5 Mythical Substances to Spice Up Your Setting
by Who doesn’t love a good made up substance? If you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons or a Lord of the Rings game, you get access to …
Tag: worldbuilding
Underdark Ecology: Dwarven Staples
Let’s face it: Dungeons and Dragons specifically and fantasy RPGs more broadly have problems with biology. For a pretty innocuous example, can you recall the …
Dex Dylan Feature 2/10/2021
by Editor’s Note: On behalf of the Charmstone staff, I must apologize for the presentation of this week’s regularly scheduled feature. As you may know, Dex …
Are You Afraid of the Doors?
If I were to download my Roll20 chat logs, I’d probably find that about 20% of all rolls are random investigation checks. With a little …
Nightmen and Gong Farmers
As 2020 drew to close, I noticed an alarming trend on social media. People seemed to be conflating the end of the calendar year with …
Sorta RPG Review: Heroes’ Feast
If you’ve been reading the Charmstone blog for a while, you probably picked up that I love thinking about fantasy food. I’ve written on the …
Weirdness of Fantasy Taverns
Fantasy RPGs are replete with tropes. Chances are you’re going to run into a cult trying to summon an ancient evil, a crooked monarch trying …
An Introduction to Shapeshifting Water Demons, or: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drown you
You can hear the sound of moving water through the trees, and it gets louder as you get closer. Finally, you reach the bank, and …
Magic Locations As Treasure
Maybe you’ve noticed. Maybe you haven’t. But, my articles usually come out on Fridays. Here we are on a Monday, so what gives? Well, I …