Articles by Dave Chalker
TheGame is Dave Chalker, a lifelong gamer, freelance game designer, Master of Arts, and son of Jack L. Chalker. Dave is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Hits and so runs the place. He is the envy of geeks everywhere because he's dating e, the Geek's Dream Girl. (Email Dave or follow him on Twitter).
Origins 2009: Monte Cook "Being A Better Game Master"
(Monte Cook ran a seminar about being a game master, and decided to mostly take questions from the audience and run off those. Here are my notes from the event).
When asked to sum up the essence of being a game master, Monte often responds with something smart-alek like “everything I know could fill up a book… and so I did and WotC published it.”
The most important thing is that the game master is the facilitator of the fun. He is not responsible for everyone having a good time, but that is the main concern (and that includes for themselves). A GM sets up situations in game and outside of game so that everyone around the table can have fun.
The big difference between a table top RPG and a computer RPG like WoW or Fallout 3 is the game master. There’s an actual intelligent person facilitating things and keeping things moving smoothly and the way it’s supposed to, so the role is a key one.
However, the whole experience is not just the responsibility of the game master: a lot of it is on players as well. If you show up at the game table with a character that doesn’t fit the setting or doesn’t get along with the party, you’re not playing the game right. Just as the GM is supposed to provide the adventure and setting so everyone can work together, the players need to do their part by providing a character that goes along with that. [Read the rest of this article]
4e Lite
…Because I dare not call it “old school.”
I think you could take 4e and remove the powers system for a “rules-lighter” experience. Here’s roughly how it would go: [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: Game Fuel Results Vary Edition
No matter how much Mountain Dew Game Fuel you drink, this may not happen to you. Also, anybody think it’s kind of weird that the woman changes into a male orc? (Via Extralife)
Inq. of the Week: Challenging Skills
On the occasion of E3, we were all “video-gamey” and asked who won the battle for the public’s digital hearts by wielding the most dreaded weapon of all: the multimedia presentation. The Xbox 360 successfully won among you, the readers, by capturing 38% of the vote by announcing the magical technology of Project Natal, the zombirific southern sequel Left 4 Dead 2, the stabbing Assasin’s Creed the 2nd, and others. Second place with 29% was those of you who don’t give a crap, and third place went to Nintendo’s M-heavy lineup.
Last weekend, as I’m oft to do every two weeks or so, I ran the next adventure of my campaign. Within it, they once again faced down a great wyrm black dragon that blames them for the death of her black dragon son (whom they did kill, but he was kind of a jerk in the first place). Earlier on, when they were but in the Heroic Tier, they fled from the menace by ducking through forests, and fleeing on horses to a safe area. Then in this last installment, the dragon found them flying through the skies aboard a flying Dwarven pirate airship (what else?) and threatened to destroy the ship if they didn’t toss the heroes overboard. Despite now being Paragons, they still found their powers mostly useless against the creature, and scrambled to improvise other alternatives aboard a flying pirate ship. Firing at the creature’s wings, slowing it for a round, ordering the pirates into a better sense of organization, searching the hold for something useful, and finally, firing a Deva riding a barrel of rum attached with a chain to an anchor at the dragon using twin ballistas.
What do both of those encounters have in common, other than the same foe? They were both done as skill challenges. (In similar fashion to Mr. Mearls’s method of throwing a famous demon lord at your players at level 1).
As I’ve remarked before, skill challenges have been something of, umm, a challenge for many DMs and groups. It doesn’t help that it had to be heavily errated for the numbers to work the way they were intended, and everyone seems to have an opinion on them.
Thus, I’d like to find out that opinion, especially towards our skewing heavily towards liking 4e audience:
Loading ...My sense overall is that either they fall flat and it’s just kind of boring, or they’re pretty awesome without a whole lot of room in between. But if you have stories of either, feel free to share them!
One Year Later for 4e Podcast
As mentioned previously, 4e has been out a whole year, and we’ve looked back on what that year playing it has been like.
Well, we’re not the only ones looking back on that year. A whole pile of bloggers and podcasters, including the likes of At-Will, Dungeonmastering, ChattyDM, Gamer’s Haven, Sly Flourish, and yours truly, got together to ask James Wyatt and Chris Perkins of Wizards of the Coast about various topics related to 4e. This all was hosted and put together by Jeff of The Tome Show (who had some questions to ask himself). The end result is quite informative, ranging from game design topics to community topics.
Check out the Tome Show today for the One Year Later podcast, and listen for my always sexy voice about halfway through (and the questions asked by everyone else, if you’re into that sort of thing) as I ask about how the D&D and RPG communites have been changed by the release of 4e.
My favorite answer might be from Chris Perkins talking about 2e. If you’re a fan of that edition, you may want to avoid it…
The 5×5 Method
When working on chapter 2 of my D&D 4e campaign (in the paragon tier, chapter 1 having encompassed the heroic tier), I kept running into roadblocks when trying to map out the next major arc. I had left a number of dangling plot threads that didn’t feel right to abandon (that the players were just getting into, as well) so changing gears majorly didn’t seem like the right thing to do. At the same time, I wanted to give the arc a bigger scope than the specific mission-based adventures that I had been sending them on, as well as giving them more freedom to roam about the world I had spent 9 levels introducing them to. I also wanted to let them take more direct control of where they wanted to go next, but still script things out enough to let me plan ahead (i.e. not go full-on sandbox quite yet).
I developed an answer to all of these in what I decided to call “The 5×5 Method.” I don’t think it’s anything ground-breaking, nor is it going to work for every campaign. However, I was asked to share, and here it is. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: Instanced Drinking Edition
A very funny video of a Chinese man’s life seen through a WoW lens. Even though it is in Chinese, it’s still funny and well done without knowing what is being said. (found via Boingboing)
Inq. of the Week: One Year Later for 4e
Two weeks ago, we wanted to find out at what age you rolled your first dice. (Hopefully by that point you stopped trying to eat them). Poll results indicate that among the 426 respondants, 49% of you started when you were at those formative years of 11-15. 27% of you (myself included) were at the tender age of 10 or younger when you started slaying dragons. 17% of you started when you were 16-20, possibly as a result of this thing called “college.” One single person said 51 or older was when starting to play RPGs, so to you sir or madam, I salute you!
As of this Saturday, 4e will have been out for one year. Possibly the most controversial of all editions and certainly the most blogged-about edition of Dungeons & Dragons to ever be released, D&D 4e has been built up, torn down, and reported on across the Internet. Armchair and professional designers have taken sides to discuss it, while players and DMs examine all the rules closely looking for suggestions and answers. Meanwhile, celebrities of the geek world helped promote the game by playing it and letting people listen in on their game.
Starting with the initial announcement at GenCon 2007, we polled reaction to the coming of a new system and found most to be cautiously optimistic. Then shortly after release, we polled about everyone’s favorite edition of D&D, which at the time showed a preference for 4e, and late voting has only increased that lead. It seems only natural to follow up with the following, after 1 year of release, the question on many minds…
Loading ...As I write this post and poll, I worry about the potential for edition war. (Unlike previous polls, this will be the first one we’ve done on the subject since the RPG Bloggers Network brought together so many different opinions on RPGs). If you’d like to explain your vote in the comments, feel free, just please be respectful to other’s preferences and tastes and choices. I have another post brewing about the conflict between fans of different editions across the blogs (and hopefully my last post on the subject), but for now, we’re just looking for numbers.
Special Promo for Dungeonmastering Tools: Free Open Game Table
Editor’s Note: We’ve been fans of Dungeonmastering since the beginning, and so we’re happy to help promote his new tools that help you run your 4e game, as well as a way to get Open Game Table Anthology (that I helped edit) into more people’s hands. That’s why we’re presenting this offer and the advertising footer to go with it. We also get a kick-back on any sold, so we encourage you to take a look.
On May 31 and June 1, Dungeon Mastering will be giving away a free copy of Open Game Table to all new DM Tools premium members.
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Check out the Open Game Table storefront for reviews by WIRED and Bards & Sages.
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With Karate (And Psionics) I'll Kick Your Ass
When the Monk preview was released a couple of weeks ago, it caused a bit of an uproar in a few ways. I was involved on an email chain between Tonester, Bartoneus, and joshx0rfz about whether or not a non-heavy damaging striker was a good idea and if their mobility could make up for it (short answer: probably not, as damage is always a good idea, and you only need mobility part of the time).
Other people focused on the power source aspect of it: Monks are Psionic. (Yes, “Martial Striker” was half wrong). As per the Design & Development article that accompanied it, Ki is a dead power source (though some third party products have already tried to use it). Personally, I have no problem with this. On multiple occasions, I attempted to run campaigns with an eastern flavor, and banned most (or all) arcane and divine classes, relying primarily on psionic and ki powered characters. Conceptually, they always seemed very close together: an internal energy source with fantastic abilities powered by intense discipline. So lumping them together seemed like an obvious step to me. It also seemed to confirm that Psionics would be a new power source in PHB3.
Then WotC released this:
