Another week of awesome posts in the gaming blog community means I’m back with a new list of links for Friday!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving (if they celebrated) and is looking forward to some happy holidays. Winter has finally arrived in Colorado (with most of this week spent near zero degrees fahrenheit), so even I’m starting to think about Christmas.

But I digress.

Here are a few posts to contemplate when winter weather hits in your neck of the woods:

• In the “Not Necessarily from This Week” category, we have “Fistfull of Lead: All the Monsters on a Budget” from Jonathan Drain over at Kobold Quarterly. The article tells us where to procure a solid collection of miniatures for your gaming pleasure. Everything from humanoids and skeletons to demons and insects is included in this mix and match collection for a bit over $100 US. Not bad!
  http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/article3132.php
• Is Chivalry dead? The RPG Athenaeum offers some suggestions on how to bring knightly orders into your game in “Chivalry doesn’t have to be dead…” The tips on designing a knightly order are very cool – including what to do if a knight fails to live up to the code. As someone who’s designed a few knightly orders, I wish I’d had these tips when I was writing them.
  http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/chivalry-doesnt-have-to-be-dead-use-knightly-orders-in-your-game/
• Also from the RPG Athenaeum, we have “Flesh out your hero with an anecdote or two,” which offers some awesome suggestions on quirks for characters that might not have occurred to you. The article covers things like quirky appearance bits, emotional bits such as memories that surface during certain conditions, or unique phrases from their adventures or where they grew up. Cool stuff to consider for NPCs as well as PCs I think!
  http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/flesh-out-your-hero-with-an-anecdote-or-two/
• From Abstract XP, we have an article on “Writing effective setting in adventures (part three)”. Weather is one of those things I never get right in campaigns, from what it should be from a seasonal perspective or what it should be from a geographic perspective… So tips and hints for using weather in an adventure is quite welcome. And when you add in tips for avoiding cliche’s and bringing in culture, the article starts overflowing with ideas!
  http://abstractxp.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/writing-effective-setting-in-adventures-part-three/
• Rob Lang over at The Free RPG Blog brings up some intriguing ideas about making fantasy RPG rules into something that doesn’t fall flat in “How to turn your stock fantasy RPG into a unique delight.” As someone who’s trying to make a generic RPG and start with the fantasy aspects, this was particularly well timed. By not only going back to the source of fantasy ideas – fiction, myth, and folklore – but researching games and other mechanics to borrow ideas here and there to add crunch to otherwise not crunchy bits, I may have enough ideas to finish something soon. Thanks Rob!
  http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2009/12/how-to-turn-your-stock-fantasy-rpg-into.html
• Ravyn at Exchange of Realities proposes three ways to think about solving problems in “Three Problem-Solving Question Sequences.” And though this was meant for gamers, I might actually suggest it to my daughters as ways to approach many different things in life. It’s hard to argue with “What do I have and how can I use it?”, “What do I want and what do I have that can help me get it?”, and “What could solve this problem and how could I get it?” Although they all pose similar questions, it’s HOW they’re asked that’s the key… Very though provoking!!
  http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/12/01/three-problem-solving-question-sequences/
• And lastly, we have a throwback to an earlier time for me… This picture of Orcus from the Lord of the Green Dragons just made me smile as I thought back to my youth and the early days of playing D&D. Good times. Does it reflect poorly on me when I think back on a big demon prince as a symbol of my youth? Maybe.
  http://lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/2009/12/old-school-orcus.html

Thanks to everyone who wrote the articles above and to the many more I have yet to read on the various RPG blogs I follow.

Have a great weekend!

–Fitz

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• 100 Descriptors for nondescript NPCs from The RPG Athenaeum (rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com)
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• How to turn your stock fantasy RPG into a unique delight from The Free RPG Blog (thefreerpgblog.com)