Search results

I agree with this stance to a degree. Not only is your background dependant on the particulars of the setting, but often, most of it just doesn't matter over the course of the campaign. Just as I wouldn't expect to be able to walk into a city and have an in-depth conversation about life with all...

I agree with this. In the beginning of a new campaign, too much background in a character can stifle creativity. Like real people, characters are far more interesting when you learn something new about them every so often. You should have enough description of the character to play them as...

Getting players to give you backgrounds doesn't always necessarily suit your purposes as a DM. I think it's important to acknowledge that what you're really asking your players for are adventure hooks, or complications/interesting wrinkles into future adventures. I dislike questionnaires, as...

Microsoft Word for my campaign notes. Adobe Acrobat for .pdf files. The calculator tool to track hit points (especially for solos), if you count that as an application. Windows Media Player for music. Mozilla Firefox to find images, or to pull up youtube for random silliness or music that I...

Not quite what I had in mind, DragoonLance, but it's a neat read anyway. Let me share with you some more of what I had in mind--why I think the concept could be neat and worth trying to work out. First off, I wouldn't want to make it as complicated as creating gestalt characters. I don't...

I've been working on companion characters a lot lately, mostly as a method to patch parties that are small or have a role uncovered. An idea occurred to me, one that I'd actually like to see in play some time. Elite monsters are (theoretically) supposed to function as two standard monsters in...

I, for one, am glad that random rolling isn't the standard any more. Not because I inherently dislike it or anything... I prefer for characters to be designed rather than left to chance. One player might get their highest score around 13 and another could have their lowest score be a 15, and...

I've done this too. Back when I started fleshing out my very own homebrew, it was 1990, and the D&D players in my area were in a schism about editions. In order to accommodate both editions, I decided to do two separate continuities to represent different editions. My 1E game took place in...

Not only does the idea of finding and killing an undead make narrative sense, it's pure RPG gold. Instead of just being something bad that happens or a challenge to overcome, it's a hook that leads to further adventures. Consider the poster XPed for this idea. Furthermore, I would stick to the...

Well let me give you a bit more detail so you can see if it's closer to what you have in mind. First off, the one-shot was set in Hammerfast. I just got the product recently, and I dig the idea of getting the map of the settlement. We ended up using that to track position of individual party...

This is exactly what I have started doing as of last week. My regular game was on hiatus since a few of my players were out of town for Easter, so I ran a one-shot at the FLGS. My big incentive (besides meeting some new players) was to try out my quest-based XP only idea. I printed out the...

Generally speaking, I prefer a game where human characters are the norm, where human nations tend to dominate the campaign area, and where non-human races are at least given a nod towards being unusual. The single biggest reason is because I find that the stereotypes (or archetypes, if you...

That's what common sense would say, yes... But there are enough miniatures out there with dynamic poses that I could see some players arguing the point. I personally think that a good general guideline would be to assume that whatever direction the face of the miniature is actually facing is the...

Probably not. I used to use facing all the time in 1E and 2E games I played, but when 3E hit and dropped facing, it didn't take me long to realize how much more I enjoyed the game without it. I suppose I could go either way, assuming that the system was written from the ground up to accommodate...

1. The short answer is that because someone that gets to make these sorts of decisions decided that deva couture should be consistent and instantly recognizable. As far as within the logic of the setting... It's probably something that we should get creative about. :) I suppose that it's...

Since I've been DMing 4E, a newly emerging tradition I'm doing is to update a classic 1E adventure to 4E, largely because almost none of the players have even heard of it and they're still fun to run. My 4E players ended up loving Ravenloft. Less so Tomb of Horrors. :) They seemed interested in...

I'm in Psi's situation with an old Vampire game. In one of the LARPs I played in, I ended up getting to be prince with a 13th generation Brujah. I ended up being the longest-running prince, and the storytellers actually seemed surprised that I played the role like I thought a prince should be...

I'm pretty strict about adhering to the rules most of the time (some 90%-95% or so). There are several reasons for this, although you should realize that your mileage may vary. My play style isn't the One True Way or the "best" for everyone or anything like that. First of all, I want the...

This is exactly the sort of product I had in mind--in fact, I already have several companion characters designed, statted out from levels 1-10, and include personality, goals, and tips on incorporating them into a campaign, including why they would join a party and under what conditions they...

I've used companion characters quite often, especially to deal with "cleric syndrome." (That is, players that hate the leader roles, and therefore, the group lacks a leader.) What I think is really neat is that it gives players the chance to try out a new character type for a session or two...