Search results

Thom's poll of the week. In our campaign we recently had a character die. Now for some people this is a frequent occurance, and for others, it never happens. But this question is about how you would handle it in you group. How hard is it to raise the dead?

The thing that intrigues me most about this poll is the seven people who whould have an argument with their DM about the unfair encounter. If any of the people who voted that way could enlignten me as to why, I am very curious.

Thom's poll of the Week. This poll is a discussion about game balance, and what happens if it suddenly goes out the window. The full question is what would you (or your players) do if suddenly faced with a challenge that is obviously way beyond their capabilities of handling. Like a horde of...

The lack of reviews is due to a couple of factors, I think. First is people are buying fewer games. Or at least that it is impression from the recent poll on these boards. Second, there seems to be a group of dedicated reviewers (psion and the rest of the ENWorld people, the D20 Magazine Rack...

I'll also put in a voice of support for Traveller. I'm biased of course, being both a playtester and writer for Traveller D20. But I have played several SF games, and always come back to Traveller. I won't repeat the above introduction to T20, but if you come over to the COTI Citizens of the...

Thom's poll of the week. As the question asks, how aware are your characters of the game elements? This is one aspect of the difference between roll-playing and roleplaying, neither of which is better than the other.

We played through the first two sets, I played the first one and ran the second. I echo the Jester's comments. We played through them with characters that were not the designed ones, and it caused many interesting issues with the outcome of the game. If your players are not as much in love...

Ah, drat. Forgot the drama dice option. There are several names for this: Drama dice, hero points, dramatic effect, etc. This is where the player can add to or completely redo a dice roll to get a better effect. This is to allow the hero to be heroic without fear of blowing a critical dice roll...

You want a real discussion of economics here? So what becomes imortant in a society where things (like gold or gems) are very available, what becomes valuable are the rare things. Skilled Craftsmen who can turn raw materials into useful objects. Mages can do some of the this work magically, but...

Thom's poll of the week. Do you (as a DM) give or (as a player) get bonuses to your action rolls for a good description of the action. For example, giving a flourishing description of your attack gets a bonus to hit. Or a description of a clever ploy gives a bonus to your bluff check.

Hi, my name is Thom and I'm not a rules lawyer. I've found the line between a player who knows the rules well and the rules lawyer is drawn about how persistent the player is about the activity. For example, GM claims NPC gets a specific bonus to armor class based upon some magic item. Both...

This Onomastikon? It is still there as of this message posting. http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/ My other favorite place for generating names: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/

[No message]

[No message]

Drat. Sorry about the blank posts. While I agree with the policy of no magazine reviews, for the reason Psion states, I would like to suggest a way of having people recommend or review new periodicals.

Voted: Other. I'm new(ish) to D20. I (and other players in my group) find it too rule heavy and arbitrary and we end up playing it without most of the rules. D20 isn't bad, but it's not my favorite either. We're playing D20 now because we're experimenting with it while our regular GM takes a break.

Alien races. I've not seen a good set of D20 based rules for SF alien races. I could suggest a few non-D20 alien race sources (Alternity, GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 4, SpaceMaster, Torg, etc). If you want better D20 alien races, take the D20 monster manual (or the SRD), take the animals...

My question would be best for what? Each of these systems has a definitive play style which appeals to different people. I'd select GURPS, Storyteller, BESM (which is missing), HERO (which is missing) and D20 as "best" systems. But for different reasons.

I looked at the CR/ECL system and decided I had better things to do. I did a little math and figured out that "3d4 * 10 * average character level" gave the advance a level per 13.33 encounters. After a few sessions, I found that 2 or 3 encounters per session gave a good advancement rate for the...

Thom's poll of the week. How does your group handle xp awards, in general. I realise that people who play in more than one group may have different ways of handling this question so pick the answer you like best.