Recent content by Herpes Cineplex

I seem to remember seeing rules in the DMG (it was in 3.0, and probably is in 3.5, too) covering the chance that a magic item would have some marking/inscription/whatever that would give PCs a clue about what its function was. I also remember something in the crafting rules that gave the...

That's where I come at it from, too. I've actually never seen this whole people-playing-CN-as-CE thing that everyone else is talking about. Anyway, what's the old bromide? "Alignment is not a straitjacket"? I tend to believe that the C in CN can encompass lots of different attitudes, and a...

Basically, yeah. It's the easiest and most successful technique around, I'd feel silly if we didn't use it. We do other stuff, too (communal character generation, restrictions on what types of characters are acceptable, etc.), but the bottom line is always that the party stays together...

We played a Scarred Lands campaign a while back where the GM incorporated Monte Cook's "Banewarrens" adventure. At the end of that, we returned to Shelzar and shared the story around a little. I seem to remember that our monk (from the library at Lokil) had commissioned a small book about it...

It's never really qualified as a "problem" in our group. Typically, what happens is that we take some time (one or two sessions) just for character creation, with lots of "Hey, what do you think about this feat?" questions from the people who feel like other people may have a better grasp of...

Our group experimented with something like this for a d20 post-apocalyptic game. (I think we were swiping the node-and-link-generation part of an indie game called Verge, but I might be mistaken about the system's name.) It was kind of a fun activity: each person at the table would take turns...

I'm firmly in the "if there's no important reason for focusing on the travel itself, don't bother" camp, both as a player and as a (very) occasional GM. That stuff is so incredibly boring to me that I welcome the opportunity to elide it. Typically, what we'd see in our games is a "how long...

Same here, although my nostalgic fondness is tempered by how intensely I disliked the system. Admittedly, it was a good fit for our group in high school (providing enormous incentives to develop house rules and tinker with the mechanics until they suited us better), but it was also enough of a...

I think we played one campaign where the characters went from 2nd to 11th level, which was pretty much the highest-level, longest-running D&D game we ever did. Two things in particular make it unlikely that we'll ever surpass that record: 1. No one likes fantasy settings enough to want to run...

CAN Nite Owl help the mysterious and heartbroken Silk Spectre? WILL The Liberation of Tenh return to delight us all? STAY TUNED, True Believers...time will tell if DORKY PHOTOSHOPPED COMIC BOOK PANELS can rouse (contact) from his dreamless sleep in the fathomless depths... -- the stars are...

-- you know you're not supposed to get him mad, right?

The last time we ran D&D, I was playing a wizard and was (after expenses for spellbooks, new spells, material components, etc.) perpetually broke. I tried really hard to get our GM to let me make a little money doing spellcasting for pay whenever our party was spending some downtime in the city...

And in my experience, "Act Quickly" seems to work just as well in the long run as "Plan Completely" anyway, so you might as well go for fun. I mean, even the best "Completely Planned" things we've tried in game have always (ALWAYS) had some complication arise which requires a large part of the...

No one I play with cares. That said, most of us do speak differently in character: usually not through a silly voice or an accent, but more in the choice of vocabulary or the pitch of the voice or the facial expressions used when speaking. But it's not a requirement, and no one complains or...

That's really cool, Wormwood. I like those house rules quite a bit. .... Hey, look behind you, a three-headed monkey! (*YOINK!*) -- now i can use your awesome house rules to look clever in front of my friends ryan