Recent content by hawkeyefan

A Cohort is an Upgrade option for a Crew Advancement. When your Crew gets enough XP, you can take an Advance. You get either a Special Ability, or you can take two Upgrades. A Cohort is an Upgrade, but it counts as both Upgrades if you select it. Alternatively, you can improve a Cohort through...

In Blades in the Dark, the PCs collectively make a Crew, but one of the resources a Crew can have is a Cohort. A Cohort can be either a Gang or an Expert. The Cohort gets one Advantage and one Drawback, or if you like two Advantages and two Drawbacks. These are tags like “Brutal” or “Loyal” or...

Just ditch the table and chairs and play on the floor!

I can suggest Blades in the Dark as an alternate game that may work if the other solutions offered don’t work for you. Blades is intended for each session to consist of one “Score” or mission plus a round of downtime. So a rotating cast would be fine. It’s also designed to require little...

Run D&D. Create a party of characters and then play those characters every week regardless of which players show up. Some players will have to play two characters on weeks where other players can’t make it.

I think the game in question tends to have a huge impact on this, as well. Campaigns are referenced in the article in the sense that "some campaigns offer a lot, some only a little" and while this is true, it seems to be a matter of preference, mostly. This GM allows this much in his campaign...

DIE is a comic book written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Stephanie Hans. It's a new take on the concept of RPG players being transported to the fictional world of their game, much like the D&D cartoon of old. As teenagers in the 1990s, a group of 6 friends vanish into the game, and 5...

I was thinking about how to possibly make 5E a bit more dangerous as it relates to PC death. I think I came up with a decent option. I’ve not yet tried it in play, but I wanted to run it by folks here for feedback, suggested changes, and unnecessarily harsh criticism! We start by removing...

This poll is inspired by the many, many threads that have brought up (or been hijacked by) discussions on the use of Feats and their impact on game balance, and the design intention of the 5E developers. Many see Feats as being a great source of options for a PC, and a great way to...

Matt Colville’s Strongholds and Followers So the PDF for the record breaking Kickstarter project is available now to backers and preorders. I’ve downloaded my copy and begun to peruse it. I haven’t read a lot of it on detail yet, just skimmed a good amount and read a few sections that caught my...

Thanks...she's a bit off as far as an actual opponent for them, at this point, so I think which one I use will depend on when and how they face her, and how the campaign goes. I'll keep those adjustments in mind if I think they are needed.

That's great! I like both versions, and the distinction by designating her as The Witch Queen in the more powerful version. I will almost surely use this in my campaign....now I'll just have to decide which to use when the time comes. It's quite a delta....we'll have to see where my PCs are at...

Sorry....that should have said "last appeared to my knowledge..." because I skipped most of the 4E products.

Sorry, that should read Snurre Ironbelly (stupid autocorrect). He's the eponymous big bad from the 1E adventure "Halls of the Fire Giant King", which is part of "Against the Giants" and all the different iterations of that module. He appears on the 5E PHB cover, actually....although I don't...

Gotcha. I use a handful of them in my campaign because they date back to my group's early days of D&D. Iggwilv, Eclavdra, and Snyder Itonbelly the fire giant king are all in my game. So far they've been in the background, so I haven't needed combat stats. But eventually, my PCs will have to face...