About

About THIS

Goblin Brains exists because I have too many ideas to keep inside my head.

I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was 7 years old, and have been engaging with myth, science fiction and fantasy stories for likely longer than that. There are many stories that are special to me and it feels only right to tell some of them, assuming I am the author. In the worlds of writing, game design, and the like, I am simply a long-time hobbyist, and I am hoping to see my work and ideas improve over the course of this blog.

Primarily this includes content designed for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, because this is a system that a lot of other things are written for. This includes player options such as sub-classes, spells, ancestries/races/species, and elements for GMs like monsters, encounter set-pieces, characters, and more.

My personal approach to this begins and ends with the fact that the campaign world I have been building for years feels real to me and I would like it to feel at least a little real to everyone else. For this reason you will also see fantasy or science fiction writing here, as well as the rare commentary on how to think about or play role-playing games.

I am trying out new RPG systems in order to improve my zone of experience as a designer. While I created my fair share of board games as a kid, most of my design experience comes from a long time of looking at video games, and to a lesser degree, film, with a critical and hopefully appreciative eye. I have experience with other forms of design in my education, where I have consistently attempted to graft games or TTRPG elements to other, vastly different projects with some measure of success.

I am slowly making my own RPG.

ANTICIPATED QUESTIONS, ETC

I’ll have more here as I come up with them but…

If you’re looking to filter through by what type of mechanics content, or narrative work from game pieces, you can do it from the categories on each post. I don’t know if this is a well known feature but I figured that is the sort of thing that would bug me if I am someone who, for example, might have an interest in fantasy writing and not in RPG stuff, or vice versa.

“Ability is over/undertuned. Do you playtest?”

No, though I would if I could. I try to when I get to play with people who are allowing but I am essentially always the GM. I have a lot of concepts that my players have already seen, and only a small fraction of these get adopted. Even then, I only have one or two people’s experience with something. It’s not like my whole party has decided to run Firebrand sorcerers. (And if they did, it’s not like that would be a great reflection of the subclass in a larger ecosystem of play.) With that in mind, I also tell people, rather unfortunately, that the abilities, and especially the numbers, for gameplay mechanics are pretty liquid and should be changed by me or anyone adopting my work to be more fun if you have an idea for an improvement. You also might see things change because I had a new idea or hopefully even an experience with someone running the game mechanics that makes me feel differently, and I encourage that attitude in everyone else. If you have an idea for how something could be better…

PICK SOME BRAINS

If you wish to contact me, seal up your message with your most energetic jar of pickled neural tissue and send it via the pneumatic tube labeled: goblingreymatter@gmail.com

The other goblins will get back to you as soon as they find you and have time to evaluate the thoughtfulness of your little gifts.