October 31, 2006 Happy Halloween! I have random songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas stuck in my head. I suppose it could be worse.
October 25, 2006 d20 Tweaking: Level Adjustments Over on EN World, there is a thread about the frustrations of trying to make an effective PC wizard who happens to be a Drow. The problem is the Drow’s Level Adjustment of +2, which means that Drow of a particular number of experience points are always going to be behind several other races when it comes to class level,...
October 23, 2006 I don’t need no stinkin’ dice bag… In the last post, Jeff (semi-inadvertently) reminded me that there was another picture I needed to post. I keep my dice in this:
October 22, 2006 I’m the best at what I do… In my Wednesday night D&D game, I play a druid who often wild-shapes into a dire wolverine. One of our early encounters in the game was with a dire wolverine, and it made an impression. I’ve typically used a dire bear miniature to represent him in that form, but Angela recently made me an actual dire wolverine miniature: More pics...
October 20, 2006 Character Death Character death is not something I have dealt with a great deal. In general, I’m opposed to player character death determined by the roll of a die. This is odd, of course, because most of the games I play include this as a possibility and, indeed, as the assumed method of character death. In my mind, player characters are the...
October 17, 2006 Noble Confusion Angela got me a copy of Nobilis for my birthday. I don’t know what to make of it. The book is pretty, yes. It is written by Rebecca Borgstrom, which – to me – means that the fiction will be good, the game text will read like fiction, and the game mechanics will likely be frustratingly unclear. This is, however,...
October 16, 2006 Cool GMs Today is my birthday. To celebrate it, I will spread the love. Here, then, are things I appreciate about my GMs (without their names attached): You describe short cut-scenes with recurring villains/NPCs who we haven’t seen for awhile. This effectively keeps them in our minds, so that when they do show up again it is meaningful. Your game is always...
October 13, 2006 d20 Tweaking: Dragons This thread over at EN World is commenting on a recent article at the Wizard’s web site by David Noonan. The bit that I found interesting about the article – and the thread – was the belief that dragons-as-sorcerers is too complex and doesn’t fit the concept of dragon’s well. While I like the draconic connection to the sorcerer class,...
October 12, 2006 Background, revisited So, a month or so ago, I was griping about my resistance to writing a background for my Exalted character. The character’s name is Hijiki. He and his water elemental business partner, Fluidity of Truth, scavenged shipwrecks and other sources of undersea wealth… and then Hijiki became one of the Solar Exalted. Other than a character sheet (which, for an...