Search results

If you opt for "take it down a notch," one way you can get buy-in from your hardcore player is what I call the "Harrison Bergeron" technique. Challenge the hardcore player to start with a known suboptimal setup (half-orc bard, for example) and make the most of it. If you get buy-in and if it...

One vote here for old-school FASERIP-style Marvel. I played that system with my little brother when he was 10, and I'm sure your cousin is smarter than my little brother. ;) Task resolution is simple, you get to look stuff up on a colorful chart, and your stats have cool monikers like...

I spend more of my time--as a DM and as a player--at the upper end of the spectrum, and I hope the finished D&DN has more than five levels at the legacy tier. This isn't a critique of the pacing per se. As Mike points out in his column, changing the "sessions per level-up" is straightforward. I...

To me, the really clever part of the rules is the Readiness DC. I like this design element so much I hope it spreads...in two ways: 1) The idea of readiness is really useful in adventure design, but the playtest-packet adventures don't use it--or at least I haven't spotted the places where they...

Regardless of the exact technique you use, I think one of the most important aspects is to reduce NPC-vs-NPC rolling as much as you can. That can be a recipe for disengagement at the table. NPCs that your players are controlling (either through their PCs or just through proxy control) don't...

Wait, shouldn't they call it "Shadowrun Next"? :p Seriously, though, this is great news, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. --Dave. nnnooner.blogspot.com

The way I always explained it to my players was that wizards spend some of their spell prep time working on spells they can't cast yet. When you hit 5th level, you aren't casting fireball for the first time. You're casting fireball correctly for the first time. I had one player who ran with...

And to think there was a time when people summarily banned the MT for being too powerful... I've played one quite a bit--in groups that also had dedicated casters--and I think the trick to being an effective MT is threefold: 1) Work _with_ the other casters. Your spells cover their gaps, and...

A lot of the ideas in here--and the critiques--mirror WotC R&D discussions in both the 3e and 4e eras. I think a lot of players would agree that it's cool to get "elfier" or "dwarfier" over time--although there's less agreement about whether you should automatically get elfier as a consequence...

I'm typing this on my 12th consecutive Apple computer. I should be overjoyed, right? Yet this feels like a huge, huge takeaway for me. For me, it's all about the export to iplay4e. Suffice it to say that I've played a _lot_ of D&D over the years. But iplay4e was a game-changer for me. (Heck...

First, I always thought the collective noun for harpies should be an "outbreak." But that's just me. Second, to the list I'd add: n) If the table's consensus plan is to retreat, then frickin' retreat. Run away! Don't stick around for just one more round to "cover" for others. Because they...

I wrote an adventure site last year based on the Cave of Swallows. Add a treacherous walkway on the interior surface, add some beasties, and you're good to go. Here's a video clip from Planet Earth: --David Noonan. nnnooner.blogspot.com

The laudable thing is that you _know_ you're burned out. In our hobby--as in many others--you can sometimes lose the joy of what you're doing and rely on inertia to get you to the table every week (or whatever). When a D&D table "fades away," it's often just accumulated fatigue and burnout in...