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I am preparing for a Star Wars game right now (well, right now, I'm procrastinating on preparing for my Star Wars game by writing a message board post about how I'm preparing for my Star Wars game, but you get the idea). Here's some of the stuff that I've done so far. First, I ask myself what...

With a death ray? I hope its with a death ray.

Locks are more or less a social construct, anyway. No lock will stop someone determined to gain access to whatever you're locking, and most locks are so easy to defeat as to be laughable. I suspect that, in the worlds of D&D, secret doors are much the same. The ordinary person, upon discovering...

Something that I've done in the past is this... Give out one general primer for all the players to look at before character creation begins. This is a single page with some interesting information on each of five or six geographic areas (that characters can choose to be from). And a paragraph...

My own armor as dr variant uses the following values... Cloth Armor - 1d4 Leather Armor - 1d6 Hide Armor - 1d8 Chain Mail - 2d4 Scale Mail - 2d6 Splint Mail - 2d8 Banded Mail - 3d4 Half Plate - 3d6 Full Plate - 3d8 Light weapons deal 1 die of damage, one-handed weapons 2 dice, and...

FRIENDLY RIVALRY The competition between these two characters pushes both of them to achieve new heights. Whenever the two characters are engaged in a competition with each other (who can get to the top of the mountain first, whoever can kill the most orcs, etc.) each character gains a +1 bonus...

I have run and played in games that have used a variety of dice rolling protocols. Players tend to feel as though they have less control when someone else is doing all of the dice rolling. If you want to run a game that causes the players to feel quite a bit of stress and that things are out of...

There is an old game from Game Designer's Workshop called Dark Conspiracy that also uses sequential careers to determine your character's background and abilities. It was originally published in 1991 and a second edition was released in 1997. Fun times, you may want to check it out.

I think that one (possibly even the biggest) way in which game design has definitely improved in is organization. Some of the earliest rpg books come off almost as stream of consciousness writings, with rules inserted into the text as they occurred to their creators. As those rules got...

I typically keep all the characters in a campaign within one level of each other, if not the same level. Usually, if a character dies and the player wishes to replace him instead of returning from the dead, I make that character one level lower than the highest level character in the group...

In my experience, there is usually a line. But it is not always clear, or consistent between players, or groups or different days. For some players / groups / sessions, the players take great care to be true to their characters despite whatever the players might know. For other players / groups...

I would love it if all creatures were playable. I really don't see that happening, however, so I'd be satisfied with a large selection of the most 'normal' monsters being playable by default, and there being a module or supplement with guidelines for making the rest of the creatures 'playable'.

For types I through III D&D, my sweet spot is 17th - where wish becomes available as a real player resource. I am not familiar enough with type IV D&D to be able to say.

I often do this. In one game, the party had a lot of trouble deciding what to do, so I temporarily inserted an NPC who offered advice and direction... Unfortunately for the party, this NPC's advice and direction pretty much always led to the worst possible outcome for the party. They eventually...

This is pretty much where I'm at on issues of sexism and other types of bigotry in an imaginary setting. I find most things in such a context to be entirely acceptable, but I understand that others do not. I think that, with issues such as these, the best thing that we can do as consumers and...

One of the iterations of d20 house rules that I've played around with had a somewhat more fluid initiative system. Your actions, or those of your opponent, could modify your initiative for the next round. For instance, taking electricity or cold damage could reduce your initiative in the...

Have you ever been on the internet before?

For the most part, I allow everything by default, including third party, net-book, or home-brewed materials, so long as I am supplied with a copy of it. If something turns out to be disruptive or not to work out in play the way that we expect it to, we make changes or creatively interpret that...

I carry quite a lot of stuff. In my left front pocket, I carry a key chain with several things attached. - A tiny 1 LED light - An emergency whistle - A small butane lighter - A micro pry bar - A key chain sized multi-tool - An emergency seat belt cutter / glass breaker - A small...

Meh. Nothing is so bad that some humor cannot be found in it. People who get worked up over jokes made in bad taste are the ones causing this to be an issue at all. I'm sure that PAX will be much better off without those people.