Recent content by BLACKDIRGE

Nice to see folks are still reading it all these years later. ;)

Phylactery This another horror flash fiction story born of the same one-hour writing exercise I used to do on a bi-weekly basis. With a limit of 1,000 words and just and hour to write, the end rushes up on you fast with these things. Sometimes the stories work regardless, and I've sold a bunch...

Cool. I didn't copy; I swear. ;)

A Pointed Education Here's another little vignette I wrote for a 4E supplement that never made it into print. This one would have been the introduction to a fighter build focused on throwing weapons. It's one of those vignettes that always left me wondering what happened to the characters...

Well, I do aim to please. :) It's funny, though, a lot of these stories were writing exercises where I had to pound something out in an hour, and for whatever reason, Richards is the first surname that popped into my head like half the time. Who knows why. Thanks for reading.

Sometimes You Need the Big Gun Okay, this another short piece that was created as a writing exercise. In this case, we had to throw together a 1,000 word story in an hour, and the story had to use these four words: caustic, vermilion, pariah, and maleficent. Some of those were definitely...

A Red Night Once again I’ve delved deep into the digital ruins of my hard drive and unearthed a tidbit of ancient fiction. This is yet another piece from when I was an RPG designer/writer/editor for Goodman Games (posted with their kind permission). Like the “The High Road” and “The Challenge,”...

Look at it this way; unlike my old story hour threads, you don't have to wait for me to actually write anything. You'll get something new every Monday until I run out of stuff. :) Thanks for reading.

Thunder & Lightning Here's another short tale spawned from a one-hour writing exercise. This one ended up being a homage to the very famous story "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" by Richard Matheson. I put an urban fantasy spin on it and took it from the POV of the monster(s), and the result is...

The Dragon's Key Here's another flash piece I wrote as an exercise. This was another one-hour challenge, where you get a prompt and then have to write the story in one hour. I've gone on to publish a bunch of stories like that, but I there are a few I can't quite find a market for. This is one...

The Challenge Here’s another tidbit from ancient history, back from the days when I was working full-time as an RPG designer/writer/editor for Goodman Games. Like the first vignette in this series, “The High Road,” this one comes from an unpublished manuscript for a player-oriented supplement...

Yeah, found myself missing my old stomping grounds. :)

Will do. Glad you're excavations are proving enjoyable. :) BD

I've kind of built the campaign around it, so it does come up a fair amount. In fact, that's what I'm trying to dial in. I feel like it may have come up a bit too much in the first session. The players seem to dig it, though, and as they develop indefinite madness, I'm going to tell each player...

I've been using the optional Sanity ability score and the accompanying madness rules in my horror-themed 5E campaign, and so far we're having fun with them. I've tweaked them a bit with some house rules (mostly by designating which types of monsters cause a player to make Sanity saving throw)...