Search results

I think it looks pretty good. One other common pit I fell into a bunch of times in my earlier years was to reveal the end too early. What I found was that if the players knew that the Chancellor was secretly evil and manipulating the king by, say, adventure 5 and my plot expected them to not...

My main advice would be to go simple. A nuanced and many layered plot is incredibly hard to pull off unless you have thoroughly planned everything. Just pick one simple theme and present adventures that tackle it from different angles. In this way the world will feel rich and not railroaded, but...

The core-6 are a strange beast. In older versions your abilities really didn't confer that much power. This was true even up through AD&D2nd (IMO) and only stopped being true once variants to ensure higher averages and the ability to split stats came into the game. In 3e and 4e abilities became...

I'm just thinking logistically here, but you might want to recommend avoiding d4s. At some point during its lifespan, it'll become an annoying bar of soap.

I can think of some solutions, but the bourgeois will argue they are Feat Taxed Enough Already.

The D&D game at PAX talked about fey marriage. Maybe those guys saw this coming. I think what we really need is to bring back 3e crit ranges. The Nat-20s have all the excitement in 4e, but when I was growing up criticals could often occur on a 15+.

The neat thing that I'm taking away from this article is how Monte's article trajectory is following the same path as Mearls' trajectory. That is, it begins with really general statements and observations that are hard to object to before getting into anything concrete. It was when Mearls got...

My first reaction, too, but that would mean his beard goes over the nose.

I would say that because both hit points and damage have a descriptive range, it would depend on how you chose to describe the events preceding the usage of the surge.

I have always heartily agreed with this notion but I just had a realization: I probably played Monopoly for 10 years before reading the instructions. Same for Sorry, Clue, Uno, I've never seen rules for most card games, chess, checkers, etc. The vast majority of games have rule books, but the...

I am a procrastinator as well and I find that a jump start is often a good way to change your behaviors. I say drop RPGs and really commit yourself to whatever it is you've been procrastinating on. Simultaneously, you'll learn how much RPGs add (or don't add) to your life. You'll be much better...

3-5 PCs + DM. If the game is going to be more story driven, I prefer fewer so that each can have a bigger piece of the limelight. If the game is more casual, let's go kill some stuff, then I prefer larger to smooth out random flukes that lead to a TPK. I've GMed a fair amount in the 6+ with...

I'd toss in "regardless" and "irrespective" if they banish "irregardless." Not an RPG term, per se, but they can break the flow of a session.

Plot costs: For many years I didn't have a method to bring the dead back to life. Then, one campaign focused on a dracolich attempting to come back to life to fertilize the last clutch of dragon eggs which he had been protecting for thousands of years. The villains efforts to return the undead...

The system has a large influence. In 2e it was almost all character concept. In 3e it was mostly character concept, but I'd tweak my choice maybe a bit. In 4e, optimization plays a big role in the decision. I think this is because of what the system validates as "cool." In 2e, the system really...

I made a name generator years ago in a linguistics class and I've polished it off a few times to revamp it. Someday I plan to start over from scratch because it grew too complex to easily manipulate over time. The outputs have usually at a minimum a good starting place for my fantasy names and...

I had a long standing tradition of having goofy (but not abjectly silly) names during one-shot campaigns. The rule was that the name had to sound legitimate and also describe the character. I.e. Colonel Ty Flingwar was a Tyfling Warlord. My favorite of all of them which eventually grew into a...

I generally dug the white. Then I hit refresh and the black came storming back and I realized I actually sort of missed the black. Long live black.

I should probably add Big Sur. It is one of the only places in the world with elevations above one mile within one mile of the ocean. In other words, the land rises at a 45-degree angle or better for a full mile.

I think this thread is worth giving a read over whenever you want to play a paladin that doesn't conform to stereotypes. Maybe you won't go quite this far, but it gives good fodder when you first set out from the norm. Would you allow this paladin in your game?