Recent content by Masada

Let me sum up... You start by introducing a situation where players are roleplaying murderous slayers. You then propose to teach them a lesson by a long campaign of greater and greater negative consequences mostly based on the idea that a game of murderous slayers isn't what you want the...

Well one aspect of most RPG games is control of items. I suppose a really good DM knows exactly how many healing potions and other misc magic items to allow in his/her game. But what if you're not a good DM yet, a mechanic helps you understand how rare an item should be. You don't see similar...

I think a mechanic is handy for creating magic items that are a bit more mundane... like healing potions, buff spells, and other temporary effects. These basically become extra abilities and you'd want to have a mechanic to make it easy to calculate without making arbitrary judgement calls. It...

Well I like the idea of showing the players that their actions have impact on the world... but I don't like the idea that you have to teach them a lesson. To me the game is about having fun. Teaching a lesson smacks of self-righteousness and tiny bit of arrogance. Not that the lesson is not...

This set up does beg the question... Who is the game for? The DM or the players? The answer is of course, both. The DM has special veto power though. No one could ask a friend to DM a game they hated. The DM would just quit and then there's no game at all. So... rather than engage in a...

I think a few Ref's have found themselves sinking under their game screens staring at the double crit roll that is going to kill a character and thought "uh oh, what do I do now?" Thus the concept behind this thread is planning for what to do when it happens. It occurs to me that this should...

Yeah, I don't think it is out of the DM's bounds to say "everyone knows a sword stroke to the throat is fatal". But of course any crazed character could ignore that. The victim dies... the villian dies... and then one player has to explain to the other player why he killed his character off...

For starters you can download the base rules for free at... Welcome to Pinnacle's Weird Website! I've been reading up on it for quite a while. It is a fast, simple system by comparison to 3.x d20, but I've not looked at 4e in enough detail to compare. It looks like a lot of fun and easy to...

#1 I agree with the sentiment that "this is too much." But... #2 I think we all sound like a bunch of old men complaining about these young gamers today... There are about 100 systems out there from no magic fantasy to brand new "Hey my belt buckle is magic" 4e. No singular system is...

For the Epic game... Perhaps it is time for a change. Have the players defend a village from certain doom in suicidal glory. Something like the movie The Magnificient Seven. Then make new characters... maybe the players with the best character suicides get to pass on some kit. A favorite...

Absolutely, Psion. I would say the Dramatic Conflict scenes in SC are a shining addition to the modern genre. I'm merely saying that if you were locked in to playing only d20 Modern mechanics you could leave out the Spycraft "good parts" and fumble through with the normal d20 Modern rules. I...

D20 Modern has its own mechanics for vehicles... So that one is taken care of. The other dramatic scenes are harder (i.e. Seduction, Interrogation, etc). If a module called for one of those, then you'd have to wing it. But that wouldn't be different for any other d20 Modern product... they...

Spycraft 2.0 is compatible with all the d20 Modern mechanics--it just has more. You could take a SC 2.0 product, ignore the extras and play it as is with d20 Modern. Any time something referenced "increase the error range by one" (or some other extra SC mechanic) you could easily just skip it...

Wild Bill Hickok was a card player... he was killed playing poker in Aug 2nd, 1876. The legend goes he drew the dead man's hand of Aces and Eights before being shot down by Jack McCall; the younger brother of a man Bill had killed years before. Who could forget "The Gambler" from the Kenny...

Hands down Spycraft 2.0. It is the most exciting modern ruleset update we are ever likely to get. Converting down to True20 is easier (for me) than converting up to SC.* *Up and down in complexity