A road-weary band trudges into an inn, thankful to be out of the rain. They request a meal from the innkeeper, and look forward to food that isn’t dried and salted, cut away from the mold, or something they caught themselves. Sitting gratefully on a surface that’s not either the ground or a saddle, they…
Tag Archives: Ideas
I’ve written before about how I often use reality for inspiration in my games. When I draw maps, I think about the geology and climates involved. When I come up with countries and cultures, my decisions are informed by the politics and societies of the real world. Probably my richest gaming gold mine, however, is…
After listing some non-mechanical ideas for quirky, unique characters I thought it might be fun to create a table that would let the dice decide just how messed up a PC could be. So here we go: a Random Flaw Generator for your new (or existing) character. With the exception of the in-game effects, this…
Whether I’m running a game, or playing a character, one of my goals is always realism. When I say “realism”, I don’t mean that I have to track every ounce of water characters drink in a survival situation. I also don’t mean that I feel the need to run a simulation of an entire economy…
Since you’re reading Intwischa you probably are something like us in that you spend a fair amount of time writing when not rolling the dice. Sometimes the words just seem to flow naturally: background fiction about your characters, an exciting new campaign arc, a prelude or epilogue to a recent adventure, or even details for…
This is the third in a series of posts about creating a game that’s completely inspired by the output of random idea generators. In my first post, I laid out my plan, and gave the output of all the generators. In the second, I started to fill in the details within the framework provided by…
Last week, I introduced my Generated Game idea. Using a selection of our idea generators, I came up with a set of random details to use as the basis for a game. Today, I’m going to take the foundation provided by the generators, and elaborate upon them.
Last week, Fictive over at Between are the Doors gave Bryan’s city generator a great plug. Possibly even more cool, he used the generator to create a city, and then extrapolated from there. He generated a skeleton, and his imagination to create the flesh, winding up with a fleshed-out (pun absolutely intended) city. Not only…
Team Intwischa is currently playtesting Zeppelin Armada, an upcoming game from Evil Hat Productions. When the playtest files were sent to me, I dutifully printed the cards on sticky name tag labels, then set about finding an old deck of cards. Only to find out my wife “cleaned” the games closet. So, here I was…
Stranger Than Fiction is an ongoing series looking at history, mythology, and folk tales. These stories offer a wealth of inspiration for your games. Just about any theme you can think of can be found by looking back at human history: battles, intrigue, treachery, and heroism. It may seem strange that we group these sources…