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I'm running a game right now. We're using D&D 3.5 rules, but this is an opinion question so it should be independent of versions. An Assassin is trying to stir up trouble in a mining community, to enflame frictions between the miners and the iron-workers. He snuck into a smithy and added salt...

Once upon a time I wrote a Superhero game. Never published, but it was a local hit. In that booklet I included a section on running a game, Let's see what I can recall from memory. Rule 1: Shut up! You know more about the adventure/module you're about to run than the players do. Keep it...

My last session? Like a song ;) Specifically, "I've been working on the Railroad, all the live long day..." The Dm complained, in character, that ours was the most chaotic group he'd seen. Not in terms of alignment, but in terms of group dynamic. Translation: "You won't do what I want..."...

I started buying mini's way back in the 70s, when they first became available. I generally prefer metal to plastic. Cardboard was never a contender. For scenery I use a number of sources: The aquarium section of the pet store has things like roman/greek columns, bridges etc. There's a...

Sorry. Duplicate post

To be fair, I kind of trashed that Mercurial module in other ways. Right after the party left our first meeting (with each other and the new manager), we learned that there was a price on our heads. It listed us by name. My character quickly realized that there was only one person who knew...

Oddly, I used to sort of pride myself for creating what I called "Module Destruction Alerts". Example: Playing Shadowrun, we were in a module called Mercurial. The plot was that we were hired to bodyguard a rock star until her contract with her current manager expired. She wanted to sign...

My own thought on the meta-gamer: A micro-version of that is the classic "Check the Chest" scenario. The party Rogue has the skills needed to check the treasure chest/hidden compartment for traps, and to open it. Everyone else stands clear, to avoid the area-damage that some traps trigger...

Well, I have to admit that I'm a "Rules Lawyer" of sorts, but I try not to be disruptive. When a question comes up I'll explicitly ask, "Permission to rules lawyer?". And my DM(s) and other players know that I'm as likely to argue that the rules play against us as they do for us. So I try not...

I've had the "Killer Friend" in games. They're a self-solving problem, when they're that blatant. The players get voted out of the group pretty quickly. Not the character, the player. We learn, pretty quickly, that their next PC will behave the same way, because it's a player thing, not a...

This is a sort of counterpart to the Adversarial DM discussion. What traits would you say define the "Adversarial Player"? I've seen two flavors of this. Some player seem to play as if they were in competition with the other players, and strive to make the most powerful character. I had a...

I'm detecting an interesting twist on this topic: I see the "Adversarial DM" as one who will change the encounter/setting (sometimes on the fly) to make things harder for the PCs, often maliciously. Some have suggested that a "Good DM" should change the encounter/setting to make it better...

Adversarial DMing? When the DM sees his role as being an adversary of the players. I have a tale of what I consider to be the epitome of it. A DM had planned an adventure for his table. It was a raid on a stronghold. He, with the help of a friend, planned who was on guard at what shift, and...

This going to sound odd, and I promise we came up with this idea before the Pandemic. There's a plague, known as the Fairy Plague. It's been known before, but it's back with a vengence. It's called the Fairy Plague because there's something called Fairy Fruit that occasionally shows up in...

I presume you're suggesting the Rogue is attacking an Ethereal fighter. The answer is No, they don't ignore the armor and/or shield. First, the Ghost Touch weapon can't attack to the Ethereal plane, so they can't make the attack in the first place. Second, if they're using a Force effect...

I started that Katana thing out in response to the discussion on what makes steel. It isn't the other metal alloyed with the iron, it's the carbon. And yes Japan had to get their iron from iron sands and smelt them with charcoal fires. Their pattern welding techniques produced a magnificent...

Try to hit a home run in baseball using a wiffle-ball bat. It's a fraction of the weight of a regulation bat, so you can get it "off your shoulder" that much quicker, and you can swing it about as fast as your hands could move empty. Maximum "V" in that MV^2 formula. You gonna' knock 'em out...

The other aspect of Mithral or Titanium as a weapon is actually fairly obvious: They're light. If I'm depending on something to deliver kinetic energy to do damage, whether on a broad face like a club or a narrow, focused area like the edge of a blade, it has to have weight behind it. A...

I found myself getting really ticked off and frustrated. Almost walked out, except that I'm the host. Yeah, it's a semi-virtual game, but I have the battle mat and miniatures on my table, and set scenery and positions for everyone. Our game (3.5) world has been described as fairly hard core...

It depends on which edition you're looking at. In 3.*, the ones I was comparing, the general rule was that a given spell or effect couldn't stack with itself. Thus, for example, a Ring of Fire Resistance couldn't stack with a Resist Energy - Fire spell, since they do the same thing, and the...