Category: Uncategorized

July 8, 2008

WALL-E: Postapocalyptic RPG setting?

This post contains spoilers for WALL-E, Pixar’s new movie-thing… and won’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’ve seen it. Angela and I saw WALL-E on Friday. As we walked out of the theater, she leaned over and said something to the effect of, “…and they all died within the first year back on Earth.” I pointed out that...

July 3, 2008

4e: Wizard

One of the things that bugs me about the wizard is how non-combat magic is an entirely separate system than combat magic. Here is a very quick draft of a possible ‘fix’ that I thought up about 10 minutes ago: Feat: Utility MageHeroic TierPrerequisite: Wis 13, wizardBenefit: When you take an extended rest and you have access to your ritual...

July 3, 2008

4e: Running the game

Last night, we began playing through Keep on the Shadowfell. I was running the game. Pat was playing Bloodaxe Axebeard, a dwarf cleric. Jeff was playing Owen, a human wizard. Doug was playing Morgan Ironclaw, a Dragonborn Paladin. We only made it through the first two fights… there was a lot of chatting and discussion, which is to be expected...

July 2, 2008

Yesterday: Not as planned

…but it turned out OK. I had a wee headache in the morning that got progressively worse throughout the day, so I ended up going home early. I took some painkillers and a nap. In the meantime, the Nobilis game was canceled because the GM (HG?) was ill. I’m enjoying Nobilis. It works as a system and setting better than...

June 28, 2008

4e: GSL weirdness

The Game System License has a what appears to be a big hole in it. Certain monsters, such as the Beholder and the Displacer Beast, (and possibly other non-monster things) are excluded from the SRD. Before 4e, these things were considered Product Identity (despite the fact that D&D’s claim on the displacer beast is tenuous) and were not included in...

June 28, 2008

Five monsters for the price of one…

I was thinking about 4e’s encounter design, and something hit me that may well be applicable in several sorts of games. In 4e, the base assumption is that you’ll have one foe per character. This is modified by a bunch of things – minions count as multiple foes, elite creatures count as two, and things like that. I find this...

June 27, 2008

Big Kitties

Over at the Necropolis Studios Art Blog, Angela posted some pictures from the Exotic Feline Rescue Center.

June 26, 2008

WoAdWriMo2

The Worldwide Adventure Writing Month approaches. Will you stand bravely and face its challenge, or will you cower before it? The choice is yours.

June 25, 2008

4e: Game prep

(Note to my players: you can read this. It won’t have any spoilers.) Preparing Keep on the Shadowfell for running three players through seems fairly straightforward. Cracking open the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it looks like the basic idea of encounter design is to pick an xp total for an encounter and then spend that xp budget on monsters and traps....

June 23, 2008

Running a pre-published adventure

In preparation for running Keep on the Shadowfell, I ran a Google search for actual play reports. It seemed like a good idea: find things that worked well (or poorly) for others who ran the adventure. So far, I’ve gotten some pretty good advice and ideas out of the deal.