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One of the hardest parts of making commercial RPG stuff is trying to figure out what's actually going on out there with the audience. If you look at the entire history of the RPG industry, you'll see the same, long, sad story: a mountain of conventional wisdom, usually backed by selective...

As a DM, 4e is all about loving the slow burn. Usually, the stress point in a 4e fight comes from a series of events, rather than a single die roll. It might end with one die roll, but you get there via a sequence of attacks and rolls. Ghouls are my absolute favorite monster type right now...

Dropping the damage to 1d4 makes the power a little too weak, IMO. I think at that point, you really have to rely on the target to make an opportunity attack to get half-decent damage, and there are plenty of situations where an opportunity attack isn't really in play. It also takes enough of...

Hey man, I don't have time for an in-depth answer, but I can at least address the basics of your concerns. Shoring up areas of the game while keeping everything usable is a very tricky process to manage. Since I'm now a designer rather than a developer, I'm not in charge of that any more, but...

When comparing at-wills for controllers, the wizard has some issues. His at-wills focus more on damage than control. The consensus is that controllers need a little more, well, control in their at-wills than we've handed out so far. Vanguard's lightning is what I'd see as a baseline controller...

Green slime shows up in Return to the Moathouse, an RPGA adventure that I wrote for Origins '08. I think you can still download the adventure through the RPGA. In the adventure, the slime is a combination trap/hazard. It makes an initial attack as it falls and does ongoing damage on a hit. When...

I thought about this a bit yesterday, and something clicked for me. D&D does rely on grognard capture, but it tries to channel it into newbie friendly avenues. Grognards want all the cool stuff they had in earlier versions of the game, along with more new stuff to play with. That's the root of...

Two words: grognard capture. It's really interesting to take some RPGs and look at their editions, from 1st to their current ones. Most RPGs follow a similar track: 1. They were introduced with relatively digestible, 64 to 128 page or so rulebooks. 2. Each successive edition incorporates more...

Someone's been peeking at the magic system I'm working on. It's actually a pastiche of Synnibarr and World Action & Adventure. I actually own the three core WA&A rulebook. I have no idea why.

I heard he's toiling away on a 1,500 page RPG system that represents a stunning fusion of Everway's tactical combat rules with the story intensive elements of Phoenix Command.

I hope it works out for you! I've been doing a lot of thinking about skill challenges for the series on them I'm writing for Dragon, and this seemed like a good place to air a few of them. I think skill challenges are a place where everyone, from staff designers to complete newbie DMs, are...

I usually use the DCs from the book, but keep in mind that I try to revolve a challenge through a number of different skills. The DCs tend to become too easy if you let the players hit on the same skill again and again, particularly if they have optimized for that skill. When I need to make a...

A good skill challenge, like a good fight, should present a number of potential outcomes and pitfalls that emerge because of the players' choices. It's all too easy to set up skill challenges like overly complicated skill checks, with the players on one side, a pile of dice rolls in the middle...

While immobilized you can still stand. For the beast you want to design, consider the following: 1. Save ends the prone condition. Nothing says that a prone creature can always stand up. 2. The critter has an at-will, immediate interrupt it can use to prevent a creature it has pinned from...

Stop attacking their AC. If your players are dropping 20s into stats, using standard point buy, chances are there are a few hideous Will and Fort defenses in that group. Nail 'em! Best of all, many of the critters that use Fort and Will attacks have nasty control and ongoing damage effects...

Man, everbody's a critic! ;) More seriously, the feedback thing is important. We're definitely listening to what people want in the game, stuff they've been excited about, stuff they dislike. When people get shrill and angry, it's very easy to tune 'em out. The thing is, someone can be really...

As someone up thread mentioned, roleplay and description are really important here. As a player, it feels a little weird to make skill checks to (essentially) decide how my character feels. You mentioned that the three contestants could have an impact on the rest of the campaign, so I'd focus...

Man, with all due respect, the more I look at those kittens the more they are seriously freaking me the hell out.

I've actually thought about it several times recently, not just now. I've been on various gaming fora dating back to Usenet. I was with Malhavoc when they went with DRM. I remember the reaction to the end of the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon magazines. The problem I see now is that...

I think there's a subtext to the 4e discussions that effectively makes analyzing the game almost pointless. Both pro- and anti-4e posters seem to have this belief that there's this war going on, and by arguing on the Internet they're fighting against the other side. It's like, if you're loud...