The Architect DM: On Magic Items – Part 1
I’m sure that magic items in D&D have been talked about for countless hours, but with Wizards of the Coast finally releasing Mordenkainen’s Magical Emporium for 4th Edition in September and my home campaign nearing the middle of the epic tier I’ve been wanting to talk about them here. The handful of times that I ran 3rd Edition D&D I was guilty of handing out items of a much higher level than the party, but I would try to balance it out with concepts like staves only having a small number of charges. The players/characters always loved it, but I would hear from other D&D players outside of the game that they didn’t like what I was doing and that they had the impression it was “contrary to the rules of the game” or something like that. I didn’t mind them much, but was very intrigued by what they were saying.
Now in 4th Edition the magic items are in the Player’s Handbook (instead of the DMG), we have item rarity levels, and the way that magic items function in the game has changed quite a bit from when I started playing with 2nd Edition. In the heroic tier of my campaign I was pretty happy with how the magic items worked out, and I even have a character in my game that is STILL wearing the Acrobat Boots he found in the very first adventure. My players really seemed to enjoy finding and wearing new magic items; many of the item types such as gloves, boots, and helmets stood out as extremely useful during adventures.
The Walking Armory Dilemma
Things started to change roughly coinciding with paragon tier when the players became much less excited about new items, possibly because they’d been playing the game for a year, began to have too many items to manage, or they were hesitant to replace items they were already using. The one thing that I did change to counteract some of these feelings was allowing the players to keep the same armor and primary weapon and simply level up the items with the characters. At present my campaign is up to level 23 and I haven’t given out a single magic item since before they hit level 20. I’ve heard one or two of my players mildly complain about it but only in the capacity that they know the rules suggest giving out a certain number of items (and that number is more than zero). [Read the rest of this article]
My Favored Enemy Is Mean People
In case anyone didn’t see the entire Internet on fire yesterday afternoon, there was an article on Gizmodo yesterday entitled “My Brief OkCupid Affair With A World-Champion Magic: The Gathering Player“. The short version of this article is that the author made an OKCupid account, accidentally met Jon Finkel (a former Magic world champion), and then proceeded to not date him – because he played Magic. It’s true, Jon didn’t really play that first date as well as he could, opting for a one-man play about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (that’s more of a 3rd date thing). Regardless, it was still all Magic that was the dealbreaker for the author, apparently so much that she thought it was a good idea to use Gizmodo as her personal Facebook page and blog about her experiences and decided to let millions of people know what a clearly bad date one individual guy is. I’m sure his self-esteem has never been better.
I’m not sure she really meant to paint Jon Finkel like a big creepy creep, but that’s the way a lot of us geeks are taking it. I’m not going to lie. I saw red and my mouth foamed for quite some time after I read this article. I am still sort of foamy. However, I’m not going to excoriate her in this here article. That would be unbecoming. Also, I think the Internet is going to do that all by itself without any help on my part.
Honestly, I’m not even sure what she was thinking. She writes for Gizmodo and does this to an epic-level gamer? It’s as if a blogger on MarthaStewart.com wrote about how she couldn’t bear to be with a guy because he ran a potpourri company.
Y’See, Theo
There was a reason MBOCAWAWCMTGP made me so furious. It reminded me of junior high school, when I had a dream about a girl in my English class in which her head and hair grew to accomodate her brain getting larger (which, naturally, convinced me I was in love). I had a reputation as a geek even back then — and in 1986, geeks were not even remotely cool yet. No, Revenge of the Nerds does not count. I wrote a note to this girl telling her how I felt. It was over the top, because I was 11 and I had a large vocabulary. I was wearing a Legend of Zelda pin on my sweatshirt the day my crush’s friend snorted an angry and derisive “NO” at me and threw the note back in my face. To this day, I’m still not sure if I got shot down that day because I was a geek. However, I was absolutely fantastic at finding people to ask out who didn’t mind using “geek” as an insult in response to my affections well into my late 20′s. These days, I respond to such things with a phrase that ends in “OFF”, but back then I felt like I had to hide who I was or I was never going to have a girlfriend.
I started using online dating services back in the late 90′s, when the appropriate way to explain how you met your date to people who didn’t have modems was “at a bar”. If you told the truth, you would have a 45 minute explanation on your hands, at the end of which your parents were pretty sure you just hired a prostitute. A cyber-prostitute. All the dating sites back then looked like visual dog-ass just like everything else, but the idea was still the same. Make a profile to describe yourself and put pictures up, message 40,000 women within a 200 mile radius, and hope that you get any responses. (My wife tells me the process was similar for women, except they got to do something called “choosing” to talk to a potential match.) I was so careful about what I put in my profile. I didn’t mention gaming at all. The only mention of computers was in my job description. I put lots of stuff about karate in there because I was sure it was normal and manly enough to attract someone. (HINT: it is not.) Fortunately, I wound up finding a nice lady on a dating site with a big nerdy streak and we’ve been married 7 years now. We even have a little nerd. I am so happy that I never have to date ever again. It sucked.
I realize now that what I was lacking was confidence. And though I’m not in the market for a date with anyone besides my wife these days, I make no bones about the fact that I’m a big giant geek. It’s just who I am. I like things the majority of the populace doesn’t. I am not smooth or suave in any way. Ironically, I am a stalwart gamer and yet I have infinitely little game. It’s OK. I get weird looks sometimes, but since I stopped trying to hide I usually find people are laughing with me rather than at me. Though I get nervous sometimes and want to try to act “normal” in social situations, I fight the urge. I’m a good person, I am just being me, and most of the time people get it. Sometimes they don’t, and those people are to be disintegrated. It saddens me that it took me this long to figure this out. I could have had a lot more fun for the last couple of decades.
Nobody Else Can Do It For You
The point I’m trying to make here is be who you are. Talk about the things you’re passionate about. Love all the people and all the stuff you want as hard as you want (within federal regulations).
Can we all improve? Sure. We can learn social cues. We can learn to communicate clearly and make educated decisions as to how to do so to different audiences. We can be open to new ideas. We can upgrade, and we can do it all without sacrificing who we are. It’s our choice, not someone trying to make us like them because they’re uncomfortable.
You’ll never be happy in a relationship if you’re pretending to be someone else. You’ll never have true friends. Worst of all, you are placing what others think of you before what you think of yourself. That’s no way to be. That puts you at the mercy of everyone else’s opinion, and everything you are fades away. Why would you take to heart the words of someone so shallow that they’d write you off instead of getting to know you?
Like, for instance, bloggers who clearly have not seen the social media responsibility PSAs on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel?
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-08-28
- Via PR: Settlers of Catan novel coming 11/15 "…a fascinating, action-packed adventure full of surprises and intense character conflict." #
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 5: OMG! I Made it!
Oh yeah, This is getting real baby!
This is the last of my autobiographical series that describes my becoming a writer and a freelancer. You can follow the series by clicking: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
Once the Plan was in place (see part 4), I started looking where I could send pitches. It was late in 2009; the economic crisis had hit the industry hard. Many struggling third-party publishers had few projects and the pay was too low for me (like 1 cent a word).
Rate aside: The rate per word (or per article) that you get paid is variable. It always starts low. I’ve worked from 3 cents a word (my first adventure) up to 20 cents for some of my most recent copywriting work. Game and adventure designs based on pitches usually pay between 4 to 6 cents a word. Rates increase when you are invited to join bigger projects with actual budget (like a WotC book or like the recently announced Marvel Super Heroes RPG).
Just don’t expect to ever become rich on this… that’s why I still have a (part time) day job.
So how did I start landing freelance jobs?
There’s no surefire secret. Were I to distill how I started to systematically land gigs, I’d bring it down to these points:
Networking with people.
I started going to Gen Con in 2008. At that time, I had had contacts with a few game designers through forums, emails and my then one-year old blog. For example, I was a regular on Monte Cook’s forums and had exchanged a few question-answers messages.
With a few, very rare exceptions, writers, designers and freelancers , if approached nicely, are easy to talk to and interact with. In my opinion, the BEST way to approach someone you admire is to go up to them, introduce yourself, and thank them for a specific product you liked. That will usually make them happy and more likely to talk to you. If you have a follow-up question that is simple enough, ask it. Engage them; make them talk about their stuff, their projects. By getting creative folks to talk about what they love, you’re establishing a great contact.
There is a chance you’ll notice they keep looking away from you, as if distracted by something. That’s because they have somewhere to be soon (or maybe you just don’t click). If they do, apologize and say you don’t want to be keeping them, and that you hope you get to talk more at a later time. It leaves a good expression and there’s a chance, if you do meet them later, that they’ll greet you as they recognize you.
Blogging also featured greatly in creating relationships with people of the industry. Late in 2007, I made a dumb post about Wolfgang Baur being the Storytelling Fluff Nemesis to my Crunchy Rules Overlord (links are broken, they come from my deleted Blogger blog). You should have seen my surprised face when, the next day, Wolfgang responded to a comment I left on one of his posts. I was delighted as I admired Wolfgang’s craft when it came to world building and setting flavour. I wanted to learn to become more like him and this “Crunch Overlord vs Fluff King” became a fun back and forth game which Wolfgang eventually won when I joined his team of freelancers on Kobold Quarterly.
Thus did I started seeing the potential of blogging, and more importantly, interacting with people from the industry.
Being nice to people always pays off.
Sending Queries
You won’t get invited into freelancing. You have to open the door and jam you foot in it with your skills and professionalism (i.e. write well, edit yourself, deliver on time and write what you were asked to write). Shortly after Gen Con 2009, I sent a query to WotC about making a D&D for kids adventure and I got a positive response to write a full outline. The idea never panned out as WotC later decided to tackle the idea in-house. But this first response gave me the positive boost I needed to keep at it. It told me that my ideas could be sold for money, provided I found myself at the right place and at the right conjecture in time.
How did I land my 1st magazine article? Very simple, I sent a “would you be interested in…” pitch to Wolfgang. He answered positively and that’s how I got to talk about mixing Skill Challenges in combat encounters back in the 2009 winter edition of Kobold Quarterly. Of course at that time, I had to learning a lesson that took me almost 2 years to fully grok:
Publishing in a magazine =/= blogging; edit your stuff, then do it again, and again. Get all the help you can.
Kobold Quarterly has high standards to get a piece published. Getting a query accepted does not mean your article will make it to print. You need to polevault over Wolfgang’s invisible quality line which keeps being raised with each passing issues. Your article is in competition with all others he gets for inclusion in the next issue. I was very lucky for my first piece to have the help of Ben Mcfarland, a veteran KQ contributor, who helped me morph my very conversationalist tone into a more neutral “magazine” voice.
Thanks Ben, I really owe you one.
Setting the Table for Success
I spent most of 2010 consolidating my non-RPG freelance projects. I spent countless hours building (and re-building) my training seminars, by far my highest paid part time gig. I also opened my own company in May and taught myself all the vagaries of billing, setting aside money for taxes, retirement, and other “fun” things like that. In the meantime, I got two more KQ queries accepted, one of which got published: an article on traps that become monsters and vice-versa in the Fall 2010 issue. The other was rejected.
The rejection was a bit painful, but not as bad as I thought, the piece was too gimicky for the magazine, maybe I should post it here.
I recall that during the fall of 2010, my wife Alex came to me and remarked that I wasn’t getting a lot of freelancing gigs vs the amount of time I had freed from my day job. She was right. At that point my other contracts and seminars were mostly set so I told her I’d initiate the final phase of “The Plan: Get (more) Freelance Contracts”. I sent about 10 pitches to Wizards of the Coast, none of them panned out. But I concentrated on getting my business up and running and stopped thinking about Wizards so much.
In all honesty, I was upset and discouraged that I couldn’t get a feet through the proverbial door. But D&D grand guru, James Wyatt, told me to hang in there… saying that he had been rejected a LOT before making it into Dungeon magazine.
Opening the Floodgates
It’s actually funny how things tumbled from there. First, I started hanging out with cool local Web 2.0 people: social media representatives for local media, tech bloggers, Tweeterati, TV show hosts, freelancers and others of that ilk. At one party, I met the host of a geek TV show and we hit it off talking about video games and RPGs. As it happens, he mentioned me in his weekly podcast; the week after I got a call from someone that offered me a regular copy-writing gig for a local workshop that manufactures realistic looking foam weapons for LARPs.
I still work for them; you can see some of my best work here and here.
Things really took off this year. I got a 3rd, very exciting query accepted for Kobold Quarterly which was just published in the Summer 2011 issue, a 4e article about playing character flaws and being rewarded for them. As my interest in small press games grew, especially with the Leverage game by Margaret Weis Production, I was invited by my friend Cam (MWP’s producer and lead designer/writer) to submit a 2000 word hack that allowed to play with Leverage‘s rules in a different genre.
I created a fantasy hack inspired by what I liked most of old school dungeon crawl… except I delivered 8000 words instead of 2000 
Cam also sent out a request for letters of interest to join the writing team of MWP’s newest RPG: Dragon Brigade based on Weis’ last novel: Shadow Raiders. After getting my response, he gave all contenders a writing test. I was asked to write, in an Alexandre Dumas voice, how to set scenes for a Swashbuckling game. I had a blast writing it. I think he liked it because I ended up writing more than 16 000 words for the game.
Of course, this was just a preview of the jackpot I would hit just a few weeks later. First, at the time I thought my chances if writing for Wizards of the Coast had evaporated, I got an email from the D&D Insider editorial inviting me (along several other bloggers and freelancers) to join their team of writers. This landed me 4 gigs: 2 Dungeon adventures and 2 Dragon magazine articles. If everything goes as planned you should see a combined Dragon/Dungeon set of article appear in the September issues and the next ones in early 2012.
After nearly 30 years of having started playing D&D, getting to officially contribute to it is such a honor. I hope I do the game justice.
Yet the biggest thing had yet to happen.
Cam (on IM): So what are your thoughts on Super Heroes gaming?
Phil: I have very fond memories of busting open TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes yellow box and making Wolverine fight Spiderman!
That discussion, initiated at an undisclosed date, eventually led me to be invited on the new Marvel Super Hero RPG design and writing team…
Brain… Blown.
The Journey Barely Begins
It took me nearly 25 years to realize I was a writer. It took me another 4 and a ton of effort, writing about a million words online, to become a better one. I made friends along the way that ultimately helped me make it in the RPG industry. Yes, I finally made it. And for a lot of this, I have you all to thank for it, through your supportive comments and helpful feedback.
Now I just have to keep on delivering. The road is not easier ahead, just more intense!
I hope you’ll get to derive the same kind of fun from what I will help create as I have with what the giants before me created.
Thanks for reading.
The Architect DM: Campaign Building
It’s good to be back! The first week of August saw us at GenCon and very happily winning a Gold ENnie award, and then in the weeks after I’ve been catching up on things post-convention and getting back into the swing of things. Lately I’ve been discussing and toying with the concept that the best world building happens through playing a campaign, and so I suggest the world building DMs out there spend less time before play and just jump into things with a published or a bare bones adventure and then let the world build from there. This also opens your game up to the possibilities for players to contribute to the world building which for me has always turned out better than I could imagine.
Now that I’ve been running my current 4th Edition D&D game for 3 years and the players are progressing through the Epic Tier, I am starting to plan ahead for what we will play and run after the campaign is over. In addition playing a wider variety of games and RPGs, I am also hoping to run a series of mini-campaigns inspired by Phil’s ideas about running a campaign like a British TV Series and his Gears of Ruin campaign posts.
The early stages of planning for these future mini-campaigns is what has inspired all of my raving about world building through play. Now that I have spent more than 3 years playing in my campaign world, it has become incredibly easier for me (and more importantly my players) to envision playing a sandbox game in the world because we already have an intimate understanding of the world. All of this brainstorming has led me to another style of running a campaign that I think could be quite fun and I’d like to explore here.
The Core + Expansion Campaign
Players often cringe at the idea of restricted choices when starting a campaign, but this concept thrives on it. Start your “Core Campaign” with a limited number of races, classes, types of items, locations and pretty much anything else you can limit. Decide what kind of story you want to tell, what kind of character your friends want to play, and then work out what kind of restrictions you should put on the Core game. Run the game with a limited plot for 4-6 or 6-10 adventures and then wrap it up. Characters can die, subplots can remain unresolved, but give a good sense of closure to the game. [Read the rest of this article]
One Late Gen Con Report
Yes, it’s been a few weeks now since the convention ended. Between some post-Gen Con business and a bit of con crud in the house, it’s been difficult to get back to the blog. But at long last, How I Spent My Gen Con.
Get Bit! Missing in Action
My one real disappointment of the convention was that the new edition of my board game, Get Bit!, didn’t get finished in time to make it to Gen Con. (I’m sure like many Gen Con disappointments, it arrived on Monday, just one day late.) Thus, there was only a single copy there for demo purposes.
I am happy to say that the game is about to become available for purchase to the public. If you’d like to get in on a great price, check out the Kickstarter by the publisher Mayday Games. The Kickstarter runs for just two weeks and ships a short time after it closes, so please contribute while you can. This new edition includes a plastic shark (modeled very closely on the LEGO shark I’ve been giving out for years) as well as revised rules, updated graphics, and still dudes you can pull the limbs off of and feed to the shark. Please check it out.
Missed Opportunities
There were a few games I wanted to demo there, but the opportunity never presented itself:
- Blood Bowl: Team Manager was the big one I wanted to try, being a big Blood Bowl fan and having looked forward to some card game implementation for a while. Every time I walked by the FFG booth during the first two days of the con, nearly everyone in line seemed to be buying a copy. After that, they sold out. I’m definitely going to grab this when it’s available for general sale.
- Super Dungeon Explore blew me away with the miniature designs on their website and was interested in checking out the game to go with it. Every time I stopped by, I wasn’t able to get the attention of anyone working the booth, and there was some kind of weird pre-order anyway, so I skipped it. Maybe I’ll give it another try at another convention.
- Star Trek: Fleet Captains was on my list because of my feelings on Star Trek: Expeditions. While I’m not generally a war game guy anymore, I’m a sucker for Star Trek, especially one with cool pieces. [Read the rest of this article]
Hints From Dire Heloise
This week, I decided to open up the floor to reader questions. I am committed to answering these in the most serious way that I can.
So, without further ado, your questions and my answers!
A pancake, made with halfling bacon.
How do you take plot points that have been scattered a bit too far out and gather them back up into a solid arc? - Jerry LeNeave
I’m glad you asked this question, because we hear this one all too often around the Critical Hits Hacienda. The trick to keeping plot points in line is not in fixing them once there’s a problem, but in proper preparation. And that, like most things, is rooted in good nutrition.
Straightforward plots generally can live on crickets and other small insects, but a really fast-moving plot will require the consumption of a weasel (or other mustelid) at least twice weekly. Particularly twisty plots need a lot of Vitamin E, as it is a natural depilatory. More exotic plots, like the European In Medias Res, will require specially processed plot foods as well as an hour every couple days under a UV light.
However, your question implies that you have an existing plot problem, and that should be addressed. You need to get your plot points back onto their nice, safe rail so they can heal before the players encounter them. There are several ways you can accomplish this. Plot points are attracted to anything shiny and new, and this is one of the reasons they go astray in the first place. Writing new characters is a good way to get the plot out in the open where you can capture it, then you can kill the character off. Be warned: sometimes this is too much for weaker plots, and they keel over and die. (Or explode.) A good, strong plot should be able to withstand the trauma of this, and you’ll have it back on its rail in no time. You can also spray yourself in the musk of a plot of the opposite sex, but this can lead to the creation of a lot of little side-plots that you probably don’t want to deal with. If everything fails – well, you need to be prepared to retcon the whole herd before they get Mad Plot disease.
With these simple tips, hard work, and a little luck, your plots will be happy through your entire campaign and the cuts of meat you get from them afterward will be tender and delicious. I don’t have time right now to go over grilling tips, but contact me privately for my backstory marinade recipe.
Non-gaming question, but how goes job hunting/full-time-dadding? - Jeff Dougan
Thanks for asking! I have a new job now with a company full of nice people. I feel like I got laid off from Mordor and now work in the Shire’s IT department.
Full-time dadding continues to be one of my favorite things to do, and I have been teaching my son the most important things in life. I believe he could disable a burglar with his foam rapier. He also wants to hear the theme to the A-Team on the way to daycare every single morning, and the theme to the Transformers movie (1986) every night on the way home. Based on this, I believe he will not be the President of the United States when he grows up. He will be the President’s direct manager.
What’s with you, ELFcookies and the color blue? - Philippe-Antoine Ménard
Back when I was still gaming with Dante and Stupid Ranger, we discovered that my brain would produce amazing ideas and my mouth would say amazing things (some of which were even intelligible) if I had eaten a large amount of sugar. At first, it was caramel filled Hershey’s kisses, which we called “shadow mana” or something else equally ridiculous. At one point, someone brought over a box of E.L. Fudge Double Stuf cookies. I disappeared half the box in the span of about an hour and found the salty taste of the cookies to be an excellent counter to the sweetness of the filling. That plus a lot of caffeine yielded some truly legendary exploits that I only partially remember. Poor Dante.
Sadly, my hardcore sugar days seem to be at an end. My current group has prohibited me from sugaring up while DMing. This is for good reason, as I simply cannot focus on anything long enough to run combat in that state. Also, it’s probably not good for me to eat 4000 calories in a 4 hour span before bedtime. After a hearty meal of pizza, of course.
As for the blue, well, it’s been my favorite color since I was little. Long before the Smurfs. Long before Avatar. Long before Dr. Manhattan or any specific portions of him thereof. You cannot blame anyone for finding that interesting. We are all like cats following a laser pointer, except the laser pointer is blue.
Why do you continue to suckle off the WotC teat when they are obviously ignorant of what gamers want in an RPG these days? - Kanati8869
First, let’s clear something up. A teat large enough to dispense hardcover books would be incredibly difficult for a human being to suckle from at all, much less safely.
You claim that WotC is “obviously” ignorant of what gamers want in an RPG. This is a very astute observation. When I attended the D&D Experience convention this past January, I had the chance to spend a lot of time with WotC’s community manager, who was very focused on making sure that every player’s needs were so thoroughly ignored that he wasn’t even allowed to carry a smartphone or writing utensils lest a concern gain any sense of permanence. I was even honored to give him his hourly head trauma so that he couldn’t remember anything.
I have several theories as to why this is.
1. WotC wants to hack into our bank accounts and convert all our money into in-game gold for D&D Online. Then it will impose economic sanctions on Activision/Blizzard, starting World of Warcraft War III. There is no reason to develop a good gaming system, all resources are devoted to brute-force-hacking passwords.
2. WotC is just the gaming division of the secret terrorist organization COBRA. Their current plot to defeat G.I. Joe involves a two-pronged plan. The first part consists of making a cruel mockery of anything Gary Gygax ever made. The second part is Fortune Cards.
3. WotC has been secretly sold to Apple, and Steve Jobs is convinced that getting people to stop playing D&D will boost App Store sales.
4. The entire R&D team at WotC has been replaced by robots who cannot love.
At this point, I cannot honestly see a reason why anybody would ever buy a WotC product, as clearly everyone hates everything about 4th edition, it is the diametric opposite of fun, and it is basically the gaming equivalent of The Situation from MTV’s “Jersey Shore”. However, the brain-implant I received when I came on staff here says I have to rescind that remark and remind everyone that the new Neverwinter sourcebook is available at friendly local gaming stores everywhere!
In the event of needing to consume a party member, which race and/or class would be the best choice (flavor, texture, longevity)? And conversely, which ones would be the worst? - Aaron R
I should say right up front that you shouldn’t expect the same kind of results when cooking adventurers as you get with normal folk. Your average person, especially a sedentary noble, will typically be well-fed and therefore fattier. Adventurers are always on the move (which burns a lot of calories) and they consume relatively little (especially the cheapskates that bought iron rations). Adventurer-meat is likely to be tougher and less flavorful. I recommend carrying several canteens filled with BBQ sauce on any quest longer than 48 hours.
Far and away the race with the best flavor is going to be Dragonborn. Some dislike having to remove the hard outer shell, but since you’re eating adventurers it shouldn’t be too hard to find something with which to crack it open. The meat is somewhat reminiscent of chicken but you can taste a spicy hint of dragon ancestry. The best cuts of dragonborn typically come from their clerics. Divine magic really brings out the flavor in dragonborn meat. You should be able to pick up a decent clerical rump roast at your local adventure-butcher for anywhere from a few silvers to 30-40gp (depending on level).
As for classes with the best flavor, it’s a little known fact that the reason arcane magic tends to make its practitioners weak and frail is because it slowly converts the wizard’s blood into teriyaki sauce. It is for this reason that Raistlin Majere of Krynn turned golden, and many an adventurer-foodie has fantasized about gnoshing on Raistlin-kebabs with a little pineapple. I know I sure have.
There’s a lot of adventure-meats that I don’t care for but a good meal can be salvaged from almost any race/class combination with the right attitude (and spices). There are, however, a few to avoid if you can help it. Elf-meat somehow finds a way even to taste pretentious, and gnomes barely have enough on each bone to be worth the trouble. Probably the worst of the lot, though, are dwarves. Don’t get me wrong. Dwarf meat can be delicious, but finding someone who can de-vein them properly is a miracle and it’s an absolute disaster if that goes wrong. It is certainly not something a hungry and desperate party of adventurers can pull off with a rusty shortsword in the dark bowels of a dungeon.
For a class that will ruin your dining experience, look no further than the Runepriest. Their meat is bitter and inexplicably full of tiny bones, no matter what race.
One of the big surprises of the season for me was revenant jerky. One would think the flesh of the undead would be vile and inedible, but it turns out vengeance truly is a dish best served cold, pressed, and salted to oblivion.
Until Next Time
Thanks for sending in your questions. I hope I’ve shed some light on these very important topics. I’ll be doing this from time to time, so if you’ve got a burning question, please feel free to contact me here, via the Twitternets, or via telepathy (best way).
P.S. my other top choice for naming this was “Dear Aboleth”.
Photo Credit
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-08-21
- From the archives:: When Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech http://t.co/k67kVBv #charchive #
- All files to run your own session of DD&D are now available on this page: http://t.co/nq7hVa0 #
- RT @ChristianLindke: Great news regarding D&D Digital Rights http://t.co/rOx3wWK #
- RT @gregbilsland: New #DDI Article by @davethegame (Rumble in the Valley) http://t.co/0hO2sef (DDI sub required) #
- Great review by @gnomestew of The One Ring RPG: http://t.co/JSqSD2L #
- The classic Ptolus setting by @MonteJCook is available in print once again through @drivethrurpg: http://t.co/nSC4b2u #
- Sandy Petersen discusses the creation of the Call of Cthulhu RPG over at @rpggeek http://t.co/BVHrR1a #
A Year at Critical Hits, and GenCon 2011
Roughly one year ago my first Critical Hits column was published. I was coming off Gen Con 2010, recently free of my duties for Living Forgotten Realms and with only a couple of brief freelance obligations ahead of me. When I hit such lulls in my freelance writing and editing work, I like to step back and take stock of where I have been, since there is often precious little time to do so in the maelstrom of juggling freelance projects.
At the same time, I had been reading and appreciating the work being done by Dave “The Game” Chalker, Phil “TheChattyDM” Menard, and all the other talented and funny folks contributing to Critical Hits. (Several months before I had even edited Phil’s short adventure in Goodman Games’ adventure anthology From Here to There.) So rather than starting my own blog, I was hoping that maybe my scribbling could find a home at their website. After talking to Dave the Game for about 22.3 seconds at Gen Con, he agreed to give me a shot and include my blog as a column.
It’s been an incredible year for me, gaming-wise. Counting upcoming projects just being outlined, I’m going to be moving soon into the 200,000 word range on freelance projects and articles since Gen Con 2010. In case you aren’t aware, that’s a butt-ton of words. I even spelled a few of them correctly on the first try. For someone who loves writing as much as I love gaming, it’s a true blessing. I appreciate the opportunities, and I want to thank Dave for giving me a forum to spill my brains into the Inter-ether. [Read the rest of this article]
Game Previews from GenCon 2011
While at GenCon this year I was floored by the amount of new games that were being previewed and available to purchase at the convention. Checking out these new games is one of the big reasons that I go to GenCon, so today I’d like to talk about some of the games that I got to demo while I was there. This post is titled “previews” because I haven’t had a chance to play any of these games in their entirety, but they all stood out to me either from before I went to the con or while I was walking the exhibit hall.
These are just a few of the games that I saw and was excited about at GenCon. The first two previews here are games that I got to play demos of and talk to some of the people from the companies about the games. The rest of the games in this post are ones that I was hoping to get a chance to play but just didn’t have the time to play or wait for a spot to open up at the tables.
Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan (Alderac Entertainment Group)
This is one of the games that I was excited for even before going to GenCon because I’m a big fan of what AEG has been doing with their Legend of the 5 Rings products, plus I love ninjas so that pretty much sealed the deal for me checking this out. Ninja is a board game that takes place in the L5R universe, and I have a copy of it here at home so there will definitely be a full review of it up in the next few weeks. The game plays with 2-4 players and allows 1 or 2 players to control the ninja and traitor as they secretly move about the board and try to avoid the samurai guards controlled by the other players. The samurai players place traps, objectives, and sleeping guards in hidden locations around the board to surprise the ninja, and every player has a small hand of action cards to add even more surprise into the equation.
Above and beyond the “I love ninjas” caveat, many of our friends (including myself) have been playing the game Letters From Whitechapel a lot recently and I was even more excited to see that Ninja appears to share many similarities with that game. I’m happy to see that Ninja is supposed to play quicker than Whitechapel, and the game also doesn’t end if the ninja or traitor are found but instead they get to kill and/or flee from the guards and still attempt to sneak away.
Food Fight! (Cryptozoic Entertainment)
The stand up displays for this game were immediately eye-catching. By eye-catching, I mean it featured badass looking food wearing combat gear and wielding guns! I jumped into the demo of the game knowing nothing more than that it is a card game, and I was pleasantly surprised once we got into playing the demo. Our first play through involved a dealt out hand, choosing which cards to play for either Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner, and then flipping up cards and battling against other players that chose the same meal that you did.
Food Fight’s cards are all extremely stylistic and, if you’re a fan of the game’s particular kind of humor, incredibly funny. If you think things like Private Pancake, Corporal Taco, and Sergeant Sushi all decked out in army outfits are funny, then this game is perfect for you. However, as we played that first hand I couldn’t help but find it to be a mediocre game at best. That’s when the demo changed completely. Once we’d played one hand to learn how the basic game played, we were each dealt a hand of cards from which we drafted one card and proceeded to pass hands around the table in the familiar card drafting fashion. I can understand why they were demoing the game without the drafting at first, but at least one of our friends ONLY got to play the game with a non-drafted hand and that confuses me. Once I started to draft the cards the game immediately improved for me and I understood the card designs and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more. [Read the rest of this article]
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