Like many of you, I was dismayed at the cancellation of the D&D minis line. Understandably, this raised some questions among the community. “Are minis really that expensive to make?” “Why can’t I just buy a box of assorted monsters?” “Isn’t it stupid to reuse sculpts?” I hope to be able to answer some of these questions, with what limited knowledge I have about the situation.
I Am Fortune’s Fool
There’s a new article up on the D&D website, available to everyone, about alternate uses for Fortune Cards. The article was written by Sarah Darkmagic, Greywulf, Tim Brannan, and oh yeah, me.
Critical Hits Podcast #27: The Out
Mike Shea and Dave Chalker talk about the combat “Out,” a method for shortening combats by defining alternative ways that the battle can end instead of one side of the other being wiped out.
Mage: The Ascension Job
It’s no secret that I’ve been a bit Leverage RPG crazy for the past few months- in many ways, it’s a system that just flat out “clicked” with me as soon as I played it. One of the outcroppings of that is my desire to hack it into other settings. I’m a huge fan of modern settings, and while Leverage RPG scratches that itch, there’s lots of room for modern games beyond heists and capers. Enter my early ideas about combining it with Mage: The Ascension, to which I (and as I discovered recently, many other gamers) have very fond memories of.
Pax East 2011: House Rules and Stealing from Other Games in RPGs
Most Game Masters do it. Hacking your favourite RPG is as old as the hobby itself. However, one can often get bogged down with rules that defeat their intent and make the game less fun. Others have so many house rules that players and master alike get confused and lose sense of what game they’re playing.
The 5×5 Method Compendium
Consistently one of our most popular articles here on Critical Hits (for which I couldn’t be prouder), The 5×5 Method is a planning method for GM’s that sits between giving decisions for the party to make so that their choices matter, and at the same time, isn’t so wide open as to make it difficult to plan ahead for those of us who aren’t as great building adventures on the fly. Just in time for GM’s Day, I give you this collection of links about the 5×5 Method.
The Combat “Out”
Combat speed in D&D is an oft-debated topic, and while much of the conversation is useful, I have one method that I trumpet above all others to make your combats take less time and work better as a scene in your game, and that’s the combat “out.”
From the Archives: Skills
Today I’m looking at skills. Rob Schwalb’s article about his dissatisfaction with them mirrors many of my concerns that have existed ever since my very first game of 3rd edition up through my current campaign. However, they clearly have value, as you’ll see in many of these posts, but also can pose some issues.
Critical Hits Podcast #26: Lessons from the Paragon Tier
Mike Shea, guest writer here and head honcho of Sly Flourish, interviewed me about the recently completed paragon tier in my campaign. Mike has run a campaign all the way from level 1 to level 30 so he’s experienced with finishing all 3 tiers, and was interested in comparing our two experiences. We talk about top tips for running paragon, issues of plot, world-hopping, combat speed, character effectiveness, and more.
The 5×5 Dungeon: The Temple of Elemental Evil
To finish off the paragon tier, the PCs in my game headed into one of the most classic dungeons out there: The Temple of Elemental Evil. I started with the original module (while not being slavish to it), then hacked away to adapt pieces to my game and involve major NPCs from earlier. However, I had a very specific style in mind that would feel like a big dungeon crawl.
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