Recent Updates


A centaur with chin-length dark hair raises one leg and holds up a spear in his right hand and looks at the viewer. He stands atop a large boulder with a stream flowing below it cutting through the forested scene of moss-coated rocks and trees.

"YAKARI Centaur" by Burningraph (original) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0


3/26/2026

I keep telling myself not to write new stuff for this site until I'm done converting and/or revising the old stuff - and I keep failing. My latest failure is your gain: a new article about soap operas and death in TTRPGs. It mainly focuses on ways soaps can help us manage character deaths, but it also includes ways to handle characters and campaigns after fellow gamers pass on. It's a drastic expansion of what I barely mentioned before, and I'm happy with it. If it serves you in some way, I'd love to hear about it.

3/21/2026

Recently, I revised my article about what soaps teach about building characters and well, that let to me heavily revamping my article about how soaps can help us handle characters better during play. I feel that the new version is a lot more readable and usable, and I hope you will, too!

3/12/2026

After a lot of pruning and tweaking, I feel good about sharing my revamped NPC group generator with you all! It's been working well and inspiring me while I've tested it out, and I hope it does the same for you. If there's anything you'd like me to add to it, let me know.

In the meantime, I have 55 old pages left to update to the newer format. There are some I want to rewrite and generators I want to redo, but I'm trying to update everything else before digging into those.

3/5/2026

To kick off this March, I've finished a new, expanded drow name generator that includes names from many canon characters and houses! It's a project I've wanted to take on for years and I've been working hard on it in my spare time for about a week. I hope it works well for you! I've also added the Google Sheet with updated meanings from the new generator (as well as keeping the ones from the very old generator).

And don't worry - the classic drow name generator still available, as well.

2/24/2026

The site revamp continues, slowly but surely. I have about 70 pages left to convert. In the meantime, I assembled a linked site map this week so you can see all the pages in one place. I've wanted to have one for a long time but it was going to take a lot of work to do it by hand, and I kept forgetting to look into my options. Luckily, I found a way to get a head start that's automated. It still took some adjusting and organizing, but it didn't take nearly as long as it would have the old fashioned way. Enjoy!

2/14/2026

I've revamped my romantic character generator and the page about it for Valentine's Day! The generator isn't in its final form yet but it's in good enough shape to share for the holiday, and I hope your enjoy it.

2/13/2026

It's taken days of adjusting and testing, but my revamped generic medieval character generator is now live! With the click of a button, you get a systemless and quick platform of personal details to build TTRPG and fictional characters from. And with a bit more effort today, I've added an updated version of the character background generator to it. I hope it serves you well!

2/5/2026

One of the joys of putting together or improving random generators is getting to use them! So I used the classic drow name generator to update my grab-and-go list of drow names. I also reorganized everything on the page to look and act better on mobile devices.

I also updated my Thayan name generator's look and freshened up the content on that page.

And I wasn't going to mess with much on the old pages until I converted them to the updated format but I broke down and adjusted some code so things will look a little better until I get around to the rest of the file. I've updated 91 so far but have around 100 left, so it's going to take a while.

2/3/2026

Happy February, folks! As part of my ongoing updates, I decided to go back to the drawing board with drow name generators. I went back to the style from Dragon Magazine and buckled down to learn how to make an online version that works, provides the various meanings, and looks far better than any generator I've offered before. I'm happy to say I finished it this morning. Behold the classic drow name generator!

1/27/2026

Yes, I'm still updating this site. And yes, I've once again gotten caught up in heavily revising old material. This time, I've reworked really old material: my pages about the drow, which I wrote 20 years ago. So far, I've updated all of the following:

I find them much improved, and I hope you do, too!

1/20/2026

Since my last update, I've heavily revised some more older articles. The first one used to be about using government and alignment to guide how you portray locations in D&D. After reading it for the firrst time in who knows how long, I realized it wasn't really about that but about using those metrics to better distinguish groups from each other. So, welcome to Developing Nuanced NPC Groups via Alignment & Government! I also glanced over my pages about basic concepts across editions of D&D and found them sorely wanting, so I trimmed, rewrote, and reorganized them, as well. I cover the same elements with more consideration of what they're like in recent editions.

1/12/2026

Much to my surprise, I've heavily revised (and renamed) my discussion on motives for slavery in fantasy games and settings. While updating its code, I found myself reading its content and feeling compelled to rewrite it, so I did. I refocused it on fantasy games in general rather than Dungeons and Dragons in particular and aimed to focus it further on fictional conventions. I strove for more concise language that supports clear communication and consent. I hope it's better for these efforts!

1/2/2026

I've added some resources to my links page and finished my first article of the new year: some thoughts on the finale of Stranger Things. Happy 2026, folks!

12/29/2025

You may notice some pages on this site now say "Kismet's Fantasy Gaming" atop a different main menu bar. That's because I've been updating it to Bootstrap 5 and making quality of life improvements along the way. The new files are smaller and hopefully load a little faster on mobile. I'm also still improving alt text for images and fixing errors as I go.

I was going to wait until I'd updated everything but I'll be honest: I got impatient. This is the first time I've had to spend here in nearly half a year and it's been great. I figured after converting over 50 pages, it was time to upload what I had. There are well over a hundred pages to go, but I'm on my way.

I've also decided to rename the site for the first time in its history. It would be easy to say I'm doing it because I haven't played or run Dungeons and Dragons since before 2020. While that's true, the greater reason is because I've offered plenty of system-agnostic material here for years. I support fantasy gaming in a broader sense, and I want the site's title to reflect that.

I hope the site works well for you for many years to come!

7/6/2025

After working on it for over a week, my basic guide to character voices is now up! It covers a process you can use to get started and basic vocal traits anyone can experiment with. The goal is to craft consistent, distinctive voices that are comfortable for you to perform at the table because having fun with your voice isn't just for the pros!

6/23/2025

In the last few days, I've gathered some visual novel reviews I originally posted elsewhere and put them here, and then finished reviewing one of my favorite VNs so far. Why all the visual novel talk? Because I've been in a big reading mood lately and have gotten back to them, and I've been having a great time - and I think they can be a lot of fun for tabletop gamers!

Here's what's new:

6/3/2025

Due to Real LifeTM, I haven't been able to get to more work on this site in a month, but I'm hoping to change that soon. Today I updated my Visual Novel Profile with more recent likes and dislikes. I've gotten back to VNs recently and realized that it was out of date. I've definitely developed more firm preferences as time has gone on!

5/10/2025

In the last few months, I've been building a brand-new site from the ground-up, pretty much sticking to only CSS (alas, that site isn't quite ready yet, but it's getting there). Since I've been learning and experimenting a lot in the process, I've also started revamping this site to function much the same. Along the way, I've been fixing errors, getting rid of outdated bits of code, and updating the look in small (but hopefully good) ways. I've continued to improve the alt text on all images as I update the pages they're on, as well.

I still have a long way to go since this site is just over 180 pages long, but I realized I've already converted 45 pages as of today, so I thought I'd share them. You can see the new work in my Faerunian calendar, fantasy character name list, and custom construct creation guide. If something doesn't work or look right, do let me know; I'm open to constructive feedback, as always.

4/20/2025

Thanks to a suggestion from a Facebook follower, I gathered up quotes from our Thayan campaign that I shared on social media over the years and put them together on this site. There's a good deal of cursing and some bad jokes, so they won't be to everyone's taste, but they made me smile all over again. Wishing you the best of gaming this spring!

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