Recent content by atom crash

I've enjoyed them all so far. Moorcock's book is basically his own version of John Carter of Mars; Kuttner's book is reminiscent of Howard's Conan stories. Moore's Black God's Kiss is one of the few sword & sorcery tales with a female protagonist, and I especially liked it for that. I've found...

I've been reading a lot lately, something I haven't had an opportunity to do since getting married nearly 2 years ago. Yay! I'm working my way through Paizo's Planet Stories line. I've read Black God's Kiss by CL Moore and City of the Beast by Moorcock. I just finished Elak of Atlantis by Henry...

After playing around with several different iterations of the healing surge for 3.5, I've finally settled on this one: Each character gets (2 + Con mod) number of healing surges per day; each one restores 20% of max HP (round up to the next whole number). Using one healing surge requires a...

it is entirely possible that the material has been delivered to meet the printer's deadline but actually won't be physically printed for some time due to the printer's schedule. Printing houses work for a number of publishers. AFAIK WotC does not have its own dedicated printing house whose...

Yay! A double post! Stupid computer!

Then why shut down the whole site? Ordering on the web store is automated, yeah? Except right now no one can do it, whether they care about 3.5E or 4E or My Little Pony. Paizo is potentially losing money right now by having the whole site shut down. They certainly aren't making any money off...

I truly hope this is all about a software upgrade. I wanted to spend some money at their web store today, and now I can't. I'd hate to think that they've shut down their entire site because they're making some decision about 4E.

I'm a bit concerned that adventurers are going to be accumulating so much cash that we need to add something like astral diamonds to the rules. What is so expensive that they'll be buying? It wouldn't be added if it didn't fill some specific need (or perceived need). In 3E, adventurers...

I agree. With the one caveat that I think PCs get too many healing surges and are therefore probably more resilient than I'd expect, I dig these three 4E-isms. 4E Action Points look a lot simpler to implement than earlier versions. I like Action Points as presented in Unearthed Arcana, but...

The other night I made several spreadsheets, using various formulas I was tinkering with, to get something close to what I wanted for second wind/healing surge, and it occurred to me that I was making things way too complicated. Simplify, simplify, simplify. I wanted to give each character a...

I've always been dissatisfied with the disconnect between combat and the rest of the game in 3E/3.5. When we game, the DM (currently that's me for the D&D game) typically describes the scene and presents NPCs to interact with, which the players do, talking to NPCs and each other in character...

As long as PCs receive magic items they don't want or will eventually tire of, there will be magic item trade of some sort. PC1: "Who wants this necklace we found in the owlbear cavern that allows the wearer to understand the chittering of squirrels?" PC2: "Not me. Just put it in your backpack...

I've been looking at 4E previews of healing surges and second winds and thinking of how to implement a similar version into my 3.5E game. The mechanic in the original post tends to allow the PCs to heal a good portion of their HP after a battle once per day (with the ability to try again, but at...

I do not plan to play 4E at the launch. My gaming group has been playing in a continous campaign for the past few years -- it's often slow going with a group of working 30-something professionals with other time constraints, including one player with a kid and another couple planning a wedding...

I've always assumed class names were something that players use to describe their characters, but not something characters might use to describe themselves. And in that case, something generic works best. For example, I might have a character named Thimbold who is a fighter, but he certainly...