Neitherworld Stories

April 17, 2007

“The Great Clomping Foot of Nerdism”

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this lately, and its relevance to rpgs. For those of you afraid of following links, sf writer Mike Harrison has declared worldbuilding to be dull, unnecessary, and futile. My thoughts? First, what he has to say is about writing – and reading – not about roleplaying. He claims (note that I did not...

April 16, 2007

Funky Mechanics, revisited

A simplified summary of this Funky Mechanic System that I was obsessing on last week, which I hereby dub the FM system: Each skill/ability/whatever has one or more pools of dice (d6s). Each pool of dice represents an additional level of mastery of that skill. When you roll the skill, you roll each of your pools. You take the highest...

April 16, 2007

Class Creation Workshop Part II (Martial Artist)

Some refined thoughts on the Martial Artist (with some notes toward the Ascetic): HD: d10BAB: BestGood Fort and Reflex saves. Poor Will save.Skills: 4+ Int bonus/level (skill list unfinished, but close to the Monk’s) Weapon Proficiencies: Simple + Monk Armor Proficiencies: none Class features by level:1. Improved Unarmed Strike (bonus feat) Martial Focus Focused Strike +1d6 Unarmored AC bonus2. Martial...

April 10, 2007

Funky mechanics

In case the two people who read this have been wondering, I’ve been popping in and out of town a lot lately on business, which has cut into my posting rather dramatically. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to change anytime soon, so I will have to adapt. (Actually, Statcounter tells me that I have significantly more than two regular readers.) Anyway,...

April 6, 2007

D20 Core Class Theory

My recent martial artist/ascetic musings have me thinking about the role of core classes. Recently, Wizards seems to have been developing very niche core classes (Dragon Shaman) and core classes that are more efficient mixes of archetypes (Duskblade) than you can normally get by multiclassing. I wonder how much of this could be handled by designing core classes to be...

April 3, 2007

Class Creation Workshop

A few weeks ago, I mentioned some of my dissatisfaction with the Monk class. In the meantime, I decided I’d do something about it. I’ve been working on splitting the monk class into two separate classes: one which focuses upon martial arts and one which focuses upon contemplation and mysticism. The two will be designed to multiclass well together. For...

March 26, 2007

Real Magic Items: The Magic Item Compendium

So, despite not really being able to afford it, I picked up the Magic Item Compendium this past Friday from Dragon’s Table. (…which apparently has a blog. Who knew?) I haven’t read through the entire thing in detail yet, but what I have read is pretty impressive. Here are some of my initial impressions: New Item Types(…which may have been...

March 23, 2007

d20 Herbivores: Part IV

Enjoy. The material enclosed in the box below is released via the Open Game License. Steel Horse Size/Type: Large Animal Hit Dice: 4d8+16 (34 hp) Initiative: +0 Speed: 40 ft. (8 squares) Armor Class: 17 (-1 size, +8 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 17 Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+12 Attack: hoof +7 melee (1d6+5) Full Attack: 2 hooves +7 melee (1d6+5) and bite...

March 22, 2007

WoAdWriMo update

It looks like Swamp Castle might get put on the the backburner for a little bit in favor of a goblin-centric adventure that will serve as a lead-in to another project. This isn’t an abandonment of Swamp Castle… or WoAdWriMo. I hope that the new adventure will be a part of that… and if it gets finished before June, I...

March 19, 2007

Random Encounters

So, Angela has been running this game in which I am playing a Dwarven chef. She has been making her own random encounter tables. When I say random, I mean random. Last night’s random encounters included: A guitar pinned to a tree with a rusty knife.A field of strawberries.An abnormally large (~1ft long) cicada.A satyr walking down the road carrying...