RPG MUSINGS Play The Game You Want To Play

Lost Skills: Perform

I’m an old dog: it’s hard to teach me new tricks. For example, take a recent 4e character I made. Lute playing is a huge part of my character concept, and I instinctively wanted to quantify his lute-playing expertise as a stat. But it turns out there’s no spot on the character sheet for musical [...]

Opportunity Actions: National Geographic Is Your Friend!

Given the hubbub lately over the impending end of Dungeon and Dragon magazines as compiled issues, there’s a void being left behind. Where can we truly go for great content, all in one place, that isn’t just a series of web articles that now have the luxury of being able to change the amount and [...]

The Tableless Future of D&D, and Why It’s Not So Bad

DDXP is this week, the first major gaming convention of the year in terms of Dungeon and Dragons.  The past few years, DDXP has been the first time the public gets to see what WotC has planned for release over the next 12 months. The next big campaign settings are announced, new books, tools, and [...]

The Recycle Bin – ME2: Waist High Walls Grant +2 to Initiative

There’s a lot of shooter video games out there these days, Call of Duties, Gears of War, Uncharteds, and yes, even my beloved Mass Effect. Most of these use some sort of cover system popularized with the original Gears of War. Gone are the days of just jumping around like a coffeed up Tigger in [...]

D&D Tactics

There was some interesting chatter on Twitter on Wednesday January 19, 2011 regarding tactics. @newbiedm mentioned wanting something akin to the “Player’s Strategy Guide” that Wizards of the Coast released, but for DMs. Basically, something that told DMs, “Okay, your party has x, y, z characters, here’s how you challenge them!”

As I wrote to both him and @SarahDarkmagic, I don’t believe that something like that is appropriate. I think that the key to challenging PCs in a 4th Edition D&D encounter is building the enemy “party” just like a player party would. What you want to focus on is the tactics within the enemy party, rather than build ways to stop the players’ characters.

Opportunity Actions: Drinking And Gaming

For your enjoyment, I’ll start this discussion with a video (WARNING: Video is French with English subtitles) Farador D&D – Tom et ses chums Uploaded by drukskill. – Independent web videos. If you hadn’t seen this before, just know that this is one of the modern classics in the nerd wheelhouse. All should see it. [...]

The Recycle Bin – ME2: All Your Base

(Note: I’ve kept this post spoiler free, for those of you still playing or who have not yet played) Something I’ve always wanted to do was run an entire game located in one city.  Everything, from level 1 until the level cap would take place in some sort of steampunkish fantasy version of New York.  [...]