It’s pretty hard to find artwork of fantasy characters using magic items, even wands. Most contemporary artists just picture them with blasts of energy flying from their hands, which is visual shorthand for “MAGIC!” Rowena Morrill is one of the rare few who has depicted them. She actually read the books and took notes of …
Category: Fantasy
Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/20/20:The Best of Twittersnips (Magic Items, Part 1)
There’s a very broad category, in gaming, of magical items that are not scrolls, potions, clothing, or weapons. They range from everyday objects like braziers or books to esoteric ones like church organs and actually body parts (like the hand and eye of Vecna.) These were always the more interesting ones too me. What could …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/13/20:The Best of Twittersnips (Magical Clothing and Accessories)
Magic clothing and accessories are a staple in fantasy. There’s the Tarnkappe of German legend, Cinderella’s glass slipper, and various gloves, cloaks, shoes, hats and girdles that helped the heroes and heroines of myth achieve their tasks. Tolkien played with that rift in The Hobbit, where Frodo acquires a magic ring by bumbling, less than …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/8/20:The Best of Twittersnips (Potions)
Potions are essential for RPG fantasy gaming. They’re like a Get Out of Jail Free card, useful for a player in dire circumstances to cheat fate by teleporting themselves away from a foe or healing fatal damage. But they can also do other things. From my twitter feed, some favorites I created. “Potion” refers to …
Imaginary Creatures (Neural Network Remix)
I’ve been working with random generation (courtesy of Gammadyne’s Random Word Generator) for almost three years now, and have to say it’s a nifty tool for generating both imaginary languages and imaginary names for people, places, and things. But now there’s another way to generate the latter: neural networks. A neural network, basically, is a …








