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.”
Brief Encounters…
And lo, a new FLGS opened within easy reach of a lost gamer. And it was good.
The Architect DM: Negative Space in Dungeons
A very important design concept used in Architecture that I would like to discuss today is the concept of negative space. This topic flows naturally from the discussion in last week’s post about the open spaces in an urban setting being defined by the buildings that are placed around it. In addition I have been thinking quite a lot about the topic since seeing the post on Boing Boing about classic style D&D hand-drawn dungeon maps. If you haven’t seen those maps yet, they are indeed very classic but they are also, unfortunately not examples of good dungeon design.
Weird and Stubborn: A Tale of Omnipotence
This week, I undertake my first serious effort to run a campaign as a Dungeon Master in over 20 years of playing D&D. Will I succeed? Or will it be just like that one time when the things happened? Oh, God. The things! The THINGS! I wonder if I can just roll a Bluff check and have it work out OK in the form of a montage…….
Digging Deep (Gnomes)
How does one designer take a creature that once ruined a campaign for him and re-imagine it to be something that could be the major piece of a campaign? With a little help and a lot of imagination.
Mouseburning It: Hacking a Skill System, Small Press Style
In which Chatty finally shares part of what his small press pilgrimage taught him and describes his new method for dealing with skill checks in classic RPGs like D&D (easily adaptable to most other classic games too)
The Architect DM: Open Spaces Design Toolbox
As I introduced in my last post about improvisation, I believe that the key to being able to design a location (whether beforehand or on the fly) is grounded in what I’m calling your toolbox for design. The key is that once you have a well developed toolbox to pull ideas from, you can more readily and quickly design a location for your tabletop Roleplaying Games on the spot or adapt your planned locations to fit the developing needs of the game table. An underlying goal of this series of posts is to help you develop the toolbox required so that you will be able to accomplish this task with relative ease and a good amount of confidence.
How WotC Doomed Us All By Making The Fates Do Way More Work
Learn the dark secrets about D&D WotC doesn’t want you to know! Discover how you can break the game by doing nothing but buying official game materials! Defeat your enemies using nothing but cards (without becoming one of the X-Men!) All this and how to use Fortune Cards to fix your love life after the jump.
Blind Design, or How to Fail Better
Adventure design, whether for personal use or mass consumption, comes down to having a goal and heading straight toward it. And, of course, there are never pitfalls in the way . . .
Visions Verbalized
If you can’t produce an elevator pitch, your idea isn’t solid enough. All games rely on this initial expression to become all they can be. A lack of focus at such an early stage leads, at least, to wasted work as designers realize a game’s scope needs narrowing. At worst, uncertain direction at the outset is a path of failure. Kitchen-sink design’s best results . . .
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