Recent content by Composer99

My condolences to Rob's family and friends, and, since he was a regular writer here, to all the folks on the EN World team. It's hard to lose a friend.

The main problem, by my reckoning, is when your game design ends up not matching the way the majority of your players want to play the game. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the majority of D&D players want to play D&D as a game of Big Darn Heroes, doing Big Darn Heroic things. To the...

Speaking of tragic backstories, I'm playing right now (we're paused while someone has a must-take call), and we just came up with the idea of a slaad adventurer. Their birth made them a murderer and an orphan all at once. Tragic!

D&D - 4e or 5e - or a 5e-like such as Tales of the Valuant or A5E. I've run a 60+ session game for 5e, and played in 60+ sessions of 5e and 4e, and enjoyed them all.

Which is why no one in arts or history uses the term to define distinctive periods in time that - oh, wait, yes they do. All the time.

To my mind, the turn of the century is suitable demarcation for "modern" in RPGs. Here is what I mean: Just as, say, musical historians use the year of Johann Sebastian Bach's death as the demarcation between Baroque and Classical periods in European art music, even though it is of course a...

Re: WHFRP - so it is! It's interesting that both systems, despite having very different vibes and indeed design goals, have functionally similar mechanics serving relatively similar purposes.

I'm mostly thinking that it's easier to keep track of? Since hit point totals are now staying the same, though, there's every chance player characters could run down their total of "lives" much more quickly - depending on how many they're assigned to start with, of course. In both cases I think...

Filled it out, happy to help!

I wonder if, instead of a large, hard-to-conceive-of number, you could, say, go with a game statistic. Call it Fate, call it kismet, call it "plot armour", call it whatever you like. Each player character begins with a certain amount of Fate; in honour of cats, let's say 8, so that you have...

I have a few suggestions, OP, which I'll summarise as bullet points and then elaborate on. Sorry in advance if I'm duplicating any advice! Don't Worry About How Things End Practice The Fundamentals Shamelessly Steal Ideas Reward What You Want to See Make Sure Your Players Are Having Fun Don't...

Apropos of complexity, I am not so sure that the pendulum, as it were, has swung away from complexity that much. Mid-to-high-complexity games, from D&D to Pathfinder to Warhammer, still have massive player bases, after all. Shadowdark has been pretty popular - but so have Daggerheart and Draw...

To my mind, money in an RPG is a tool to facilitate any or all three of: Score-keeping behaviour (numbers go up big! Yaaay!) Giving the players interesting decisions to make. Helping the world feel lived-in, alive, like a place that exists independently of the gameplay. The more you want to...

Just so I'm clear, are you complaining about spell saving throw DCs being missing? The saving throw DCs that you find in a big red text box at the bottom of the class board?

Hit points are the worst game mechanic except for all the other mechanics that have been tried from time to time.