Blogroll – Jeremiah Robert McCoy

Local Loresheets

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on December 16, 2024

How do you tie a character into the deep lore of your game world? A lot of games have very deep lore. Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Shadowrun, 7th Sea, and Runequest are all famous examples of worlds with lore so deep it practically has encyclopedias of it. There are more than a few examples. World of Darkness has quite a lot, as well. It has some contradictory lore and some best forgotten. I am looking at you Romani blood purity stats and most of Kindred of the East, but it still has a great deal even without those. It is too much to absorb easily.
One of the things I particularly liked in the 5th edition of Vampire is the use of loresheets to give players a chance to connect to that lore without having them know any of it before they start. You can be tied to movers and shakers in vampire politics, or maybe be part of the Week of Nightmares, but you don’t have to read all the fan wiki entries to get the benefit.

Side Note: Yes, I know Legends of the Wulin did it first, though pretty differently from the one in V5, and are really not part of this conversation.

New Backgrounds

New Backgrounds

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on December 9, 2024

The new 2024 players’ handbook introduced a new way of looking at Dungeons and Dragons backgrounds. They are more important now. They provide a feat, equipment, and an attribute bonus that was previously attached to race/species.

While I think removing attribute bonuses from species and moving away from bio-essentialism is a good improvement, I think attaching it to the background was a mistake. It would have been better to follow Tasha’s changes and let it just be a floating element.

School of Vitomany Update

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on December 1, 2024

Since the 2024 rules have been released, I will be revisiting some of the stuff I have written for D&D. This is the updated version of the Vitomancer. It didn’t need much tweaking. I added a little to the 14th level feature making it a little stronger and adjusted the 3rd level feature Necromancy Savant to match the 2024 PHB setup.

My intent here is to create a wizard healer school that is viable and has a flavor that works. I know there are some who will object to the whole idea. I can’t really convince you if you are strictly against the idea altogether. I can only say that this proscription against wizards who heal is strictly a D&D thing. Plenty of games, and folklore traditions, show less of a separation on this point.

I did try to make the thematics of this work for me. The Vitomancer is a close cousin of the Necromancer but inverts that connection to give us the healing wizard.

Broken States: a Cyberpunk Future

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on July 6, 2022

I am doing the RPG Writer’s Workshop again this month. This is an attempt to break my writer’s block, among other things. This time around I decided to write an adventure for a system other than D&D for a change. This time I am working on a cyberpunk genre adventure for Modern AGE by Green Ronin. It is a system I wish I had more time to play.

As part of this adventure, I decided I needed at least a rough background. I am not writing this for an existing world, so I figured I should have some world information to put in the adventure. Just enough to have a starting point. I will also write up what the tech level is, as well, but I am trying to not overwhelm myself.

So here is the future history I produced.

4 Magic Bows

4 Magic Bows

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on November 4, 2021

There is always a need for more magic weapons in D&D. Simply having a +1 just doesn’t feel that satisfying a lot of the time. I like items that are little more varied than simply doing more damage.

This time I am going for bows. There is something compelling about the archer character and there a lot of ways to build them in 5E. Any of these would be great for a ranger, a fighter, a rogue, even some monks. Hopefully, some of these will prove useful for additions to your games.

Making Encounter Tables

Making Encounter Tables

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on July 18, 2021

Making an Encounter table is an interesting exercise. In some ways it is a statement of the tone of your game. Do you have a half dozen silly encounters? Do you have 8 generic wilderness encounters with beasts? Do you have combat encounters? Role playing? Chilling atmospheric encounters? Each says something about the style of game you are running.

Whatever the case, you are generating a list of events you wouldn’t mind showing in your game. You are generating a list of things that fit enough that you don’t care which one shows up. Even having an enormous table says something.

But some folks don’t know where to start. So here is a quick guide on how to make one.

Note: I used this technique to design an encounter table for my adventure, The Lost Library of Meldorin.

Paladin’s World

Paladin’s World

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on June 18, 2021

I recently started playing a game called Sentinel Comics RPG run by my friend Jared Rascher. It is a newer superhero system with an interesting structure to its combat, a deep amount of lore, and a somewhat randomized character creation which calls back to the feel of classic Marvel Superheroes RPG without being so random as to make the characters silly. The lore of the game is also based on the board game called Sentinels of the Multiverse. I made a character called Paladin, because his abilities were supernatural and began to resemble paladins from D&D. I created a lose history for the character, but I realized after playing him I needed to do something more.

Cyberpunk: The genre and the games.

Cyberpunk: The genre and the games.

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on May 26, 2021

Cyberpunk 2077 has been the source of much conversation. It was long-awaited and there much hype preceding its release. The launch didn’t go…swimmingly. There were some well-published bugs, particularly in older consoles. Beyond that people complained about it not being “punk” enough because you can work for the police, or the problems of the social media managers being transphobic, or the fact that they made the developer do mandatory overtime as part of pre-launch crunch, or…. let’s just say it was a rocky start.

I actually played the game via Stadia and had fewer technical problems as a result. Actually playing through the game, I got to appreciate the things that didn’t go wrong with it. I got to experience the tremendously well written story. With lots of heart to it. It is about who you are when you are losing anyway, but you chose how you lose.

It started me thinking about the genre and the games that operate within it. It made me want to talk about those things. I will mainly focus on the TTRPG’s because that is my area of expertise.

Something in the future wants you dead

Something in the future wants you dead

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on May 18, 2021

I think the Terminator series would make a brilliant D&D adventure idea for a D&D Plot.

Weapons

Weapons

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on February 10, 2021

Argath bent his hulking body over the bench. His thick fingers were bent to the work of shaping the small pins down into place. They were to hold the ruby in its mount. The dull red gem looked like a large drop of blood frozen in motion. It contrasted with the gold wirework on the pommel.

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