Pax Unplugged 2025: Limping, Laughing, and Loving Every Moment
This past weekend marked another unforgettable year at Pax Unplugged, my favorite board game and RPG convention—and even on a broken foot, there was no way I was missing it. Limping around the show floor may not be the most glamorous way to experience a...
“Black Fang Friday: When Shopping Becomes a Crime Spree”
How Zoo Mafia Turns a Sale Weekend Into a Turf War Black Friday in Furton City (or any Zoo Mafia-inspired zoo setting) is never just about deals. It’s about dominance. It’s about family pride. It’s about who controls the flow of goods into the underground markets...
Shops Above the Clouds: How Commerce Works in Aether Skies
Why Shopping in the Floating Cities Is Nothing Like Your Standard Fantasy Marketplace Shopping in a traditional fantasy game is simple: a merchant stall, some friendly haggling, shiny coins for shiny things.But in Aether Skies, even buying a coil of wire can feel like espionage.Supply chains...
Giving Thanks at the Table: A Thanksgiving Tribute for RPG Players and DMs
Thanksgiving is often a time for feasting, family, and trying to explain to your relatives what exactly you do during “that game with the dragons.” But for those of us who gather around the gaming table—whether physical, digital, or conjured by ritual casting—Thanksgiving is also...
Building Characters With Purpose: Giving Your PC Goals That Matter at the Table
Most players want to build a character who feels real—someone memorable, layered, and fun to roleplay. But the secret to a great player character isn’t just the cool backstory, the edgy aesthetic, or how many daggers you can hide in your boots. Purpose is what...
Under the Dome: Feast — The Hunger That Never Ends
Inside the Dome, everyone’s hungry for something.Food. Power. Freedom. Revenge.The Dome doesn’t care which—it just makes sure you never get enough. A feast under the Dome isn’t just a meal. It’s a performance, a battle, and a confession rolled into one. Because when resources are scarce...
Feasts in D&D: More Than a Meal — A DM & Player Guide to Using “Feast” in Your Story
In Dungeons & Dragons, a feast is far more than a table full of roasted boar and overflowing tankards.It’s a narrative tool, a cultural symbol, a spell, a plot hook, a reward, a temptation, and sometimes a trap. How the term is used—from the DM’s...
Feast of Favors: Power, Hunger, and Thanksgiving in the Zoo Underworld
By The Keeper’s Ledger When the Zoo’s streets grow cold and the smell of roasted peanuts drifts through the air, every crew knows what season it is — Feast Season. Not the polite family dinner kind, but the kind where every plate comes with a price...
Feast Above the Clouds: Gratitude, Gluttony, and Survival in Aether Skies
A Reflection on Celebration and Hunger in a World That Shouldn’t Still Be Flying In the floating cities of Aether Skies, every meal is a miracle.Grain doesn’t grow in the skies. Livestock can’t graze on steel. Every loaf of bread, every strip of smoked skyfish, every...
Wizard Subclass: The Symbiotic Sage
“It whispers equations in my sleep. It twists runes in the corner of my vision. Knowledge isn’t something I study anymore—it’s something I am.” This is the last of the series of symbiotic subclasses.The Symbiotic Sage represents a wizard who has bonded with a magical symbiote—an...
The Rise of Solo RPGs: Why Playing Alone Is One of the Fastest-Growing Trends in Tabletop Gaming
For decades, tabletop RPGs have been defined by groups around a table, bags of dice on hand, and the unpredictable chaos that happens when a party of adventurers tries to solve a simple problem in the most convoluted way possible. But in recent years, another...
Under the Dome: Getting Together — Trust in a World That Forgot How
Most adventuring parties meet in a tavern.Under the Dome, meeting in a tavern is one of the fastest ways to get robbed, stabbed, conscripted, or eaten. Trust is rare under the Dome. Scarcity erodes it. Hunger kills it. Chaos warps it.But connection—real connection—is still possible. And...
Unique Ways to Get the Party Together: A DM & Player Perspective
One of the most deceptively challenging moments in any tabletop RPG isn’t the dragon fight or political intrigue—it’s Session Zero’s question: “So… how do you all meet?”The classic tavern intro gets the job done, but after a few campaigns it can feel like you’re pouring...
Getting Together in Zoo Mafia: Seven Stylish Ways to Form a Crew
How your mismatched mobsters become family (or something like it). Every Zoo Mafia campaign needs a moment — the moment — when a bunch of morally flexible animals decide, for one reason or another, that they’re better off together than alone.In a world of crooked capos,...
Getting Together: Uniting Your Party in Aether Skies
Unusual Beginnings for Adventurers in a World of Clouds, Secrets, and Storms In most tabletop campaigns, “the party meets in a tavern.”In Aether Skies, that’s almost impossible. Taverns exist, yes — but they cling to the sides of floating cities, perched over a cursed world, humming with...
