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Archive for August, 2010
Bring Some Luck to Your Dice
Are your dice unlucky? RPG players, do you have trouble rolling critical hits? Game Masters, do your NPCs die without having a chance to react? Do your monsters get slaughtered as you roll below 5 every time? I may have an answer to your problems – this may be just the thing for you… Dice [...]
Opportunity Actions: Hybridizing Gameplay
It’s tough. People’s schedules just don’t always line up the way we’d like them to. People move. People get married, have kids, and other things that make getting together less and less possible. So, what do you do? Many groups call it quits after they find they can’t get together once every week, month, or [...]
Put your hand down and play
A few weeks ago, I was playing in my bi-weekly 4e game. (Wait, is bi-weekly every other week, or twice a week, I can never remember…let me try again.) A few weeks ago, I was playing in my every-other-week 4e game, when one of the common complaints about 4th edition became clear to me. It [...]
Opportunity Actions: What I Look for in an RPG
There are a lot of RPGs out there. That much is clear. The question I’d like to take on is: Which one(s) would I play, and why? There are a few criteria by which I will judge this: Theme/Genre Character Building Mechanics Innovation Theme/Genre When we talk about theme, we find the basis for the [...]
Bringing New PCs into an Existing Group
About two weeks ago I was talking to Ben over at Ben’s RPG Pile and we decided to co-write an article outlining a variation on the cooperative party building method. What follows is the result of our collaboration, in which Ben did most of the work… Thanks Ben! – - Hello, My Name is… New [...]
What’s in a name?
I hate coming up with NPC names; I have trouble doing it without the names sounding forced, which tends to break the mood. When I try, I come with names like Jandor Ravenwing and Eldar Strombridge or some such. Names like this serve their purpose, but I feel pretty cheesy saying them. When I trying [...]
Opportunity Actions: Character Optimization vs. Storytelling… Is This Really a Fight?
In a recent post over at Temporary Hit Points, SarahDarkmagic, sort of in passing mentions the conflict between Storytellers and Optimizers in character design. This gets me thinking. Why is there such a difference between storytelling and character optimization? The First Problem: The Argument Let’s start by defining the conflict. Optimizers want to get the [...]
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