So, do you read Kobold Quarterly? It’s pretty great and has stuff from Pathfinder, 4e and AGE. Also, non-crunch stuff. Still not sure? Well, it’s your lucky day. Download Kobold Quartlery #14 for FREE up until February 14th. Some info about the issue:

Issue #14 was the extra-big Gen Con issue, and in its pages you’ll find:

• Exclusive Pathfinder content, including two articles by Paizo staff
• The Ecology of the Tengu—in Golarion and in Zobeck
• An interview with 4th Edition D&D lead designer Rob Heinsoo
• Treasure Trove articles with phat loots to improve your game and bring smiles to players
• Paladins, secret languages, and aasimar PCs
• Secrets of Game Design by Monte Cook
• So much more that it makes us dizzy to even think about it!

All you need to do to get your PDF copy is go to the KQ Store, add issue #14 to your cart, and enter the coupon code KoboldWelcome at checkout. Enjoy!

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• IAYC: Fantasy Newspaper (Free Download)
• ZILLA! – Free ‘Classic Character Pack’
• Link Hoard: Free RPG Round-up
• Free Playtest RPGs
• Fantasy Playing Cards for Your Game

It was my birthday recently and my awesome wife made me some NPC Description Tables! <3

They’re some handy tables for generating various physical characteristics and behavioural traits of NPCs on the fly or during prep all contained on a single page. Choose results or roll once for each column. She didn’t design it to make coherent NPCs by reading across the rows, but I think you can get some pretty interesting ones by doing that too.

When rolling, for the large table roll a d6 twice and check the results in order, or roll two different coloured d6s. For the d8 tables, if you happen to have only a d6 handy you can just use that, as the results that a 7 or 8 would bring can easily be ignored as they are the least common.

Also, some results have a few choices, sometimes as opposites or alternatives (hairy/hairless) and sometimes to just give a little more choice (bandaged/stitched). When you get a result like this, choose whichever you like best or whatever seems most appropriate.

If you don’t like a result or it doesn’t make sense with something else you’ve already rolled, simply re-roll or choose something else.

I hope you enjoy this gift as much as I have.

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• IAYC: Fantasy Newspaper (Free Download)
• Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About
• GMing Cues: Impressions, Aims & Pitfalls
• NPC Motivations Table
• ZILLA! – Free ‘Classic Character Pack’

It’s done!

Life has run away on me this year, but I have finally managed to complete the fantasy newspaper I promised as my contribution for I Am Your Champion. I had some interest, but few donations, and that’s fine. I had fun making it and I hope those who donated to my charity are happy with the result. This isn’t just for them though, it’s a free download for everyone. I’ve made a parchment version and a print-friendly version. I hope you enjoy this and get some use out of it

Game masters can the newspaper for hooks, NPCs, adventures and worldbuilding or even just as a source of random rumours, information and goings-on. I think the best use for it, though, is for GMs to read it, think about it, then next time the PCs are in a tavern tell them “Someone’s left a newsletter on your table. It looks like this…” and then just give them the handout. I love doing this sort of thing in game and I hope you’ll enjoy my attempt at a fantasy newspaper, inspired by a thoughtful present my wife and friends made for me a few years ago.

If I get enough interest I might just make another issue. Enjoy

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• ZILLA! – Free ‘Classic Character Pack’
• I Am Your Champion: Act for Peace
• Campaign Setting: Hang Ups
• Demonsea: Ships of the Demonsea
• Fever Dreams – Entertainment Built on Pyres

It’s Free RPG Day again. Last year I released my first roleplaying game on Free RPG Day. It’s called ZILLA! and is a game of destruction, mayhem and love. You’re a giant zilla on a city-smashing rampage. Zillas are powerful and hard to kill, but they are prone to becoming enamoured with humans. Will you fight another zilla, escape the city to a better place, smash the city to the ground, or even… find love?

This year, I have released a free character pack with three pre-generated zillas for you and your friends to take to town. This is the ‘Classic Character Pack’ and it isn’t hard to see the inspiration behind Thoron, the giant lizard with atomic breath, Leoptra, an enormous psychic moth, and Kapparo, a gargantuan magma-infused tortoise.

Download the classic character pack for free. If you don’t yet have the game itself, download ZILLA! for free too.

Happy Free RPG Day, everyone!

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• Kobold Quarterly #14 for Free!
• NPC Description Tables

In the spirit of Free RPG Day, here is a list of some great RPGs that have been free all along. Some I’ve played, some I haven’t, but they are all great games. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Emergency services are inundated with calls that they terminate because they appear to be pranks or non-emergencies. Stuff about aliens and werewolves. That kind of thing.

That’s where Hang Ups comes in.

They’re an independent (and not technically legal) group that intercepts these abandoned calls and sifts through them for seeds of truth. Armed with their knowledge of the paranormal, they respond to potentially legitimate calls to help those that the authorities ignore.

When I present this to my players, I’ll explain most of this as we go. But to get them excited for, it I made this one-page PDF flyer. Feel free to use it with your own group.

In the Demonsea campaign I’m running for my wife, we’re using Savage Worlds. It’s a great system, and one of my new favourites. I like the Hindrances and Edges, but we found that choice there can sometimes be a bit limited and the ones my wife had picked for her character ended up not being very relevant. I know we could have changed them or made up our own, but that didn’t really excite us.

Instead, when we went to advance her character again we decided to try ditching Hindrances and Edges and incorporating Aspects, from FATE-based games like Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files RPG. Now, I know this may be blasphemy to some, but we wanted to give it a shot. I’ve read a lot about SotC and DRPG, but haven’t yet had the chance to run either, so this was also like a test-run for using Aspects.

If you’d like an offline copy of these house rules, you can download a PDF here.

• 2121 words left. Tomorrow, I win! #nanowrimo
• I have few words to go but a fair chunk of story left. I feel like this is one I actually care enough about to keep writing after #nanowrimo
• VICTORY!!! I wrote 51,145 words in 30 days. I am a #NaNoWriMo WINNER!
• I’ve participated in #NaNoWriMo for 4 years, enjoyed it and won each time. If you didn’t join us this year I highly recommend you do in 2011
• I’ve neglected my website this month. Now, I want to focus more on it and try to post more regularly. I’ll have some new content up soon.
• Making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS! Jonathan Coulton + Portal + #Nanowrimo = http://bit.ly/hQM8zM
• December’s Fiasco playset is fantasy-based! Play as dragon-slaying adventurers who “saved” a town. So much awesomeness! http://bit.ly/fLctIj
• Order of the Stick is exceptionally good right now. Great story arc.
• Donkey Kong Country Returns is a nostalgic fun-fest. It’s challenging and I’m having lots of fun. Great music, graphics and level design too

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• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-28
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• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-10-31
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-09-12

• Ben Lehman is experimenting with a “Pay-What-You-Like” model for Polaris and Bliss Stage http://bit.ly/hgmNg #rpg
• The Walking Dead just keeps getting better and better. It is very inspiring for roleplaying games. Apocalypse World maybe? #rpg
• 40,024! Caught up! Finally some exciting stuff is happening. I think this scene should’ve started 30,000 words ago, but oh well #nanowrimo
• RT @fredhicks “Bandwidth II http://www.deadlyfredly.com/2010/11/bandwidth-ii/” Awesome superheroes idea: radio broadcast super powers #rpg
• Ever wanted to make a Fiasco playset? Here are the fonts to make yours match the published game: http://bit.ly/dQwrgn #rpg

I think we’ve stumbled across RPG rules before that we really wished worked differently. And everyone loves free stuff, right? Playtesting RPGs is a great way to get a nearly complete game or supplement for free. It also allows you to provide feedback directly to the creators of the game so that they can consider the problems you find.

That’s the great thing too, it’s not just typos and calculation errors you can report on, it’s how powers and abilities work, how a certain rule plays out in game, how things are balanced, and so on. Right now there are some great free playtest PDFs you can get your hands on, letting you try things out early and help shape the way the final products work. Let’s take a look.