For me, the Olympics have always had a different kind of special significance. For whatever reason, the Olympics get me to give a crap about sports, if only for a couple weeks.
Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight
I find it interesting that I made the exploration of failure in RPGs such an intense interest of mine because I’m currently living with the consequences of failure in my own life right now. Don’t worry, nothing major, but important enough that it may affect “The Plan” if I don’t play my cards more carefully from now on.
Ashes to Ashes, Death to Life
Character death. Total Party Kill. These words have long been the bane of DMs and players. DMs face scornful players and upset friends when a beloved character dies, and a possible coup when a TPK comes around. While players see their invested time, work and creation disappear before them with a single roll of the dice. Nobody, DMs and players alike, enjoy the idea of starting again or losing a beloved character within the game. However if death is never an option, if DMs fudge rolls so nobody dies, then the thrill and tension of grand battles can very quickly dissipate and the campaign can grow stale.
Character Concepts: Dragonborn
A handful of character concepts and builds for creating an effective and elementally devastating dragonborn. From a Warden/Fighter that spews acid left and right to becoming an all-powerful avatar of the deceased god Io.
Gears of Ruin: The Phantom Rails, Part 1
The one rule I gave myself was “Shape the adventure based on the questions your players ask you” and “When in doubt, ask for a skill check”.
It worked wonderfully. So much so that my first true sandbox dungeon adventure probably felt like a seamless linear adventure narrative to my players who probably thought they were just following the path I had made for them.
Will of The Forsaken (WTF for short)
There was a full decade of my life when I declared there were two things I’d never play. One was MMO’s. I decided this when a guy I knew quit his job to play Everquest full time and mooch off his girlfriend. The other was collectible card games, because I was astounded at how much money one could drop on them. This decision was made easy to live with by being in college and/or mostly poor. Over the last two years, both of these vows have been broken.
Friday Chat: Are You Watching the Interweb?
In the last few years, as I gravitated to jobs with extremely lenient web access policies (and absent monitoring) and started blogging, I found myself drawn just a bit too much. You know, the kind that makes you spend just a little too long catching up with the Questionable Content archives, or fall for link-baiting to a website that will ruin your life.
What? You want to Sleep here?
I don’t like random monsters. On the other hand, the idea of having players sweat for their extended rest could be worth exploring once or twice in a campaign. This is especially true if your group chronically blows their wad of dailies in the first encounter and then just assume they can take an extended rest wherever they please. So, what if you said ‘Yes’ to resting in a dangerous area (like in the middle of a freaking dungeon) but did it with a twist?
Cooties
For some guys, talking to girls is difficult. A look back upon mistakes made, and hopes for the future. Also, boobs get mentioned.
Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit, Session 1, Part 4
The Titan Clank hit by the Avenger’s abjure undead power was eventually bloodied. In a cloud of greasy smoke, it stopped functioning and let out a badly battered undead humanoid made of mismatched stitched parts! It was wearing some sort of military leather harness filled with poisoned knives!
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