Search results

I would agree with this. Wizards has the name recognition that their books are on the shelves of every bookstore which means they can rely on huge print runs with stores carrying their inventory for them; that is a common and lucrative business strategy. As bookstores have died, that strategy...

The first time pushcow showed up, the half-giant barbarian rolled a 20, 18, 13 (or thereabouts) and the wannabe knight rolled a 1 on the charge. Both were pretty fun events.

Two quick posts soliciting feedback about game design issues. The first is trying to distill combat movement into its simplest forms as I try and develop tactical combat without being grid-reliant. The second is about different approaches on magic items.

I wanted the players to feel like they were beginning in a podunk, and the campaign began on festival, so I introduced them to a little something called "Pushcow." It is a competition to see how many feet you can bull rush a cow over three attempts. The first roll you can charge and get a bonus...

I predict 5e will have a much longer play test cycle than 4e did with a fair portion of it being "public." The 3e play test cycle was (I believe) three years with more than year of it well known and regular tidbits given out. That generated huge good will but was only tenable because 2e sales...

Include: The math. People have griped about 4e's commitment to the math but I think it does a greater service than disservice. It is easier for the GM to fix a +/- 2 error than a +/- 8 error. Exclude: Powers. They were a neat experiment, but I ultimately am not a huge fan. They vary so greatly...

Thanks for all the hard work to those folks leaving D&D today and best of luck now and in the future.

One of the virtues of 3e class design (and 2e kits) is that they provided bundles of powers and within those bundles you could tuck little gems like "trackless step" or other features that players wouldn't necessarily go out and purchase with resources. I feel some of that was lost in 4e and...

I like that a lot (probably because I like formulas). The main issue, which the author notes, is that you need to know ahead of time what your game will be about because you can't really change your maps after they're developed. I suppose the formula could be changed around to P(DN) = DN - H and...

Flattening the power curve. An idea for flattening the power curve with re-rolls instead of numerical pluses.

I agree. Dungeon in particular really created (in my mind) the adventure path. Now it is hard to envision a large budget adventure that doesn't intend to be a piece in a path. That is significant. Also in my opinion, those years of Dungeon and Dragon provided the highest overall quality of...

In honor of the summer solstice, a post about my setting's calendar and how it shows up in play.

The interesting thing to me about the results is just how *different* gamers really are. The plurality winner coming in a 17%? The top three results coming in at under 50%, and those top three are about as different as you can get. Even the range from top result to bottom was pretty tight.

At this point, I'd play anything without a steep learning curve. This means anything 2e and after or modern variants of older editions that tend to smooth things out and build on more modern conventions. It isn't that I'm not interested, it is that I don't really have the time or motivation to...

Another +3 (despite the continued non-showing of subscriber-dom...) Time to spread the xp.

A veritable desert of imagination.

Ian McKellen Patrick Stewart Liam Neeson Stephen Fry Morgan Freeman Basically, I think it'd be neat to get that many powerful voices at the same table and listen.

I always intend to design a setting that will be long lasting and can maintain many campaigns without revision, but it rarely happens. Ultimately, during play, I realize that the players crafted characters they genuinely care about and every session expose them to death at my hands. To hold back...

Update 3/21/2012. It has been a while but I figured I would update this thread to be a complete repository of the project. I put Runeward on hiatus until I see how 5e goes, but there is a mostly finished alpha draft available on the site. I am wrapping up some parting comments on the alpha draft...

I appreciate the "germ" aspect of ideas and don't want to trounce on anything. The 'germ' phase is my favorite phase. What I want to know is where you are headed; what is the payoff for tracking and dividing all these new things? I'm more than willing to do a little math if the payoff is worthy.