September 4, 2007 Facelift Mark I There will probably be tweaking… and there’s a good chance I might scrap the design altogether.
August 31, 2007 Some people like to buff? This morning, I read the D&D article on PC Roles. It looked at a Fighter 4/Bard 7 under running under 3.5… and how the PC was relatively ineffective. The character, Nils, could increase his party’s effectiveness though bardic music and spells, but that took actions in which he wasn’t actively accomplishing anything on his own. The 4e solution to this...
August 30, 2007 Facelift This blog has been in need of a makeover for a bit. Some of the links are out of date and there isn’t a good way to sort posts by label. I ought to have a link, at least, to my OGL content. I should also add some graphical elements – perhaps even an avatar of sorts. I may do...
August 30, 2007 More external effects of the 4e announcement I’m finding a lot of people writing thoughtfully about the d20 rules and how they might be tweaked and/or rewritten. Some of this is speculation. Some of it is wishful thinking. Regardless, I think it is, in general, a good thing to think critically about rules and whether they serve the purposes of fun. I’m enjoying reading EN World’s 4e...
August 27, 2007 Dynamic combat I was reading this thread on EN World. It is about how movement might be encouraged/more important in combat in D&D 4e. I’m not going to speculate here on 4e mechanics, but this idea did get me to start thinking about how to encourage dynamic combat. Part of the goal is to get people to use their environment to their...
August 24, 2007 Abandon All Hope… and stop having fun This is a continuation, of sorts, of my last post. Let’s assume that the primary point of gaming is to have fun. You might disagree with this, but if you do… well… then what you and I do when we game are wholly different activities. Anyway… In any situation, some things can make a gaming experience more fun and some...
August 24, 2007 Playing in the Sandbox Three weeks ago, Jeff blogged about sandbox play, and I said that I’d address it here at some point. Between then and now was a New Orleans trip, moving, and GenCon. Now, I am trying to get caught up. The basic idea of sandbox-play is that there is a world around the PCs and that the PCs can go anywhere...
August 23, 2007 GenCon Report Part IV: other random stuff I forgot to mention that I also picked up a copy of Fractal Mapper 8.0 – hopefully the learning curve won’t be too rough. Overall, GenCon looked to be very well organized in advance… but not so much on the ground. Fortunately, when I got there, the line was negligible. When I checked in, no one provided me with any...
August 22, 2007 GenCon Report Part III: Loot Stuff I got at GenCon: Some pretty d20s (gift from Angela): Some ‘practical’ dice from the Chessex booth: A d6 from the Hinterwelt guy:An ugly d12 from Zach (I tried to pick his ugliest die): (and, for Jeff, the die that Zach identified as his most “metal”:) Squirrel Attack (free from the Hinterwelt guy – William? – at the Ennies)...
August 21, 2007 WoAdWriMo: Day 82 Yeah. It has been a while since I worked on Goblins of Gourm. I took a break in order to move, go to New Orleans, and deal with some personal stuffs. Getting some distance from the material was probably a good idea, though. I’m still fixing up my new place… and I have a huge gaming reading list that I...