Neitherworld Stories

October 13, 2006

d20 Tweaking: Dragons

This thread over at EN World is commenting on a recent article at the Wizard’s web site by David Noonan. The bit that I found interesting about the article – and the thread – was the belief that dragons-as-sorcerers is too complex and doesn’t fit the concept of dragon’s well. While I like the draconic connection to the sorcerer class,...

October 12, 2006

Background, revisited

So, a month or so ago, I was griping about my resistance to writing a background for my Exalted character. The character’s name is Hijiki. He and his water elemental business partner, Fluidity of Truth, scavenged shipwrecks and other sources of undersea wealth… and then Hijiki became one of the Solar Exalted. Other than a character sheet (which, for an...

October 10, 2006

d20 Tweaking: The Hexblade

The Hexblade is a base character class introduced in the Complete Warrior. The basic idea of the class is a primarily martial character with some arcane abilities – most notably the ability to call down a curse on its foes. I like the concept. Unfortunately, I really dislike the execution. His supplementary powers are of very limited use. The curse...

October 9, 2006

Why are there ability scores?

On occasion, I like to think about statting out various fictional characters in RPG-terms. One frustration I often have with this most geeky of passtimes is that, in most RPGs, a character’s capabilities are well-defined across all areas. In fiction, this isn’t the case. Unless it is a defining characteristic of a fictional character, you rarely know how strong that...

October 6, 2006

More from the “Campaign Ideas I’ll Probably Never Use” file

Another D&D campaign setting idea, this one combines Fallout and the Underdark: An eon ago, there was the Cataclysm. We only have the stories to tell us what happened. Some say that wizards probed too deeply into the nature of magic and that something in the nature of the world simply snapped. Others say that there was a war in...

October 4, 2006

A Milestone

There comes a time in every gamer’s life when he kills his first Tarrasque. Well, maybe not every gamer. In any case, last night – for me – was that time.

October 3, 2006

Great Cake

See it here.

October 2, 2006

The Ultimate

So what is the ultimate d20 gaming accessory? Jon, alongside whom I play with in Jeff’s game, has these nifty plastic frame thingamjigs that you can place on a battlemap. They are the outlines of effects of various radii. They are extremely useful when you don’t want to have to figure out the size of an effect in the middle...

October 2, 2006

I always hated being the banker in Monopoly…

EN World has been pushing this Fantasy Money thing hard, billing it as the ultimate gaming accessory. Essentially, fantasy money is a bunch of bills in denominations like 5cp or 100gp or whatever. It is Monopoly money for D&D. This strikes me as the worst idea ever. Part of it is that I don’t like to worry about piddly sums...

September 29, 2006

Fortune in the Middle

I’ve been thinking a lot about the skill-based spellcasting method for d20 that I discussed in an earlier post – in particular, the manner in which I suggested applying metamagic in the comments. This amounts to a sort of hybrid fortune in the middle mechanic. The idea is that you’d declare the spell, roll the dice, and depending upon the...