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A common piece of writing advice is to not use adverbs. We’re told that they’re weak, that we should find strong verbs instead. As with all writing advice, this one is situational. Some would-be writing gurus with good intentions take a situational piece of advice and try to make it seem universal. A writer for the Macmillan Dictionary Blog rece...

I was glad when a friend asked me to write about roleplaying games (RPGs) for kids, because it’s something I’ve put a fair amount of thought into, and I relished the excuse to look into it a bit more. I started playing tabletop RPGs when I was about 11 years old and never stopped. I definitely intend to introduce my kids to the hobby one day. Tw...

Is the traditional method of making katanas better than using modern steel? Here’s the answer from modern expert sword maker Walter Sorrels. To summarize, katana blades made from modern steel have superior performance. They are harder and keep a sharper edge. They are also cheaper. The primary advantage of the traditional technique is that th...

Some time ago, I posted the cover art for the ebook editions of The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. For the sake of comparison, here is the art for the US hardback editions. All of these covers were done by Darrell K. Sweet except for the last book, A Memory of Light, which was done by Michael Whelan. Click each image to see a larger ver...

Some time ago I posted images of the covers to all the Wheel of Time ebooks. Here are the covers of the Dutch print versions. New Spring   The Eye of the World   The Great Hunt   The Dragon Reborn   The Shadow Rising   The Fires of Heaven   Lord of Chaos   A Crown of Swords   Path of Daggers   Winter’s Heart ...

I have some pretty strong ideas on how damage ought to be handled in a roleplaying game. But rather than complaining about how boring and unrealistic hit points are, I’ll simply present my current thinking on how I’m going to implement damage in my own game. I am an unabashed violence monger (well, I might be slightly abashed depending on who I...

My posts on speed archery have been very popular and continue to get a lot of traffic. So I’ve been digging into it more and trying to find more resources for those of you who are interested in the topic. If you haven’t seen them already, check out my first three posts in this series. I’ll link to them at the bottom of this post. Today I bring ...

Does medieval plate armor slow you down and make you easier to hit in melee combat? On the face of it, you’d definitely think so. But the truth of it is that plate armor was designed to allow freedom of movement and weighed less than the gear of a modern soldier or firefighter. That’s about all I’m going to say for now. There are a ton of great ...