In the original Torg game, Orrorsh is where Storm Knights went to die. The powers of the Horrors allowed them to prevent Storm Knights from soaking damage, which often ended up in dead heroes. I’m not looking to make Orrorsh so deadly in my Torg hack. After all, dead heroes can’t be afraid, or become corrupt and become Horrors. Since a horror style roleplaying game has a different feel than Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, there needs to be some substantial changes to how you play the game in order to get the atmosphere of horror.
Gen Con 2012: D&D Keynote and More
D&D is in a transitional period, and that showed quite a bit at Gen Con. No longer in one big room at the Sagamore, D&D events were spread out across different rooms in the convention center, with the booth in the exhibit hall focusing mainly on showing off the new MMO expansion, the Lolth statue, and selling branded merchandise. Organized Play such as Living Forgotten Realms and Ashes of Athas kept the torching going for D&D 4e, while other rooms were dedicated to demoing Next. Let’s start with the current offerings from D&D and move forward from there.
Free RPG Day 2012: The Price of Free-dom
Coming soon to a game store near you is Free RPG Day—on June 16th, you can find a wealth of RPG material free for the taking. Free RPG Day has been occurring annually since 2007, and has included material from some of the largest and most prestigious RPG companies in the industry today, including Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, Fantasy Flight Games, White Wolf, and Paizo Publishing.
Origins 2012 Report
I almost didn’t attend Origins this year, despite having attended for many years prior. The date change meant that a number of people I knew would not be attending this time around, cutting down reasons for attending. Likewise, I was already making other plans for that time off. Then Get Bit! was nominated for an award, and that pretty much settled that. Despite the changes, I still had a good time. Here are some of the highlights for me.
D&D: Advantage vs. Flat Bonuses
There are a lot of people talking about the D&D Next open playtest, and one of the subjects I hear about a lot is the way Advantage/Disadvantage are currently working. The general opinion I’ve heard is that it is overpowered when compared to the +2/-2 bonus we’re used to from previous editions of D&D. My gut reaction to hearing that something is overpowered isn’t to jump into the mob and swing my nerf-bat around, it’s to look at as much data as I can and figure out if I agree or not. So that’s what I’m going to do!
Thirteen Books Nerds Should Read
Do you collect facts like little boys collect dirt? Do you read nearly all morphemes that flit past your eyes (including cereal boxes and the fine print on DVD cases?) Did you already know the definition of morpheme? If you didn’t, do you have at least five apps on your phone that could tell you? If you said yes to two or more of those questions, read on.
Torg: A Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Hack (Storm Knight Datafiles)
Today, I’m publishing six datafiles that I’ve worked on so far for my Torg hack. Since the World Laws of the various cosms show up in the datafiles, I will briefly discuss them as well, although not every datafile will include every World Law.
What Classes Should be in D&D?
For me, choosing a class has always been one of the most fun and important decisions to make while playing Dungeons & Dragons. I can still remember the feeling of pure excitement I had when I first cracked open the 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook and saw that Monk was a core class. I also remember our friends all having multiple discussions about what exactly the Sorcerer class was and how it was different from the Wizard. With the next edition of D&D now in open playtest, I felt it was a good time to discuss the varying levels of class distinction in D&D.
Playtest “D&D Next” Like A Pro
With the open playtest of the new iteration of D&D coming tomorrow, I wanted to offer some of my advice on playtesting and giving feedback.
Torg: A Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Hack (Hacking the Datasheets)
I need to explain how the mechanics of causing contradictions in other realities worked in the original Torg game. If a character uses a tool: a spell, miracle, piece of tech or some sort of social concept, it causes a single contradiction if the axiom level of that tool is greater than either the character’s home reality or the reality that character finds herself in.
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