Worldbuilding: a swashbuckling campaign

I reviewed The Three Musketeers: D’artagnan recently, but I only realized I hadn’t yet reviewed it because I was deep in the process of creating a T3M inspired setting for an RPG. I knew I wanted the intrigue, the swordplay, the ambition, and the thrill of being small players discovering a much larger political game. So I hunted for and pulled out the themes that felt crucial to T3M’s fun, trying to find ways to create a setting that would evoke those while also incorporating the elements my players contributed.

I’ll lay some of it out for you.

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What I Usually Write, or, Responsibilities to One’s Audience

Annex - Rathbone, Basil (Adventures of Robin Hood, The)_02

More or less what I grew up with.

I love adventure fiction.  It’s makes up a large portion of what I write, probably because it’s what I grew up reading in books and creating in role-playing games.  When I don’t write adventures, I still generally use the climactic structure to resolve the primary tensions of the piece.  Unless I feel like experimenting, I don’t usually do the “unfinished story” thing and leave such tension unresolved.  But you probably already know this, so why the hell am I telling you?

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