Search results

I think this is where some of the presentation of skill challenges has been mishandled, actually. Here's the idea: The challenge, when you're in combat, is NOT REALLY who can roll better, but who can make the best tactical decisions -- maximizing chances to hit, using unexpected powers...

I think there are places where it makes sense, but it's far from universal. When I was trying to stick closer to the core SC rules as DM, I was really struggling with some applications of it. An example: The players were in a town, and one of the things that was going on was that a house had...

Totally with you on the first point. I have mixed feelings about the rest. A lot depends upon what you value most in the RPG experience. Gamers want to know the rules so they can find the opportunities to squeeze out great performance in their characters. The encounters can become as...

I've often used this method, and it worked quite well. I also used Skill Challenges for travel/exploration, with lots of "secondary" checks to do things like avoid or overcome hazards, etc. The thing that really helped me with 4e Skill challenges was when I really embraced the idea that the...

Tanking isn't so much about taking damage as it is about protecting the squishies in the party from taking damage. In video games that's usually handled with taunts, which 4e emulated in some ways, but there are other ways -- including just being the guy in the front rank that the mages and...

falcarrion, That's awesome. Or, as my players like to say, "F*&# You, Imagination!" ;) -rg

Sounds like a lot of cool ideas. I like Paizo's cards -- I use the face cards from time to time for NPCs, especially when there are a lot of them. In one campaign, I printed paper money that I passed out in look, but that felt a bit too much like monopoly. As far as the puzzles go, I bought a...

Oooh, I'd love to see a picture! -rg

That sounds great -- a lot of the really effective uses of random encounters I've seen have had approaches like yours. So the encounters are a real reflection of the region and what's going on in it -- not just a collection of monsters that inhabit that type of terrain. And many of those...

There is to be a tradeoff when you prepare the encounters ahead of time. On the one hand, you can have a better encounter, because you've prepared it, but you also lose the tension and game drama associated with actually rolling the dice. One of the things I look forward to with D&D Next is...

In the earliest days of D&D, adventure modules came with Wandering Monster tables, meant to create urgency and risk for parties that take their time, prodding each flagstone of the dungeon floor with their trusty 10' pole. Since then, we've see the rise of Random Encounter tables used to do...

I'd be looking for ways to leave the PCs their spellcasting abilities (they're much more valuable slaves that way) and their free will (so they're still playable) but they're in a position where they CHOOSE to be slaves, at least for the time being. Hostages were suggested, but there are other...

One of the challenges you will face in your efforts to market your services through social networks is that your audience isn't the general public -- unless I'm misunderstanding (highly possible). You're a distributor, so you're doing business primarily B2B. Social media marketing reaches...

Essentially, this is what a lot of 4e was, just without the nice flowcharts. Most encounters were disembodied tactical zones. It works just fine that way. But it's also something that has been complained about a lot over the 4e years. In our home game, we played a lot of Paizo content, but...

I meant gadgets to facilitate or support play -- the same way Alea Tools' magnetic discs facilitate combat. So, the 10' pole isn't quite what I was looking for, unless your players use it to move their minis around the table. In which case you've got a really big table. But, over the...

I don't think we need to limit ourselves to actual gadgets -- or, at least, not physical ones. My column tries to be about gadgets, yes, but also about doing exactly what you've suggested doing with the dice pools from Star Wars -- stealing ideas and mechanics from other games and using them in...

Well, I think that's part of what makes this challenging. There are lots of obvious pain points in most combat systems -- fiddly bits to track, etc. But for the most part, exploration systems for our games are so abstract and high level they tend to not develop those sorts of pain points. An...

As we come down from GenCon, lets take a quick look at ideas for game-supporting gadgets that serve the non-combat pillars of our games -- exploration and roleplaying. GenCon's over. I've written a couple versions of a post-GenCon column, and each time I've ended up trashing it. Too much of...

I was there on my own on Friday afternoon at 2 -- the hours just before the actual Ennies. The booth was largely empty, since most of the display stuff had apparently made its way over to the actual event. And I was there on my own. It felt a bit like I was guarding a parking space. ;) Still...

I don't *think* I said that anyone shouldn't care about believability. My point was that healing kits are an abstraction as much as the hit point system they serve are an abstraction -- which I *do* think is a useful approach to the question. I tried to present a frame of mind in which the...