Welcome to my page on gaming and world building! Thank you for visiting my site! (Bookmark this page!) I would love to write some additional material for you in the general area of gaming. Please drop me a line at the e-mail address shown below with ideas for articles you want to see, and I'll try to put one together.
Have a great day, and thank you again for visiting!
In July 2005, I started a planned, several year hiatus from GMing. It is not burn-out. Life events are such that I need to focus on some other areas. I have been doing a couple of gaming events per year just to keep Zhalindor active.
In addition to talking about it, I actually do gamemaster! Please check out an overview of the TSYF campaign in Zhalindor
Link to the Current TSYF Homepage.
Recent Gaming One-up! One of my favorite one-up systems is Stellar Games' "It Came from the Late, Late Show." We recently did a one-up called the Legend of Sluggotha. Check out the link; it was a lot of fun.
Some real Starwars (tm) philosophy:: Listen to Yoda explain how fear is behind everything to young Skywalker > WAV format.
Game Design: Khymir Mark Rogers, author of Zorachus and The Nightmare of God, and I have teamed to write a role-playing game based on his fictional world. The RPG is called KHYMIR: The Role-Playing Game (check out the link for an outline of the game). We are currently running two sessions of playtesting. Our hope is to have a book out in perfect bound, mass market size for $15 for the entire system. (So far, so good, but it will need some public support to make the economics work.)
Zhalindor: One of our stalwarts, Joe G., has typed up the contents of a prop, the Book of Greater Seals, and placed it on the WWW at
The Book of Greater Seals. Check out
TSYF Fall Starter to see more of what the group is currently working on!
Zhalindor is my fantasy gaming world. If you are interested, feel free to run your own adventures there! I would be glad to help you set-up plot lines, etc. Hundreds of gamers have had the pleasure of playing in Zhalindor over some 25+ years. My site includes a large amount of information on Zhalindor. To get started check on the Kernan links (below on this same page) or Zhalindor page. The world is absolutely huge (about ten times the surface area of Earth)!DISCLAIMER: Zhalindor is a collaborative effort. I did not design the entire world from whole cloth myself. You'll see elements liberally "borrowed" from many sources. Check out my article on World Design to see some of the references.
Check out my background/articles, and drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. staats@alum.mit.edu
LAST MODIFIED: 22 MAY 07
Sound Prop: The great "Tractuatus Mark-Cosmologicus" was the creation of Mark Brandreth inspired by his two year tour in Zhalindor. This in turn has inspired countless gamers to examine the "great Markovian chain." One of the outcomes is the play, "Waiting for Marko." Please find a recording of the play in .wav format HERE.
Dealing with mulitple, plot significant NPCs in the same scene [HTML] (2K)One of the more challenging activities that a Gamemaster or writer potentially faces is having multiple, significant NPCs in the same scene with the PCs. I took a stab at some general, practical guidelines at Gamemastering Principles by Rich Staats [HTML] (3K). (These are helpful for both the novice and the experienced gamemaster.) Dealing with Evil by Rich Staats [HTML] (3K) New! One of the key points I've made at presentations on GMing is that the GM serves his players best by working inside his own moral comfort zone. The article here deals with what to do when the party heads down the wrong path. Enjoy!
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