StorminDaCastle.com

Written by Jeremy Morgan, tabletop games editor, gamer, and software developer.
About | Planescape4E

Dark Pantheon - More Thoughts

09 July 2019
More Thoughts about the Dark Pantheon

NPCs for Loga et Dus

13 May 2019
Four NPCs for Loga et Dus

Barbie the Astronaut - What My Mom Taught Me about Feminism

16 September 2015
Yesterday, I mentioned my mom. I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell an anecdote about my first positive exposure to feminism. My…

Word Overload - "Permission"

12 March 2015
In case you didn’t know, I like words. A lot. The other day I was thinking specifically about the word permission. It’s a word that pulls…

The Quick and the Dead FAE, Part 2

21 November 2014
First off, huge thanks to Quinn Murphy for giving me the next round of changes to my FAE hack for the Quick and the Dead. His input directly…

D&D 5E PHB - Through Chapter 2

19 August 2014
I told myself I wouldn’t purchase D&D 5E. I did. The price tag was a bit steep, and I wanted to believe I was done with D&D. It brought me…

On Max Temkin

14 July 2014
Content warning: This post deals with the topic of sexual violence. The gaming community is one that I’m usually proud to be a part of. It…

Game Chef 2014 - Pilgrimage

17 May 2014
I decided to submit to GameChef this year. It’s the first year I’ve done it. My entry, Pilgrimage is below the break. Pilgrimage Pilgrimage…

Semantics

22 January 2014
Today, there was almost a scuffle on the internet. Surprise, surprise. This one in particular revolved around the word inclusive. This word…

2013 Recap

31 December 2013
Recap posts appear to be a thing, so I thought I’d take the opportunity and be one of the sheeple. I am not afflicted with nostalgia; in…

Metatopia 2013 Recap

04 November 2013
Metatopia was awesome and amazing. I met so many wonderful people, and I didn’t have a negative experience all weekend. This is only the…

13th Age Apostolic Icons - The Zealot, The Skeptic

29 September 2013
This represents the third couplet of Apostolic Icons for 13th Age. As I progress through these, I find that some of the apostles are hard to…

Apostolic Icons for 13th Age

19 September 2013
Several weeks ago, an idea came to me in church (I go to church; I don’t think I’ve mentioned that here before). There are 13 apostles (1…

The Witcher 2, My Thoughts

20 June 2013
I finally caved in and downloaded the Witcher 2 this weekend and started playing. I had struggled with the idea of purchasing it ever since…

BHM - The Ahshan

12 February 2013
Over at Thoughtcrime Games, they’re taking Black History Month and blogging topics specific to that. As part of this, Quinn issued this call…

Clans in Night's Black Masquerade

23 October 2012
I started working on fleshing out the Clans for Night’s Black Masquerade tonight, and a strange thing occurred. I had a well-laid out path…

Confession

22 September 2012
I have a game design confession to make. An appropriate term for my problem fails me, so I’ll have to use more words than I’d like. I’m bad…

Initial Thoughts on Planescape Icons

17 August 2012
Rob Donoghue has been doing a very thought-provoking series of articles on Icons in 13th Age. In case you didn’t know, Rob’s one of the best…

Crucible of the Odds 2

22 May 2012
So this weekend marks the second Crucible of the Odds run! A mostly brave group of crusaders shall enter the ziggurat and face certain death…

Initial Thoughts on a Fourthcore Dungeon

22 April 2012
Disclaimer: This post will contain my thought process on a fourthcore dungeon I’ve been kicking around for a while. It might be a bit…

Charity of the Odds

04 March 2012
I had the opportunity to try my hand at some Fourthcore D&D. What is Fourthcore? It’s an amazingly fun way to play, that’s what. I’ve never…

Editor's Voice - Lego Heroica

19 December 2011
Today, I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m going to practice my editor’s voice. I had the opportunity this weekend to play…

The DM's Role as Apologist

01 November 2011
So I wrote earlier about using literary theme in your role as a DM. Today I want to expand on that topic and cover a topic that a lot of…

The DM and Literary Theme

05 October 2011
I’ve branched out a bit lately with my blog reading, and I discovered Chuck Wendig, @ChuckWendig on Twitter, over at his blog Terrible Minds…

Planescape 4E - The Gray Languor

24 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest Today is part 2 of our planar ecology for the Gray Waste. Last time I talked about the overall planar effect of the…

Planescape 4E - The Aasimar

13 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest Today, I have the write-up for the third and final race that we need to deal with for now, the Aasimar. Technically…

Planescape 4E - On Alignment

29 August 2011
So last post, I introduced a framework to help me with my thoughts moving forward. Disclaimer #1: I realized after beginning to dig through…

Question about Theogony

11 January 2011
I like to consider myself fairly knowledgeable when it comes to mythology. I always find the part about the universe’s creation (cosmology…

December 2010 Update

19 December 2010
Okay, I’ve been completely silent for quite some time here. I could make excuses, but I won’t. I hope to add more content here in the coming…

One of the Reasons I Play D&D

08 July 2010
One of the reasons I play D&D is that some of the moments that can occur are truly epic and worthy of any blockbuster action flick. Last…

The Ardent

24 June 2010
I went to session 3 of D&D Encounters last night, and here’s my promised post about the Ardent player class. The Ardent fulfills the leader…

Let's Talk about the ENnies

04 June 2019
My Thoughts on the 2020 ENnies Judge Nomination Form

2019 Return

10 May 2019
Looks like I'm blogging again…

Death, Emotions, and Miscellany

14 September 2015
I’ve got a dear friend, John Adamus, and one of his favorite sayings is “put your guts on the page.” I like to push back on this saying…

Identity

03 February 2015
For background, read this post first. That article went up yesterday, and it’s prompted some discussions online. Some positive, some less so…

Quick and Dirty - The Quick and the Dead FAE

15 November 2014
Quinn Murphy’s been doing a take on Sleepy Hollow FAE, and it inspired me to do this. It’s quick, it’s dirty, and it’s not something I’ve…

Icons of Planescape - The Lady of Pain

13 August 2014
Two things led to this post. The first is that I’ve been thinking about Planescape again. The second is this post from Quinn Murphy…

Loading the Game With Relationships

31 May 2014
Our question today comes from Josh Jordan, an all-around great guy with a podcast, an indie publishing company, and who knows what else. He…

Feedback Hurts Sometimes

05 May 2014
Today I want to talk about feedback. You know, when you’re designing something and you get other people to play it and tell you what they…

Doing What You Love

16 January 2014
There’s an article that bubbled up on my twitter feed several times today. I didn’t bother to read it, so I don’t have a link. I’m sure you…

A Quick Rant about Stories and Emotions

24 November 2013
I need to let my editor voice rant for a bit. I heard from someone I care deeply about that someone told them not to read anything that…

My Metatopia 2013 Schedule

28 October 2013
This is the obligatory convention schedule post. I’ll be at Metatopia this year (2013)! I’m not playtesting any of my own stuff this year; I…

13th Age Icons for Planescape Redux

27 September 2013
A while back, I tried to port Planescape into 13th Age by creating some Icons. A large part of defining a setting in 13th Age is wrapped up…

Why I Edit

29 August 2013
It occurred to me that I haven’t discussed editing much here. That ends now. I’ve discovered within the last year that editing is something…

Revisiting Firefly - Belief in the 'Verse

19 April 2013
Dev Purkayastha recently concluded a series of posts that revisit the Firefly/Serenity universe. There’s some great stuff there that takes…

Marco Polo Sucks Compared to Ibn Battuta

08 February 2013
Ever heard of Ibn Battuta? No? It sounds like your history class was as eurocentric (read: lacking) as mine. This man was amazing; his…

A Cool Minute with John Adamus

19 October 2012
This is the first of what might become a new feature here at Stormin’ Da Castle! I email questions to various RPG luminaries and pester them…

Night's Black Masquerade

12 September 2012
Continuing with my Dragon*Con 2012 posts, today’s topic is an interesting one. I got to play in a Vampire: the Masquerade (V:tM) game one of…

Quickfire Update

07 August 2012
I moved the blog and some of you might be wondering why I haven’t posted anything since doing that. The reason is that I’ve moved physically…

Intelligence as an Attribute

17 May 2012
I had a thought the other day. It might be because I’m now getting to play in @MilwaukeeJoe’s Revenge of the Iron Lich play-by-blog game…

Night's Black Agents

01 April 2012
Super-spies vs. vampires? Yes, please! Night’s Black Agents (NBA) from Pelgrane Press takes this concept and cranks it to eleven. Kenneth…

Link Roundup - dndnext

10 January 2012
This post is mostly for me, but I thought others might benefit from it as well. This contains links to all of the articles that I’ve found…

Planscape 4E - The Planes, Fate, and Cortex+

08 December 2011
It finally happened. I screwed up. I mistakenly talked about Aspects in Cortex+. The problem with that is Aspects are a thing in FATE, not…

Planescape 4E - On Chaos

27 October 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest I know I said that the second part of Limbo was going to be next, but I’ve hit a bit of a snag with it. I was…

Planescape 4E - Wrapping Up in the Gray Waste

04 October 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest So today is part 4 of the planar ecology for the Gray Waste. This will be the last post for the Gray Waste, and…

Planescape 4E - Don't Waste the Gray Waste

20 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest Here, I talked about a framework for the planes. Today, we’re going to put some meat on those bones with regards to…

Planescape 4E - The Bariaur

08 September 2011
Editor’s Note: The original post of this talked about a gender binary. That’s been removed in this version. I also removed the part about…

Bringing Planescape Back to the Planes

26 August 2011
After reading NewbieDM’s post here on the Planescape Campaign Setting, I managed to pick up my own copy, complete with all the maps…

Initial Thoughts on L5R Character Creation

10 January 2011
I bought my brothers-in-law the fourth edition Legend of the Five Rings sourcebook in PDF form from DriveThruRPG for Christmas. They’re…

Aldurukh Keep - Session I

22 August 2010
I kicked off a new campaign tonight. I had been talking about running a campaign for my father-in-law and two brothers-in-law, and fate (in…

The Storm Is Coming for Blizzard

06 July 2010
Edit: Check my updated post here. Edit: This post should help illuminate some of you who are sitting on the fence. So, Blizzard announced…

Random Thoughts

23 June 2010
I know I’m early with my post, but this one is kind of an intermission. Ok, so I’m checking Facebook and I run across a link to this. I…

Dark Pantheon - Initial Thoughts

31 May 2019
Initial Thoughts on a Dark Pantheon

Sometimes Flakiness Can't Be Helped

04 September 2017
So this article is making the rounds on my Twitter feed, and I have thoughts on it, and on the first response I saw to it. Let’s give you…

Two Types of Conversations

03 May 2015
Today I want to talk about types of conversations. Specifically, I want to talk about the difference between external and internal…

Out of Spoons

15 January 2015
Last post, I tossed out a half-formed idea. This is a continuation of that. It’s shaping up into a microgame I’m going to call Out of Spoons…

Metatopia 2014 Recap

12 November 2014
I have so many thoughts about Metatopia. I went last year as a player and this year as a designer. I was a bit anxious, but this year…

People You Should Be Paying Attention To

04 August 2014
Today, I want to point out some people you should know if you don’t. Quinn Murphy Quinn’s the mastermind behind Thoughtcrime Games, and he’s…

What Do I Do With This Feedback?

23 May 2014
The topic today comes from Mark (@slavetothehat on Twitter), friend, fellow game designer, and cartographer par excellence. You’ve written a…

Comparisons

11 February 2014
The impetus for this post is a document I had the misfortune of seeing at work. There was a section that attempted to relate Maslow’s…

Impostor Syndrome, Advice, and the RPG Community

10 January 2014
*Before I get to the main point, let’s cover what Impostor Syndrome is for those who don’t know. Among creatives (artists, game designers…

Rough Mechanics for Iron Edda - Memories of Metal and Bone

07 November 2013
A dear friend told me the last post was fluffy and asked too many questions without defining things. Let’s change that. Laby Blackbird and…

How I Edit

14 October 2013
Inspired by this post from John Adamus, I thought I’d share the process that I use when editing a manuscript. First, I start reading the…

Planescape 13th Age - Bariaur

25 September 2013
A while back, I did a Planescape conversion for D&D4E. Since I’m on a 13th Age kick right now, I thought I’d see if I could re-port those…

First Editing Gig

26 August 2013
Great news, everybody! I’m in the process of contracting for my first paid, freelance editing job! It’s something I’ve been meaning to do…

A Cool Minute with Olivia Hill

26 March 2013
Yesterday I mentioned that I might interview Olivia Hill about #ADX. I emailed her some questions, and she was kind enough to respond…

Planefate

29 December 2012
I’m terrible with names, but let’s go with Planefate for now. I’m a backer of Fate Core on Kickstarter (you should be too, if you’re able…

Skillfull Thinking and Feeling Evocation

02 October 2012
Night’s Black Masquerade chugs along in my head. I had gotten to the point where I was starting to map the guts of one system into another…

Atomic Robo Playtest

05 September 2012
This will be the first in a series of posts about my time at Dragon*Con this year. D*C represents my first ever trip to a convention of any…

Old School Hack

21 July 2012
There’s nothing quite like playing an RPG and having the creator of the game be the GM. It’s a magical experience, one I recommend to all…

Fourthcore Character Creation

26 April 2012
@MilwaukeeJoe runs a cool Fourthcore blog over at Grind4E, and he posted an article called Revenge of the Iron Lich Call to Crusaders about…

Thoughts on Morality

19 March 2012
The topic of morality has been on my mind recently for numerous reasons. One is the ongoing speculation with #dndnext in regards to…

Don't Overlook This Game

27 December 2011
I got an opportunity to play Don’t Rest Your Head (hereafter DRYH) from Evil Hat last night (I’ve talked about it before here). It was a…

Planescape 4E - Hacking the Planes with Cortex+ Distinctions

01 December 2011
So last time I talked about belief and the planes. I wanted to lay some groundwork before diving into these posts. Let me be clear that I am…

Monte Cook and the Monstrous Legacy

19 October 2011
I’m taking a short break from my usual series to talk a bit about the latest Legends & Lore article from Monte Cook (@MonteJCook on Twitter…

Planescape 4E - [WiC] The Plane of Ice

29 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest Part of the Winter Is Coming RPG Blog Festival. “Hello, mortals. The name’s Sanctimarin, Master of the Frozen…

Flash Fiction Challenge - The Numbers Game

16 September 2011
This is my entry for Chuck Wendig’s (@ChuckWendig on Twitter) Flash Fiction Challenge that he posted here. Long story short: write a story…

Planescape 4E - The Rogue Modron

06 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest Ok, so last time I presented a partial implementation of the Rogue Modron. The one at the bottom of this post…

Unnar the Mythender

25 May 2011
So, Jeremy Keller posted this on his blog the other day. I’d seen posts from Ryan Macklin before, but for some reason hadn’t seen Mythender…

Aldurukh Keep - Stillborn Campaign

05 January 2011
So the Aldurukh Keep campaign is stillborn. I’m disappointed, but I don’t really have the time to DM a campaign right now. The ideas I had…

The Planes

21 July 2010
First, my apologies for not posting anything recently. I’ve had real-life situations occurring, so my posting has been non-existent the past…

My 3.5 Character

05 July 2010
So, I messed up and didn’t post on Thursday, and this post is almost late. There’s been some sickness in the family. I thought I’d take a…

Initial Thoughts on the 2nd D&D Encounters Season

22 June 2010
So the second season of D&D Encounters has come. After a pretty successful foray into Undermountain in the first season, this season pits…

Sticking the Landing

19 May 2019
A good example of sticking the landing on the setup/payoff cycle

Two Reminders for Writing Genre Fiction

22 September 2015
An editor friend of mine was at a writing conference not too long ago, and he came back with a horror story about genre fiction (no, not a…

Don't Waste Your Afterlife

16 April 2015
A long, long time ago, I pitched an idea to Evil Hat’s Don’t Hack This Game. It was my first professional game design work, but the project…

Random Game Design Thought - PME

14 January 2015
Here’s something that I’ve been kicking around in my head for a little bit. It’s not fully formed, but I need to get it down on paper, so it…

My Metatopia 2014 Schedule

03 November 2014
I’m putting this here on the blog so I can refer back to it later. Last year, I went as a playtester (even though I used the convention to…

Protagonists and Morality

17 July 2014
I recently started watching House of Cards on Netflix. I’m three episodes in, and it made me think about a topic that influences what media…

Sections and Subsections

22 May 2014
Today’s topic comes from Christopher (@EldritchFire on Twitter), one of my favorite clients. One of the things an editor does is assess a…

Inspiration and Iron Edda - Memories

24 January 2014
Last night, I was thinking about inspiration. I’m one of the stretch goals for the Iron Edda Kickstarter (you knew that, right? I think I’ve…

On Writing and Guilt

03 January 2014
Today, I want to talk about writing and guilt and family. Bear with me, as I’m likely to say things you might not agree with. That’s okay…

Iron Edda - Memories of Metal and Bone

07 November 2013
“The dwarfs came for us, and we raised the bones and the runes against them. We fought the good fight, but it wasn’t enough. They overran…

My Tendencies as a Writer

30 September 2013
I’m writing a short story, did you know that? It’s the first one I’ve ever written and the first fiction writing I’ve done for pay. It’s a…

13th Age Apostolic Icons 2

25 September 2013
Today, I continue my series on Icons for 13th Age based on the Apostles. Without further ado, I give you the Caretaker and the Thunderer…

Are You Ready for the Astropocalypse?

23 June 2013
This weekend I got the opportunity to play a new micro-boardgame from Ryven Cedrylle, a friend I’ve had the honor of knowing and gaming with…

Two Awesome Kickstarter Projects

25 March 2013
Today’s a marketing post, but it’s well worth your time to check out these two awesome Kickstarter projects. Don’t feel too bad if you can’t…

Night's Black Masquerade - Clans Redux

29 October 2012
The last time I talked about Night’s Black Masquerade, I included a first stab at the Nosferatu. After posting, I talked with one of my many…

Mapping Vampire the Masquerade to Night's Black Agents

28 September 2012
As part of my new process, I decided to do things properly and revisit my Night’s Black Masquerade idea. Today, I want to talk about a…

13th Age Icons for Planescape

22 August 2012
Last post, I talked about creating a list of Icons for Planescape. Today I’m going to present the list I came up with in a similar format to…

The Lady of Pain, Mythender

25 June 2012
If you’ve been following me at all here or on on Twitter, you should be aware of two things. One is that I love Planescape, and two is that…

More Fourthcore Dungeon Thoughts

23 April 2012
Last time, I talked about Fourthcore and gave some initial thoughts on a dungeon idea. This post is a continuation with more thoughts. I’ll…

Retooled Lord of Chaos Epic Destiny

07 March 2012
I had the wonderful opportunity to be on Tome Show Episode 191 last night with Jeff Greiner (@Squach on Twitter), Tracy Hurley…

Don't Neglect Your Update

22 December 2011
Thought I’d give a small update on what’s happening around here recently. I haven’t lost steam on the Planescape 4E stuff, I’m just taking a…

Planescape 4E - The Planes and Belief

23 November 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest This one will be short and more of a conceptual post, but I must write my thoughts down before they disappear into…

Planescape 4E - Chaos Incarnate, The Plane of Limbo

11 October 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest I’m going to attempt to tackle Limbo today. As part of the planar ecology, I’m going to need planar traits, horizon…

Planescape 4E - Languor to Larvae

28 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest This is part 3 of a planar ecology for the Gray Waste. Last time I talked about the horizon effect to add menace to…

Planescape 4E - The Plane's The Thing

16 September 2011
The Lady of Pain's Crest We’re going to continue with our Planescape 4E revamp but start into a new series. I’ve covered races, and now I…

Planescape 4E - Races

01 September 2011
In the DM’s guide provided with the Planescape Campaign Setting, several races are mentioned. Let’s discuss how to handle these races in 4E…

Twenty Questions Character Creation in L5R 4Ed

18 January 2011
Editor’s Note: Originally, this content was posted in two parts. I’ve taken the liberty of combining them into one, using the original…

The D&D Virtual Table

05 January 2011
Update: Added link to guest post by Sarah Darkmagic at Loremaster.org So I’ve now had the opportunity to play with the D&D virtual table…

The People Have Spoken

09 July 2010
So Mike from Penny Arcade tweeted this link, and all I can say is, “Congratuwelldone, Blizzard.” Although the weasel words, “at this time…

Lament for the Loss of Discovery

28 June 2010
I play World of Warcraft, yes, I said it. I’ve played since open beta, and I was even able to get a copy on release date without preordering…

First Post and Background

22 June 2010
Normally I eschew slangy things like the use of the word, ‘da.’ I believe in this case I must beg forgiveness and explain why I chose it…
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