BLACK SHARK ENTERPRISES

The picture above is of the House of the Blackheads in Riga, Latvia. The Brotherhood of Blackheads was a trade guild founded in the 1300's. If you are intersted in the history of guilds, you should read about them in the link. Today's post is a follow up to yesterday's post that offered 20 different groups that your PC's might encounter. The hope is that this post will help to fix the imbalance of the previous post. This table is for guilds and other more organized groups tha

First, let me brag on the artist of today's pic. This is "The Distinguished Mercenary" by Toni Justamante Jacobs. You can see a lot more cool character portraits and other stuff at the ARTOFJUSTAMAN, so check it out. Second, today's post is a collection of group and organization names that might be used as either friends or foes to your PC's. Perhaps they just have information or they might be hiring. Feel free to use them however you wish. Sometimes a GM just needs a halfway

Creating realistic shipboard combat can be a challenge for any GM. Every D&D combat has its own unique features, whether it be terrain, monsters, or magical elements, but getting players to feel like they are fighting and moving on a ship when they are rolling dice and crunching chips around the table in your gaming room is a real challenge. I use a combination of elements to some effect, but be warned. There's no magic charm here; these are all cheap tricks. You must have yo

I was recently asked about the books that I had read as inspiration and for information about the nautical and pirate stuff that I write. Here are some of the books and webpages that have led me to the twisted paths that I write upon. This is by no means a complete list and it doesn't even touch upon the wealth of material available in film. That's an entirely different post for a different day. There's a little in the way of fiction in the list below, most of what is below f

For my own D&D 5e campaign, which is based mostly upon the high seas of various worlds, one background for a generic sailor just didn't work. On the coast, everyone sails. Because there are many different types of sailors and nautical personalities, I felt that there needed to be more variety than just one generic sailor so I created five additional nautical backgrounds to supplement the original sailor/pirate. They are merchant sailor/smuggler, marine, deep water sailor/expl

For my own D&D 5e campaign, which is based mostly upon the high seas of various worlds, one background for a generic sailor just didn't work. On the coast, everyone sails. Because there are many different types of sailors and nautical personalities, I felt that there needed to be more variety than just one generic sailor so I created five additional nautical backgrounds to supplement the original sailor/pirate. They are the merchant sailor/smuggler, the marine, the fisherman/

For my own D&D 5e campaign, which is based mostly upon the high seas of various worlds, one background for a generic sailor just didn't work. On the coast, everyone sails. Because there are many different types of sailors and nautical personalities, I felt that there needed to be more variety than just one generic sailor so I created five additional nautical backgrounds to supplement the original sailor/pirate. They are the merchant sailor/smuggler, the marine, the fisherman/

For my own D&D 5e campaign, which is based mostly upon the high seas of various worlds, one background for a generic sailor just didn't work. On the coast, everyone sails. Because there are many different types of sailors and nautical personalities, I felt that there needed to be more variety than just one generic sailor so I created five additional nautical backgrounds to supplement the original sailor/pirate. They are the merchant sailor/smuggler, the marine, the fisherman/

War is coming to the pirates. The powers that be, whether they are kings, elves, clerics, or colonial barons, can suffer these scalliwags' assaults upon civilization itself no more. Pirate hunters are to be dispatched to seek out these evil men and put an end to them either by bringing them to the noose or by putting them to the sword. The ships below alternate between the HMS designation and simply a name, but they were all once British warships patrolling the waters of the

With the return this week of the Starz series Black Sails, I thought it best to return to this blog's true roots~desperate piracy. Being a pirate is very hard work and it's usually work done with little or no reward. The phrase "No prey - No pay" was common in the articles of those desperate enough to "go on the account". All pirates dream of the rich merchantman who gives over after they are shown the black flag, but such things are rare indeed. More likely is a costly figh

After my post on Mimics, I was going to do another one detailing some Lurkers Above and Trappers. I began by searching through the 5th Edition Monster Manual to "get a baseline" on these tricky monsters, but was shocked to find them missing. So I pulled out my OG 1st Edition Monster Manual and looked them up to refresh my memory. A quick review of their statistics left little doubt as to why these creatures hadn't been included in the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons --

Apologies to all for my long absense; I have been quite ill for some time, but have finally shaken the bug that I was sure was going to be my end. As a tribute to the illness that snuck up on me and then nearly killed me, I have decided to make my first post of 2016 about monsters that try to do the same thing to adventurers everywhere: Mimics. The Monster Manual describes mimics as shapeshifting predators able to take on the forms of inanimate objects to attract prey to them

Another double-feature set for your halloween-themed games. Staying with the theme of witches, allow me to present for your enjoyment 20 Eerie Components for Witches Spells and 20 Dark Rites of the Coven. Witches always seem to be the most trouble either when they are brewing up evil in their cauldrons or when they gather together in numbers to perform dark rituals. This double-feature allows you to prepare for both. Witches can cast spells, make minor hexes, brew potions, an

Halloween is a time for children and the young at heart to explore what frightens them. Keeping with this central core of Halloween is today's post. The idea behind the Gobbits is to create a small monster that is more disgusting than dangerous and more funny than horrible to help introduce younger players to the game. This is not to say that Gobbits are for novices only; a devious GM could easily wreak havoc with a few of them, even against experienced players. Without furth

Here's more halloween fun for you RPG GM's, this time in the form of skulls and skeletons. Here are 20 different ways that you can use skulls and/or skeletons to scare your players -- or at least dress up your adventure a bit, even if you don't scare them. Be warned that some might find this list to be graphic because it deals with parts of dead people. Knowing that you have been duly warned that horrifying elements could await you, I humbly present one of my smaller closets.

In my quest to make certain that you have as many items as possible to help you create a better Halloween adventure for yourself and your players, I considered that you might need some ghosts to haunt your castle, manor house, sage's mansion, and/or haunted house. Here are 20 spooky encounters with spirits to dress up your haunt. Most of these are just servants or side-line spooks for whatever your main event is, but hopefully they will give you a good idea or two. As always,

We're here again to discuss more scary things to use for your own horror games in whatever setting they might be in. The usual number of items for these posts is 20, but because I have been so lax in posting lately I thought you deserved more, so I decided to give you a library of spooky tomes. If you mix and match the elements below, you will be able to create a wall full of interesting books to be found in a spooky old manor, alchemist's lab, or wizard's tower in nearly no

Sometimes an excellent horror story must start with (or will enventually involve) a horrifying crime scene. Below are 20 scenes of murder most foul for you to use in your rpg's or horror stories. Be warned that these descriptions are NOT meant for minors and might be upsetting to you. Now that you have been duly warned, here are 20 Grisly Scenes of Murder. Enjoy! Something took a very large bite out of this streetwalker. Large as in half of her chest is gone. All that remains

What would October be without ghost stories? I don't even want to know. I grew up on ghost stories and I love them. Don't get me wrong though, I don't want to talk about religion or life after death. I certainly don't want to get into any kind of scientific/religious/philosophical debate about whether or not ghosts really exist. I just want to talk about ghosts like those that appear in ghost stories or rpg's. Researchers of paranormal phenomena (again, remember that we are h

I love october. I love fall, halloween, and scary movies. Today, you get a double-feature. Two tables instead of just one. The first is a collection of haunted furnishings for a haunted house. The second is a list of 13 Devils, with a short description about each one, that you might find useful for your horror games, if you do that sort of thing. If not, then hopefully you will just enjoy the read. Haunted houses are creepy because bizarre things happen inside them. In any go