Neitherworld Stories

May 5, 2008

I which I offer a preliminary criticism (or two) about 4e encounter design…

I appreciate the fact that Wizards, in making 4e, took a long, hard look at encounter design and found it lacking. I’ve written before about how big a difference numbers make in 3.x – a group of PCs against one powerful enemy has a disproportionate advantage due to the per-round limit on actions. This could make climatic fights against the...

May 2, 2008

Licensing issues

Wizards just posted a Game System License FAQ. I’m not keen on them abandoning the OGL, though this allays a few of my fears. I’m still worried about just how restrictive these licenses will be, though. Will non-fantasy games need to refer to the PHB for character creation rules? If so, that will be a problem.

April 30, 2008

Supervillain Concept: Mr Twist

As I mentioned, Nick is planning a supervillain campaign. I’ve been brainstorming, and I’ve come up with a couple concepts that I thought were cool, but which I don’t want to play for whatever reason. Here’s one: Mr. TwistThe Articulated Man Villain-type: Brutish thug Powers: Inhuman athletic ability. Low-end super strength. Twisted regeneration. Background: Mr. Twist received his pseudonym before...

April 30, 2008

In the spirit of the Velvet Marauder…

If you aren’t a fan of the Velvet Marauder, you should be. Nick (who is gearing up to run a supervillain campaign) is a fan, and he’s created A Villain’s Life – the blog of the second Doctor Cataclysm. Check it out.

April 29, 2008

GM Tools

Printable Graph Paper: Here or Here. Because you can never have enough. Freemind – Mind-mapping software. Angela recommended this to me for creating flowchart-like-things for planning game sessions. I haven’t tried it out yet. Maple – a document organizer that includes a word processor and built-in databasing allowing you to connect documents with images, web pages, and such. I haven’t...

April 25, 2008

Nostalgia and Ingenuity

Last night, in the final session of our Gygax Memorial 1e AD&D game Jeff has been running, we finished clearing out the moathouse near Hommlet. Up until last night, out performance had been kind of lame. Last night,I think, we got into the dungeoneering mindset. We set an ambush. We used decoys. We took advantage of those few tools we...

April 23, 2008

Thoughts on 4e

As more information becomes available about 4e, I predict: I will enjoy designing things in the 4e system a great deal. I may well enjoy running 4e more than I do 3.5. I will be incredibly frustrated by what I will perceive as arbitrary restrictions if I ever try to make a PC.

April 22, 2008

Cooking With Magic II

Basic: Reduce PersonA small person needs half as much food and water to sustain himself as one of medium size. This has obvious benefits from a food-conservation standpoint. It also has benefits for the frugal arcane gourmet who has limited access to large quantities of high-quality ingredients. Intermediate: Gentle ReposeThe benefits of being able to perfectly preserve a creature’s corpse...

April 22, 2008

Flaws in Game Design

I tend to be a fan of a particular game-mechanical trick that first (to my knowledge) showed up in TSR’s old Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) game – that of spending experience points (or their equivalent) for temporary power boosts. I’ve often thought that one good way of making veteran-types characters would be to allow them to more cheaply buy higher-level...

April 21, 2008

Filler

I realize that it has been a while since I last posted. Work has been eating my brain, and I haven’t been thinking too much about gaming stuff in the last week or so. I promise to post this week. Really. In the meantime, go check out this post of Ben’s at ars ludi. It gets to the core of...