The Old Ways are the Best Ways
Look at 'dat dragon... Yes, another two weeks without a post. Yes I know. I know it's bullshit. Even more so that the last time I went on an unannounced two-week hiatus. Anyway, to give you a quick recap, since I go[...]Read on >>
Wounds and Wound Penalties
Most RPGs have combat as their central conflict resolution mechanic, and why not? The kinds of stories that most gamers seem to want to play, it even makes sense. If you make a grand epic of swords and sorcery, at some p[...]Read on >>
Minions on the Table
September 2, 2010 from Critical Hits
Filed under: 4e, DM Advice, Encounter Design, Monster Design, RPG, RPG Hub
Monsters can lose a battle before it begins if they have bad tactical positions. This is even truer with minions. Even if we assume, narratively, that your minions have no way to know they’re little competition for the[...] Filed under: 4e, DM Advice, Encounter Design, Monster Design, RPG, RPG Hub
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“Mark the Berserker” or “Switching from continuous play to episodic play”
One thing that switches in different points in your life, is the regularity of your players. At some points in life, players can make it pretty much every game. This allows for really easy (95% of the time) continuit[...]Read on >>
Review: Dark Sun Campaign Setting, Part 2: More Player Options
September 1, 2010 from My Girlfriend Is A DM
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Campaign, D&D4e, Game Design, RPG Hub, Review
In the first installment of my look at the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, I dug into the new builds provided by the book for existing classes and the two new races introduced. They’re all pretty cool, but one of the [...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Campaign, D&D4e, Game Design, RPG Hub, Review
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Rolling the Hard Six
"Sometimes you have to roll the hard six" ~Admiral Adama, Battlestar GalacticaDo you know what that means? It's a term from Craps, and essentially means rolling a pair of 3s on two six sided dice, instead of getting a si[...]Read on >>
Unisystem experiences and “unbalanced” games
Earlier this year, I was trying to expand my vistas by playing with some new people. This also meant playing some new games. We used the Unisystem from Eden Studios, Inc. To summarize I guess you could say that it [...]Read on >>
The Dungeon: Never Done With You
This is the first part of a series about the The Prison, by John Schutt, a dungeon locale set high above the seas off the coast of Loaerth City. The Prison will be found in the upcoming adventure setting Loaerth & [...]Read on >>
My Motivation for Writing an Adventure
I recently announced that I was writing a Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition adventure. Progress on this project has been steady. Anytime I have a free block of time to myself I am working on it. I have already learned a[...]Read on >>
Body Powers: Take Three
Yeah, yeah: I posted just yesterday. And less than 20 minutes after saying I had a form I preferred, I found a bunch of problems. So, what the hell, here we go again:On third thought, I felt that Claws are mu[...]Read on >>
Magic Items and Failure
In a response to a previous discussion on how I would remake the magic system in D&D, wickedmurph conjectured: The other thing that this system would do is really make scrolls viable items again, even for magic-users[...]Read on >>
The Importance of a “Go To” System
Yesterday we talked about how important it was to play multiple different systems whether you are a GM, a Player, or a Game Designer. While doing that, I briefly made mention that it was also important to have a 'Go To' [...]Read on >>
Body Powers: Take Two
I posted Table 2: Body Powers some while ago. But I've never been satisfied with several aspects of that Table. I don't know why the dam broke today, but for some reason I got it to a form I prefer. The[...]Read on >>
My Geek Wedding & Free Spacer SitRep
It has been a long while since I last posted. (The last one was done by one of my playtesters – Thanks Renee!) Now yes, I do have a long list of excuses, but the biggest is my wedding on August 3rd and my long honeymoo[...]Read on >>
Review- Synapse: Part I, First Impressions
Greg Christopher has released a free public beta of his game Synapse, something he's been working on for quite some time.Greg has in the past left me an impression that he is at his core... a game design new ager for the[...]Read on >>
Of Scrolls and Flaming Oil
I've got to say, I am one of those DM's who never thinks to include scrolls in treasure hordes. It was an act of conscious will that I remembered to include them in Castle of the Mad Archmage, but they're really an incre[...]Read on >>
Why You WANT To Play Multiple Systems
Everyone has a go to system. The system they're the most comfortable with. The system their group knows. A system that has given them hours upon hours of enjoyment, where they pretty much know the rule book backwards, fr[...]Read on >>
The Kings Crew
I decided to try the NPC Creator’s Toolbox for my King dungeon I am making. It is a random table set found in the Game Mastery Guide for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game. Overall it is useful in filling out charact[...]Read on >>
Older RPG’s had it right, a stat mod above +3 is too much
For the last couple years it has been gnawing on me more and more with piecemeal, the stat mod going up to +5 for a 20 (1-20 spread instead of 3-18) is too much. With such a great spread it too important to have a grea[...]Read on >>
Magic – The first thing I’d change in D&D
This post is in response to a long standing request from wickedmurph that instead of just declaring what I don’t like about the track WotC took with 4E D&D, I focus on expending energy taking a crack at fixing[...]Read on >>
Practice Makes Perfect
I've been contemplating the rules vs. imagination 'conflict' in RPG's and feel the need to weigh in briefly. I think that rules can serve two functions: to define the possibilities of an expansive world (D&D, GURPS,[...]Read on >>
Proving Grounds of a Million Mad Overlords
A bit over a year ago (Friday, July 17, to be exact) I complained about the lack of outreach to potentially new gamers. Apparently, I should also start complaining about not having a million bucks because oh what a diff[...]Read on >>
Proving Grounds of a Million Mad Overlords
A bit over a year ago (Friday, July 17, to be exact) I complained about the lack of outreach to potentially new gamers. Apparently, I should also start complaining about not having a million bucks because oh what a diff[...]Read on >>
Quite Distracted By: One-Roll Combat (Again)
Way back in April, I posted a thought for one-roll combat in Spellcraft & Swordplay; that is combining the attack roll and the damage roll. This idea was based on the serendipity that my hack for combat in S&am[...]Read on >>
The King’s Crib
I am still rolling forward on my to kill a king dungeon. To help me out, I purchased a GameMastery flip-mat. I have quite a collection of these now. I have: the City Market, the Keep, the Bandit Outpost, the Arena and tw[...]Read on >>
Just one more formulaic CRPG-ification bullet into the imagination at the heart of RPGs
This is another of my rails against the nature of where RPGs seem to be headed in my opinion. So if you’re not interested in reading my rant and joining in on what my horoscope says should be a lively discussion a[...]Read on >>
Thinking About Skills & Abilities
Today some thinking about how to restructure Skills/Abilities in Action Cards, our house system. I'm still working on the 3.0 revision. I've done some base level dissection of game rules before and I want to revisit that[...]Read on >>
The Architect DM: Function & Playability
Welcome to the second installment of my series about applying real world design concepts to your own personal D&D or tabletop RPG world. Last week's post was a relatively broad overview of the basic aspects to consi[...]Read on >>
The Hit Point Gauge: A nifty alternative for tracking hit points
A recent post on RPG Geek, along with playing some basic D&D with my eight-year-old son this weekend, got me thinking about different ways of tracking hit points and in a stroke of inspiration I came up with this[...]Read on >>
Coming Soon: Resolute, Adventurer & Genius
After the flurry of work to get Warrior, Rogue & Mage ready, I had time to think about how the Wyrm system might be adapted to other genres. Mark Meredith is hard at work on a spy/technothriller adaptation which I am[...]Read on >>
Encoding Otherkind
I’ve blogged about Otherkind dice a few times. Once describingthem as a game mechanism of the week, once describing how I’ve incorporated them into other projects (such as FUBAR), I’ve described them with respect t[...]Read on >>
It’s Good To Be Wrong: DC Adventures
Knee-jerk reactions still make us jerks. I think that could be advice to live by, and the internet is not a communication forum known for people admitting when they were wrong. Well, I spouted off at the mouth — an[...]Read on >>
The Iconic Character Type
So, over at Space To Think yesterday I saw this post. The author talks about it, but I want to go into it a little bit more.What is 'it'? Well, it is the fact that when you are making a game for an established fandom you[...]Read on >>
Help Me With a Name (Again)
Last time I did this, you were all very helpful. So let's try it again.As discussed previously, two of the ways of looking at a Power are its Effect and its Category. At least right now, there are seven Effec[...]Read on >>
Creating Powers in Heroes of Industry
If you can describe a Power and decide upon its Effect, you should be able to create just about any power you need in Heroes of Industry. One of the most important things to keep in mind is how often or how easily the P[...]Read on >>
24-Hour RPGs on RPG Geek (32!)
So (as I mentioned before) RPG Geek has put together a contest for people to design an rpg within a single 24 hour window. The basics of that you can find here. All of those entries are finally in and everyone can go and[...]Read on >>
Mazes and Monsters retro-clone 6: Live Action Maze Exploration
We've come a long way in our exploration of the Mazes and Monsters rules. The old rules. The old, boring, sit-around-the-table rules. But now it's time for the next stage of the game: As I mentioned last week, JayJay (th[...]Read on >>
Elves in Sheep’s Clothing
by Christian Martinez Hello everyone! This is my first post here on the blog and I hope to be making more on a fairly frequent basis. I’m a new face here – though I’ve been involved since July and am working on[...]Read on >>
Game System Update Part I
Several weeks ago I posted that I needed some help making a game system that didn't suck. Thanks to everyone for the comments, they were much appreciated. Since that time I have been working out exactly how I want the ga[...]Read on >>
Redesigning the Wild West
My Star Wars game has been on hiatus as of late, due to real-life constraints. So while I haven't had anything new to post on the 'running game' front, I have begun work on the 'designing game' front.I've had this visio[...]Read on >>
Desired Effects: RPG mechanics having knock-on effects
Some of the things I am noticing with Piecemeal is the difference from traditional fantasy RPG's by the focus of it rules. One of those is smart players having their characters do dumb things.I began noticing more and m[...]Read on >>
The Villain’s Escape Kit
Last week was a good week for me I was able to shop for new books and I ended up buying Advanced Player’s Guide & the Game Mastery Guide for Pathfinder. Both are great additions to the PFRPG game system. I may [...]Read on >>
Game Design Journal: Pointman, Hacker &Thief Pt. 2
Number of View: 190In the Game Design Journal series, we’ll track my progress on creating Pointman, Hacker & Thief, a spy-themed RPG. The elegant simplicity of the Wyrm Roleplay System just astounds me. It takes al[...]Read on >>
Introductory, Quick Start, and Basic Rules Sets
This month's RPG Blog Carnival is on the subject of how to teach new gamers to play. I thought I'd focus on the utility of so-called "quick start" rules. When you have a large and complex game such as D&D, it cannot [...]Read on >>
A Little Nod to Game Designers
Game design is every GM’s secret hobby. Somehow, sometime a GM gets this weird itch to build an RPG from out of nothing. Right now I’m working on a pet project that may yet see the light of day. It is p[...]Read on >>
Game Design Journal: Pointman, Hacker & Thief
Number of View: 210In the Game Design Journal series, we’ll track my progress on creating Pointman, Hacker & Thief, a spy-themed RPG. It started out simply enough. I was chatting with Michael from StargazerR[...]Read on >>
Minions of Differing Flavors
August 19, 2010 from Critical Hits
Filed under: 4e, DM Advice, Encounter Design, Monster Design, RPG, RPG Hub
Just like the epicure needs new and exciting experiences, numerous DMs among us need new ways to mix it up with minions. This is especially true if you feel your minions disappear too quickly to be interesting or seem to[...] Filed under: 4e, DM Advice, Encounter Design, Monster Design, RPG, RPG Hub
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How To Handle Cosmic-Scale Powers
One of the many elements of PDQ that I like is that I don't have to do much math. Add up two d6 plus a modifier of no more than 6; that's pretty much it (if you use my rule for upshifts beyond +6). The Ranks [...]Read on >>
NOD Sandbox Format
I've posted about this kind of thing before, but now I'm starting to visualize how I want to format my sandboxes in future issues of NOD and future blog previews. My main concern is making the information 1) useful for a[...]Read on >>
Timetravelling squirrels with gadgets
In one forum there is a competition where you must write a game or an adventure. The topic for the competition is time and requirement is animal. At first I had hard time inventing something for the requirements, but the[...]Read on >>
