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.
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 . . .
Lessons Learned at DDXP2011
DDXP 2011 is in the books. I’ll look at what I learned, think about the joys of playing and DMing, and extol the virtues of the World’s Smallest Stripper.
Eulogy for D&D Miniatures
We are gathered here today to say goodbye to some old friends. For the last seven years they have entertained us with their crazy overly-large axes, completely inappropriate phallic clubs, and fiery jazz hands. They have fuelled our imaginations with naked bat-winged lady-folk and helped us avoid trying to describe just what the hell a […]
Four Months in the Borderlands: D&D Encounters
Dave “The Game” Chalker talks about his experiences running the latest season of D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands, and ruminates a bit on the state of D&D from playing with strangers.
D&D XP 2011 Is Coming: Convention Coverage
Our coverage of D&D XP 2011 is coming up soon, and we’d like to know what you think about liveblogging and what you want to hear about.
Into the Unknown
Mysteries must have answers in all roleplaying games. At least, the secrets the players wish for their characters to uncover should have some means of being laid bare. That means the DM, at least, has to know, or have an idea, where a path of exploration leads. In the case of published work, the designers should know such answers and, more important, reveal them.
Personal Encounter Design Workshop
In mid-December I received a great e-mail from a reader named Brian that I talk to regularly on my twitter account, he was planning for an upcoming D&D adventure and wanted some specific help with designing an encounter. I’m not sure what exactly prompted him to send it my way, but I was more than happy to read through and share some of my ideas to help spice up his encounter. Just today I received a follow up e-mail that he is planning to run the encounter tomorrow and that he wanted to run his updated encounter by me again. I was all to happy to oblige, and I also realized that the exchange of e-mails might be something some of you would be interested in seeing. So here it is, with his permission of course.
My Love Letter to “Mage: The Ascension”
Dave looks back at the 2nd edition of “Mage: The Ascension,” how he got into the game, why it never stuck as a campaign, and how it rewired his teenage brain.
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