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I was designing powers for Elden Ring monstrosities, picturing an epic, 60-foot lunge coupled with the swing of a flaming, one-ton axe, or something like Godrick's magical flamethrower stemming from his grafted dead-dragon-head. I realized that these powers would require multiple actions (in...

Lowly Tarnished, the Erdtree has revived thine soul yet again, to gather the Great Runes and restore the Elden Ring. But many steps make a great journey, and the Shardbearer to whom thine fate leads remains indomitable, lest ye reclaim lost runes and turn them toward the ends of Grace. The...

I'm setting up a dungeon crawl one-off and want to offer some pregenerated characters to reduce setup time. They'll have a touch of room for customization, so I'm hoping I can get away with some generic pre-gens and not, you know, 21 different sheets to proofread. My first three shots at the...

You've just charged into the market square, eager to show the townsfolk that you're not afraid of the bridge troll there, and that they can count on you when needed. However, the bridge troll seems keen on keeping its career change to market troll, and its oversized forearms and blood-tipped...

'Tis the season in which everyone becomes a bard: merry singing, gay dress, lifting spirits. So it's a good time to ask, what do you think a "bard" should be, now that you've been one for a day or more? My favorite bard from memory was a witcher, less the juicer/monster hunter aspects. He was...

I was happy to house-rule D&D (3rd) back in the day. It was kind of fun, actually - a little tweak here, another there, until I had the game that ran like I wanted it to run. I didn't (that I recall) complain about how broken polymorph was, or how grossly overpowered the cleric was, or how...

I'm running two games with different RPGs and had a thought: I can increase my prep efficiency if I have only one setting to develop instead of two. This can extend to PCs in one game becoming NPCs in the other. But what if one set of PCs gets really involved with the PCs of the other game...

I'm reading a post that talks about levelling up/skill up/what have you, and seeing some algebra involved: at level x-1 you need x experience points to do (some cool thing). Now, this process is probably written out in plain language or found in a table, so there's no actual Solve For X...

You're playing an RPG that provides a la carte character options: any PC can learn magic. any PC can use weapons or armor. spell and weapon damages generally cap at the same level. there is a decent selection of non-damaging spells, some of which create effects that make specialists feel silly...

Another DMing adventure is on my horizon, so I'm wondering several things. Which 5e rules are optional? Is D&D 5e any lighter in rules than 3e (as advertised)? What rules should be memorized, and which are an acceptable look-up? But ultimately... How many rules does D&D actually have...

My eyes are on the vestigial elements of D&D 5e (and not on the playtest packets, because I don't like playing alphas): Flaws, Alignment, Ideals, (Personality) Traits, and Bonds. Is OneD&D (ODD) leaning into these? Will they become integrated parts of the game? Or conversely, will they get...

A Lord of the Rings-sized campaign history. Dimmers on the lights. Fingertip access to several seasons of Game of Thrones soundtracks. There are all sorts of ways to get players into their characters' heads, but what rules does your game use to support immersion? Should immersion be part of...

Mooks are supposed to die quickly and painfully. They make homicidal PCs feel better about themselves! So to get the killin' in, without wasting time on mooks, what do you think about this system: PCs get three combat action/choices: Attack: kill a mook, but take damage if it attacks...

I was paging through my PHB (c)2000, enjoying the PowerPlays - from the Pages of Dragon Magazine (how did Dragon Magazine have min-maxing ideas before the game had been published?) - when it occurred to me that a sacred cow died in that book. They had removed the THAC0 mechanism. And I ask...

Sample scenario: my game provides two low-level spells that cause damage. Fire does physical damage while Stun does mental damage. Physical damage is by far the most prevalent, so most combatants (animals and monsters included) have physical protection that reduces damage. Mental protection...

It came up again: a PC with two weapons wants to do two-times the damage. This time, I didn't think about the rules-answer, I wondered about the real life answer. Is someone twice as likely to die when getting jumped by a thug with two knives? Twice as likely to get cut? What if the victim...

I have a question for all of the skill-focused RPG players out there: what would you expect from a skill called Willpower? I thought I'd give it some practical uses: defending against metaphysical attacks, recovering mana. But those are pretty specific, special-use cases. What does Willpower...

Ah, character creation: it takes the whole first session, there are too many options, how to multiclass, how to optimize, what should my backstory be, I just died so now I can't play again until I make a new character . . . Free character creation isn't always easy on GMs either: how do you...

It's getting late. We just got our new quest, and it seems that the bandits we're supposed to intimidate (kill) won't be in their hideout for long. But we're hungry, getting tired, and once the sun goes down, it gets pretty dang cold around here! Do we wait until after breakfast, make...

As I was escaping an ancient shrine set deep in a crevice the other day, I found a small tunnel that lead upward and promised to let me avoid backtracking through the entire cavern to exit. The tunnel was roughly carved, as though someone had cut the bare minimum amount of rock to create a...