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You are here: Home / Archives for architecture

The Architect DM: The Ise Grand Shrine

May 9, 2012 by Bartoneus

I’ve sat through more hours of architectural history classes than seems reasonable for a human being, everything from the crude Dolmen tombs of early Europe to weeks of studying the various gothic cathedrals that all look pretty much the same. I never got the chance to take an asian architecture course, but one of the most memorable asian structures that I learned about was the Ise Grand Shrine.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games, The Architect DM Tagged With: advice, architect dm, architecture, D&D, DM, dnd, dungeon mastering, Dungeons and Dragons, inspiration, L5R, Legend of the 5 Rings, roleplaying games

The Architect DM: Give Your Cities Some Architecture

June 29, 2011 by Bartoneus

Not every D&D campaign or world map includes nations or regions that break the larger mass into more digestible pieces, but this is one of the features that I’m glad I chose to be a primary element of my current D&D campaign. Inspired by a 3rd Edition D&D campaign run by our friend Dennis (aka The Main Event) where the nationality of the PCs became one of the most memorable parts of the game for me and ended up factoring into the ongoing plots in interesting ways, I decided to present my players with a world divided into various nations each with a unique flair and often divided by racial distinctions. However, one of the elements that I failed to strongly present to my players and that I’m going to discuss today is the idea of giving a unique design and feel to each of those nations when it comes to locations and buildings.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, 4th Edition, advice, architect dm, architecture, campaign, D&D, dnd, Dungeons and Dragons, nations, regions, sandbox, world building

The Architect DM: Questions & Answers

January 12, 2011 by Bartoneus

While I’m gearing up and preparing to continue the Architect DM series into 2011, I decided to first put out a call for more questions on my twitter account and see what kinds of questions you guys have when it comes to DMing and world building in your RPGs. This has worked incredibly well for me in the past, at least half of the posts in this series so far have come directly from reader questions or suggestions and I’m always looking for more topics to cover.

Filed Under: Roleplaying Games, The Architect DM Tagged With: advice, architect dm, architecture, babies, design, magic, q&a, roleplaying games, Roleplaying Games, structure

A Koster Conception

October 16, 2007 by Bartoneus

For those of you who know me, and read Penny Arcade regularly, you’ve no doubt been waiting for this post since last Wednesday. (The) Raph Koster wrote a guest post for Tycho, it was about a game idea Tycho had and discussed with Raph at San Diego ComicCon which is an MMO Construction game of […]

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Video Games Tagged With: architecture, construction, design, MMO, penny arcade, raph koster, urban

About the Author

  • Bartoneus

    Danny works professionally as an architectural designer and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).

    Email: bartoneus@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//author/Bartoneus/

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