcame that diminishment. Other players would be frustrated by the truenamer’s impotence. Eventually, that boost wouldn’t be enough, and the only way to keep pace was a single, specific, magic item, the Amulet of the Silver Tongue, that the DM had no choice but to give you (unless the DM hated you). No one else could make use of it. Unfortunately, there were only two versions of that item (i.e., lesser and greater), so after 12th(?) level, the character never could keep pace with the rest of the party’s power curve. Sure, a DM could just create a “superior” version of the Amulet of the Silver Tongue, but considering two more were were necessary to keep the character relevant through 20th level, they should have been included.

But I’ll be damned if that class didn’t have the greatest built-in flavor of any class I’ve played. The class used spooky words of power known as utterances to rearrange reality to suit its needs. At the highest level, there was an utterance, Unname, that could erase a creature from existence. It did so by warping reality and removing the creature’s truename from existence. Neither resurrection nor reincarnation could bring them back. It cost a ton more than that, which was a cost far more than anyone would ever want to pay. Bringing a class like this into other editions should have been a priority. It’s just too damn cool.

Rob Schwalb is one of the best writers in the industry. He had a really cool idea, but the system was convoluted that breaking away from the standard led to disaster. In this case, the disaster was an underpowered class. But enough with this digression.

In preparation for starting a new 1st Edition (“1e“) campaign a few years ago, I replenished my RPG stash, but not just 1e. There were quite a few books I wanted to get back from my 3e days, and with a little help from my friends, I did. These included the Book of Exalted Deeds, Deities & Demigods, the Fiendish Codex: Tyrant of the Nine Hells; and Drow of the Underdark:

Everything else I wanted I already had, but that was still a lot for a game I don’t play. Why? Flavor. I loved what the Fiendish Codexes did. I loved expanding on the Drow even though it has since been done to death. And I became a Dungeons & Dragons fan because I was a mythology nut, not the other way around. Without leaning in so heavily to mythology, I’d have never been interested in it.

Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, 3e will always hold a special place in my heart.

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It’s Finally Here! My FASA Star Trek Character Builder #RPG #TTRPG #StarTrek #FASA

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And only 35 years late!

Okay, I know I promised to get my FASA Star Trek RPG character builder up and running over the weekend, but I ran into a serious snafu, and it needed to be addressed. In any event, it’s up now. You can find it in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/Frylock1968/FASAStarTrekRPG. There’s a long-winded read me file that you really should read before you use it. Because none of you will, here’s a summary:

  1. It’s written using Access 365, which is a limited programming tool.
  2. It’s written using Access 365, which means Apple users are out of luck without some extra steps I don’t understand myself, and even PC users without an MS Office subscription won’t be able to run it. This software requires a preexisting installation of Access on your machine. The good news is that, to my knowledge, Access is included with even the most basic Office subscription.
  3. It’s a beta version, which means I’m relying on your help in uncovering errors.
  4. If something doesn’t work, I’m going to fix it, but if there’s a feature missing, it’s unlikely I’ll add it. I plan to make a web-based version of it, and that will include everything.
  5. More features will be added, but only really simple ones. I’ll save all features for my intended web-based application.
  6. A feature I said I’d like to add to this application is the ability to create Orion PCs. Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen. After reading through it, I learned that such a feature requires four different methods, and arguably five. Ruddies, greens, Green slave women, greys, and half-breeds among the bunch are all handled differently, and those differences are non-negligible. That’ll have to wait for the web application.
  7. One issue I can’t seem to figure out is a data lock issue. When you load a previously saved character and edit it, and it results in Chinese characters saved to some of your fields, don’t save it. Something’s corrupted. Instead, reload the character from your hard drive and start again.
  8. One clean up task on my list is to remove excess options from lists. For example, Klingon culture is Klingon culture. It shouldn’t be divided into separate cultures for Imperials, human-fusions, and romulan-fusions.
  9. There’s no user manual. Instructions appear on the user interface itself in red, italicized text.

Game long and prosper, bitches.

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So Very Close: My FASA Star Trek Character Builder #RPG #TTRPG #StarTrek #FASA

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I’ve previously discussed my FASA Star Trek RPG character builder. I updated you by stating that I had made quite a bit of progress. Well, I was going to publish it after adding the component for creating Romulan player characters but decided to wait until I added the Klingon component. I can easily say that it should be uploaded to GitHub by the end of this weekend (let’s say, Sunday, 7/13).

I’ve already uploaded my first beta version of my Gamma World 7e character builder to GitHub (here). I’ll create a new repository for the Star Trek stuff and publish the link as soon as I do. I plan to add a component for creating Orion player characters and merge other components from my prior work into this character builder. That prior work has the means to instantly create solar systems, NPCs of all races, animals, and balanced starship battle groups. Eventually, I’ll replace all of these with web-based versions when I begin producing character builders for other games. Those other games will be contemporary ones still in print, so those will be subscription-based if I can work out a deal with the publishers.

FYI, the Gamma World and FASA Star Trek applications will always be free.

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Uploaded to GitHub: Gamma World Character Builder #RPG #TTRPG #DnD #4e #GammaWorld

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I finally posted my Gamma World 7e Character Builder to GitHub. This is a beta version, which means I need the community feedback to address any hidden bugs. It’s also nothing more than an MS Access database, which means the user interface isn’t exactly perfect, and it won’t run on Apple products. Still, this is, at this moment, pretty damn useful. You can find it here, or you can download it directly from here.

By all means, prove me wrong, and I’ll revise it.

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More Progress on My FASA Star Trek Character Builder #RPG #TTRPG #StarTrek #FASA

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Six days ago, I posted my progress on my FASA Star Trek RPG character builder. Tonight, I finished the character sheet.

You can download the PDF version here.

The application does not currently support creating Klingon or Romulan PCs for campaigns centered on those empires, and honestly, that’s not a priority. At this point, I have only three things I need to do immediately: Create the capacity to save the character to an external file; create the capacity to advance to the character as it competes adventures, and the customary clean up of bugs and such that are inevitably found during the use of the application. The first two will be relatively quick, and the third one is always an ongoing process.

Oh, and I have to upload it (and the Gamma World 7e character builder) to GitHub so that you can all use them.

I have to spend the next couple weeks focusing on a Response to a Motion for Summary Judgment. After that, I’ll finish this up and start my next project. Or so I hope. The next project will involve a modern game system still in print. I know the author of the game and need to discuss it with him before starting the project. If he gives me the thumbs up, that one will be a bear.

By the time I’m finished, I will be known as the “Character Builder Guy.”

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