Jim Ward (right) gaming with Gary Gygax (left) on Gygax’s front porch. Image from Goodman Games. In the last years of TSR (the company that owned D&D before Wizards of the Coast), every year on April 4th Jim Ward (VP of Creative Services) would tell a story about the day he got fired from TSR on…
Last week, Jim Ward passed away at the age of 72. If you don’t know who he is, spell his name backwards. D-R-A-W-M-I-J As in Drawmij’s instant summons. Jim was a player in Gary Gygax’s game group, and he suggested the concept for that spell, and Gygax wrote it and named it after Jim.[1] Jim…
Info on my Patreon, full of crunchy RPG goodness!
My friend and colleague Kim Mohan passed away today at age 73. I met him when I joined TSR. He was one of the TSR people whose names I recognized[1], so getting to talk to him in person was a cool thing. When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, he and I were part of…
I’m gonna start a Patreon, probably in December 2022. Partly because I want people to be able to find me if Twitter stops working, and partly to incentivize myself to post more articles (I do post them here on this WordPress blog now and then, but I’m the sort of person who gets a lot…
(Trivia & Anecdotes is a series of blog posts about weird and sometimes funny behind-the-scenes facts about various books I worked on, in chronological order of when they were published. If you see a number in brackets like this [1], it’s referring to a footnote at the bottom of this post.) Welcome to part two…
(Trivia & Anecdotes is a series of blog posts about weird and sometimes funny behind-the-scenes facts about various books I worked on, in chronological order of when they were published. If you see a number in brackets like this [1], it’s referring to a footnote at the bottom of this post.) This is the first…
I just got back from Gen Con 2022, and I’ve received a few messages from people who saw me at the show, but decided to not come talk to me because I was running a game or in a conversation with other people. I appreciate everyone who is respectful about approaching others and not wanting…
In 1999, I was the first person outside of the 3e design team who got to write monsters for the new 3e Monster Manual. At the time, the 3e design team was Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams; Jonathan was the lead on the PH, Monte was the lead on the DMG, and Skip…
Back in 2014, I ran a Kickstarter for the Five Moons RPG, which I intended as a simpler take on the 3e/PF rules and focusing more on the “sweet spot” of adventuring (levels 1 to 12 in 3e/PF terms, before the math really starts to break down for high-level characters), flavored with some of my…
My previous T&A article was about Cloak & Dagger, my very last 2e design project, so it makes sense that my next book, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, was my first 3e design project. The plan for 3e D&D was that the core D&D books would “nominally” be set in the World of Greyhawk (WOG), meaning…
At this year’s GameHole Con I ran several sessions of a one-shot Ptolus adventure[1] using the Cypher System. I brought pregenerated characters so we could get right into the gaming. Two different groups had a player ask, “some of these say ‘Dwarf’ or ‘Elf,’ does that mean the other characters are human?” Specifically, three of…
[This was originally a rant on my old website, written back in 2001, I’m just migrating it here. Originally this was called “RPGs Are Too Expensive,” because that’s what people were saying, and my rants were arguing against it. I don’t have more recent data on printing costs, designer costs, and so on, so this…
(Trivia & Anecdotes is a series of blog posts about weird and sometimes funny behind-the-scenes facts about various books I worked on, in chronological order of when they were published. I stopped doing these articles in 2015 when my life went off the rails for a bit, but I’m starting them back up again!)This feels…
(Hey, GMs, please read to the end of the next sentence before deciding to close this tab!) GM intrusions are a game mechanic for the Cypher System game, but you can use them in other RPGs too, and in this article I’ll explain what they are, how they work, and how to use them in…
I wrote two articles on the MCG site about the process of converting Ptolus from 3e to Cypher System and 5e. Those articles focused mostly on the game design aspects–but there was a ton of work that needed to be done to the files before we could even get started on the game rules. Here’s…
(Trivia & Anecdotes is a series of blog posts about weird and sometimes funny behind-the-scenes facts about various books I worked on. I stopped doing them in 2015 when my life went off the rails for a bit, but I’m starting them back up again!) (Lemme point out that this adventure was written in 1999,…
As my contract at Wizards of the Coast draws to a close, I’m looking at other options to take care of the bills, and one of the things I’m considering is having a Patreon. I’ve been wanting to push my creativity in different ways, and having a Patreon-style setup would definitely motivate me to create…
This is the story of how someone on the Magic: The Gathering team told me I built my character wrong. It was around 2001 or 2002. I was a designer on the Forgotten Realms team at Wizards of the Coast. Chris Perkins was one of the senior staff at Dungeon Adventures Magazine. Chris ran a…
You’ve probably heard the song “Closing Time” by the band Semisonic. I saw them open for Barenaked Ladies once, and at that show they also performed a song called “DND,” which is obviously about hanging a “do not disturb” sign on a hotel room door. But they say “DND” a lot, and it sounds like…
Sean K Reynolds 