Describing itself as a “love letter to D&D”, 13th Age has quite the pedigree behind it. 13th Age is designed by two accomplished and notable game designers, Jonathan Tweet (Everway, multiple editions of D&D, much more) and Rob Heinsoo (Feng Shui, D&D 4e, much more), and is published by Pelgrane Press, whose design on their GUMSHOE and other lines show that their production values are top notch and often eclipse products put out by bigger companies.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #1: What’s in it for me?
In Chatty’s first posts of his new series, he tackles what you can expect to gain from being a DM and, as importantly, what you need to stop expecting if you want to have the best possible start in your DMing career.
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.
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!
Collateral Damage #3: The Avengers Initiative Part 1: Training Day, Prise Deux
Collateral Damage is back, our cheating, barely heroic characters try to complete Avengers training… of course, they’re not going to do it by the book… that would be boring.
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.
The Architect DM: The Ise Grand Shrine
I’ve sat through more hours of architectural history classes than seems reasonable for a human being, everything from the crude Dolmen tombs of early Europe to weeks of studying the various gothic cathedrals that all look pretty much the same. I never got the chance to take an asian architecture course, but one of the most memorable asian structures that I learned about was the Ise Grand Shrine.
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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