Tag Archives: Homebrew

Iblis Prime: A Homebrew Planet for Rogue Traders and Other Adventurers

The Boiling Brine

The Boiling Brine, an inland sea on the planet Iblis Prime via

For the past 28 sessions, I have been GMing a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game for my home group. At the end of our last story arc, the players were rewarded with the rights to a colony on a newly discovered (though presently populated) planet outside of the Imperium of Man.

Rather than give them a data dump of information and plot hooks I created, I made a session out of planet creation. I leveraged the World Generator system from Chapter 1 of the Stars of Inequity supplement, and players took turns rolling skill checks to research or investigate the planet and its system. Based on the success of their skill rolls, I granted them some leeway to choose off of the random tables from Stars of Inequity. If they failed, I chose nastier results.

After randomizing the characteristics of the planet, we set about filling in the details of some major factions of the city, creating a slew of potential allies and adversaries as they set off to make their mark for the Imperium of Man. I’ve included the results of our session as a (mostly) ready-to-play location for your Rogue Trader game, which can be easily adapted for other settings.

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Fixing Dark Heresy 2E’s Random Item Acquisition for Rogue Trader

dark_heresy_second_edition_front

Lately–as I’ve mentioned on the Total Party Thrill podcast–I’ve been running a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game using Fantasy Flight Games’ Dark Heresy Second Edition system. Rather than members of the Inquisition, as Dark Heresy is designed for, the player characters make up the crew of a Rogue Trader vessel. We had to lightly reskin and reflavor a few items, but it has been an overall smooth conversion, but one mechanic has stuck in my craw since the first game of Dark Heresy we ran in 2014: item acquisition.

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Group Spellcasting: D&D 5E Homebrew Challenge

Not the same Unearthed Arcana

This is not the Unearthed Arcana you’re looking for… via

Homebrew Challenge is an occasional column in which we develop a homebrew solution for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition in order to create additional player options, actions, or abilities. We discuss the challenge, the solution, the design principles we employed and ideas that we rejected, and the areas of concern that Dungeon Masters should keep an eye on.

The Challenge: Group Casting

The idea that a group of casters can combine their power into a single spell is as old as magic. It shows up in fiction in various forms, from Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth to a variety of psykers, heretics, and cultists in the Warhammer 40k universe. The goal here is straightforward: create a mechanic by which two spellcasters can combine their spells to achieve a greater net effect.  Continue reading