As gaming groups are wont to do, mine has recently gotten into the practice of sharing tabletop TikToks and memes. The habit, and shared a-moos-ment, are surely something that can only bring a group closer together. Occasionally though, a shared nugget of media posits a question that warrants a fair amount of discussion. While the latest one the group shared might be udderly ridiculous, I did cowtow to their request and answered their question. After all, everyone at your table wants to be seen and herd (unless they’re a rogue). If you’ve heard this before, I hope you won’t experience any déjà  moo: If a cleric uses "True Resurrection" on an enemy’s leather armor, will a cow form around it? The short answer to this, of course, is... no. This will not work. If you don’t care about the why, you’re welcome to jump to the end of the post. Why won’t this work as the original joke wants? There are several issues here. Just going through the spell description in order, the first p...

I admit it: I'm not up to date on the Sonic Fandom . My familiarity with the character is limited to the original Genesis games, although I've certainly known people around my own age for whom the name "Sonic the Hedgehog" meant the animated series, comics, or (heaven help us).. newer video games. There have been the recent movies  keeping the character in the public eye, not to mention Sega embracing fan creations using the old 2D format though Sonic Mania alongside slicker, modern titles like Sonic Forces . Nonetheless, I've been spending a lot of time with the character lately - thanks to a couple of miraculous devices , I have the complete Sega Genesis library at my fingertips and I've been slowly working my way thorough the classics . Things are stressful for just about everyone these days, and being able to quickly pull up a something colorful and energetic for just a few minutes provides great comfort and relief. I beat the first Sonic the Hedgehog ...

Even if you’ve been keeping your nose in dusty tomes of RPG lore, word has probably made its way to you that Queen Elizabeth II has died. As heathen Americans, we’re more used to the idea of Kings and Queens (and Czars and Emperors and Kaisers and…)  from history and works of fiction than in our day-to-day lives. But those works of fiction, even the ones we make ourselves, are inspired by history and the world around us, so this week we thought we’d talk about the way that shifts in leadership (monarchical or otherwise) can affect the worlds we create for stories and games. - B B : The more you think about it, the more you see things that are affected by these kinds of changes. Whose face is on the money? Who even declares the value of said money? Even if your setting is based around bartering systems (something of an inevitability when much of the wealth the Player Characters encounter is in the form of plundered discovered treasure and artifacts) the availability of goods and se...

Gamification seems to be everywhere these days, with articles on how to incorporate it into the workspace, or boosting your fundraising process. It even invades our personal lives with games that cover everything from learning new languages, getting fit (do we really need a new gamification application for every single kind of fitness trend?) and getting your errands done. It seems you could potentially gamify just about anything. It shouldn’t be too surprising -  as a species we’ve been playing games for an exceedingly long time. As we’ve mentioned on the blog before , the trendy D20 has origins that date back to at least ancient Egypt . While gaming may be old, the term gamification didn’t come around until the early naughties when Nick Pelling came up with it. Even then, the word didn’t really become popular until... Foursquare?! (Hard to believe that was a thing. Gamifying visiting places in the real world? Was this really the precursor to things such as Pokemon Go! and Zombie...