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They were musical wizards in 2nd Edition, when I fell in love with the class. Back then, their inspiration abilities were kind of useless, because the situations where you weren't trying to win surprise or losing surprise were rare. In 3rd edition they lost the ability to cast fireball, but they...

That is quite a wish list. Some of these may prove difficult to market, though I think this is one way that even an established company can take advantage of Kickstarter. They can establish an actual market for the product beforehand. The turn-based isometric RPG was supposed to be dead, but we...

That is interesting. I don't know that I'd accuse Gygax of being lazy so much as slapdash. He read deeply, really went to the well, which is something you can't say about a lot of people working on RPGs these days. I give him credit for that. But then his own work strangely distorted his...

I do raise an eyebrow a bit that they've taken a generic Latin term for spider and made it the name of a very specific type of monstrous spider. I realize that D&D has a history of nailing down what is meant by some formerly vague mythological terms like kobold or goblin. They even specified the...

My own campaign setting is a sort of elaborate joke on the fact that Faerun is more-or-less Europe, with Zakhara as Araby, Kara-tur as the far east and Maztica as south America. So I set my campaign on a newly discovered continent (North America) called Draconia, because it's where old map...

Once upon a time, in the real world, there arose a new class of poets known as the Goliards, which blossomed in the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe. They were trained as churchmen, but the good spots in the church hierarchies tended to go not to the most talented, but those whose families were...

Okay. A sharp disincentive to multiclass. Of course, I have faith that my fellow gamers will have an FAQ out any day now on how to multiclass without hosing yourself. I mean, just because the system was set up by professional game designers doesn't mean somebody can't exploit it to hell and...

Just to be clear... it appears that your ability score increases are tied to your class levels, not your character level. "At certain levels, your class gives you the Ability Score Improvement feature." So, if you're a Barbarian 3, and you choose to switch to Cleric at 4th level, you don't get...

I'm currently deep in a HackMaster 5e game, though I will get the starter set and decide from that how much and how soon I want to invest in the new system. It may be that our HackMaster group would enjoy trying out the starter set adventure. I didn't actually put any money in 4e until it was...

Well, I certainly won't be jealous if you make the switch. Back in the days of 3.5, I used to use HeroForge to generate my character sheet and then tape the weapon block from E-Tools over it. I'm glad to see so many options opening up now -- the more the better. If you're the same guy I've...

I work on the Pathfinder version of sCoreGen, the distribution site of which was listed above at The RPG Engine. I am a big enthusiast of character generators and other computer aids for roleplaying games. You may remember me from my Star*Forge and SavageForge chargens, which have helped...

I prefer to separate the debate about which system we should be using in real life from what we should be using in games. What matters in games is different from what matters in real life. The real world's game scale is wildly inaccurate and inconvenient. People in a fight don't stand 5'...

Although the connection between westerns and planet-hopping sci-fi go way back, Firefly did carve out a special niche for western motifs in modern science fiction, and Dawning Star availed itself of that and I'm sure it occurred to them that this would appeal to the fans of Firefly. I'm not...

I hope the words "Savage Worlds" or "Modern20" are involved.

What about Monks? They get a Flurry of Blows, after all, and are liable to stack Two-Weapon Fighting on top of that. And they aren't just going to be using it for damage -- with Improved Trip and such abilities they can make a lot of use of those extra attacks. But this makes their turns take...

It's not actually a HeroForge mod, though the character sheet form was ganked directly from them. The idea is to create a character generation engine that can be adapted for the needs of various d20 sub-systems and is relatively adaptable to the needs of a particular gaming group. Pathfinder...

How do you know? My copy of the Alpha 3 rules don't mention it, but it doesn't mention a lot of things you're supposed to know to use the standing rules for. I need to know what's Hoyle because synergy is already built into my Pathfinder CharGen spreadsheet.

I have a Pathfinder RPG chargen out right now, to help facilitate the playtesting and also as the working ruleset for the development of what I hope to be a general purpose core d20 chargen. http://chargen.motime.com/ It's a work in progress, so feel free to try it out with your favorite...

Here's an update for you. The current version of Pathfinder sCoreGen includes NPC classes and stat blocks. As I GM I find this kind of thing makes my life a hell of a lot easier, so I expect it will help facilitate your Pathfinder playtesting. FATHER MOREHAMMER Male dwarf Adept 3 LN Medium...

I will at some point put in a stat block generator, since that's what I found most useful for generating NPCs. A spreadsheet helps tremendously. I know people do stat out NPCs by hand, but they must spend a lot of time doing it. Also, I suppose I should enter the NPC classes from...