Neitherworld Stories

February 26, 2008

The Price of Power

I’ve been reading C.S. Friedman’s Feast of Souls. It is pretty good, so far. In the world that Friedman creates, magic is powered by the spark of life. Most witches can only use their own life force to power their magic, which results in them tending to live shorter-than-normal lives. This isn’t a new idea, at all. Novels are full...

February 25, 2008

Art Linkage

Angela has started up an art blog for Necropolis Studios. Right now, it has a picture of her working on the awesome dragon she’s making and some pics that Grace drew/painted at the Con. Have I mentioned this dragon before? It is going to be amazing. The thing is big – about the size of the Wizard’s colossal red dragon...

February 25, 2008

Favored Weapons

One of those things I remember fondly from my early days of playing D&D was that PCs would sometimes end up using strange weapons (often tridents, for some reason) because they’d find some really good magical ones. Making (or commissioning) your own magical weapons to spec was prohibitively expensive, and most GMs I played with (including myself) didn’t make magic...

February 23, 2008

I Am Paladin!

And So Can You!

February 21, 2008

Taco Like a Pirate Weekend

Last weekend, I headed up to Capricon. Angela and Grace had a table in the dealers’ room. Not that my con-going experience is vast or anything, but it was the most well-organized con I’ve ever been to. The signage was remarkably good. The badges were made of hard plastic. The con suite was always fully stocked with a dozen different...

February 13, 2008

Elmer’s Spell Book: Ground Stew

The material enclosed in the box below is released via the Open Game License. Ground Stew Transmutation [Meat] Level: Sor/Wiz 3Components: V, S, MCasting Time: 1 standard actionRange: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)Area: 10-ft. square/level; see textDuration: 1 min./level (D)Saving Throw: Fortitude partial; see textSpell Resistance: No The ground becomes a morass of hot liquid, filled with savory...

February 12, 2008

DM Organizational Tool-Tip

On Sunday, Angela ran D&D… and it was a fairly combat-heavy game for that campaign (we tend to avoid combat). The first fight involved a bunch of Phantom, Sand-form Skiurids (shadow-squirrels with a couple of weird templates). Angela has taken to marking up the battlemat with an identifying number next to each opponents’ miniature. This works reasonably well, but she’s...

February 11, 2008

Winter War Was

This past weekend, I stopped by Winter War, the local gaming con. I’ve been living in town since 2001. This is the first time I’ve gone. I wasn’t actually aware of it for the first few years. After that, I’d been told that it was all historical miniatures battles (not really my thing). Then there were a couple of years...

February 8, 2008

Fairness Rules!

I’ve been thinking a bit about rules that I’ve seen D20 as not handling well (or at all): disproportionately-sized opponents, facing, grappling, mass combat, surprise, mounted combat, and things like that. (The astute among you will note that many of these are related.) Most of my thoughts have been along the lines of attempting to create relatively realistic models for...

February 7, 2008

Planescape, Revisited

I wrote this up a long time ago as potential notes for a neo-planescape campaign. I’ve added a couple notes since then. Maybe I will do something along these lines someday. Until then, maybe someone else will find this useful. It is unlikely that this will make sense unless you are familiar with Planescape.The Lady of Pain:Largely unchanged, though perhaps...