Neitherworld Stories

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.

June 23, 2008

Public Service Announcement

Since I know that I have several readers in the Illinois/Indiana area… This weekend, Angela and I went to visit the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, in Center Point, Indian (near Terre Haute). It was pretty awesome. The place takes in exotic cats (mostly tigers, lions, and pumas – but there were also leopards, bobcats, and servals) that are abandoned or...

June 19, 2008

4e stuff

It looks like I may run Keep on the Shadowfell for Jeff, Doug, and Pat. I’m pretty stoked about it, though I am slightly concerned about how three PCs will fare in an adventure designed for five. This is a really good summary of the paradigm shift between 3e and 4e. If you haven’t read it, do so. This is...

June 18, 2008

4e: GSL

So, Wizards released the GSL. I’m not sure I see why anyone would use it. I haven’t read through it in detail, but it doesn’t seem to actually grant any worthwhile rights. The OGL was arguably worthwhile. You agreed to abide by WotC’s restrictions. In return, you got to use a whole lot of content more-or-less as you wish. The...

June 17, 2008

4e: first time playing

Last night was our regularly-scheduled Morrow Project Game, but George was out of town. Instead of forging ahead and then trying to reintegrate George to the ongoing game (which he doesn’t make easy), we decided to give 4e a spin. There were only three of us, so it wasn’t going to be a full-fledged group or anything, but it was...

June 16, 2008

4e: Dreadblade?

A long time ago, I was talking about revising the Hexblade from the ground up… essentially, I did so (and called it the Dreadblade), but I don’t think I ever published it in any form. The class power-structure was too funky – it was, essentially an entirely new subsystem like those on the Book of Nine Swords – or the...

June 16, 2008

Update

Sleepy. Went to Duckon this weekend. Angela and Grace had a table in the dealer’s room. I had a good time, but the dealer’s room was slow, business-wise, for everyone. One person I spoke to said that he did about 1/3 as much business this year as he did at Duckon last year. The gaming track was pretty sparse at...

June 11, 2008

Nobilis

I think I mentioned earlier that I was at least thinking about playing in a Nobilis game. Well, I am. Playing in one, that is. I suppose I’m also thinking about playing in it… or writing about… or writing about thinking about… or… Yeah. We’ve met four times. The first two were devoted to group character, Imperator, and Chancel creation....

June 10, 2008

When you’re good…

In my Monday night game, my PC has played a very successful game of chess. The game uses Storytelling/WoD rules. Game mechanically, we just treated chess as Int+Academics rolls. My die pool in that is 6. Pretty good, but far from awesome. The thing is, I’ve rolled it twice for playing chess – and got amazing levels of success (4...