Piledriver. You’ve all played it, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident, but you play it more than you expect.
White Wolf Grand Masquerade 2011
The annual White Wolf Grand Masquerade convention in New Orleans just wrapped up over the weekend. As with other conventions for fans of a particular RPG company, there are panels, announcements, exclusives, and gaming. Unlike most other company cons though, there is much partying and pagentry to be had, especially given the New Orleans backdrop.
The Geek Way
In most dictionaries, the definition of “geek” is way behind the times. It’s still classified a pejorative term that implies negative qualities or insular, intellectual behavior. Synonyms include dork, freak, nerd, and weirdo—basically a social misfit. The reason I say this sort of definition, and the people who still use it, are behind the times is because geek has been moving toward chic since Revenge of the Nerds (1984) was in theaters. As the dorks of the 80s grew up and became business leaders, computer specialists, game designers, scientists, writers, and other sorts of accomplished professionals, “geek” has become synonymous with success and disposable income.
Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 2
In which Chatty concludes the Bedside story he and his daughter Rory created. A story about a young teenaged magician named May-Gee, a boy and the power of music and linked magic.
Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 1
In which Chatty goes back to basics and shares the first part of an bedtime interactive story he created with his daughter.
The Architect DM: On Magic Items – Part 2
Last week I looked at some issues I’ve been experiencing with magic items in 4th Edition D&D and some possible solutions. This week I’d like to talk about some other possible solutions as well as just some general concepts related to magic items that hopefully generate some interesting ideas for how to handle magic items in your D&D campaigns. There were some fantastic comments on last week’s post and I’m going to incorporate some of the topics or ideas brought up there into this post as well.
Preference is Puzzling
It is not terribly hard to write a typical dungeon-delve adventure with 3 encounters, a skill challenge, and the PCs rushing in at the last moment to stop the ritual before the evil creature of great power is unleashed. Many DMs and players are happy with that. Thank goodness! However, not every DM or player is happy with the standard fare.
The Architect DM: On Magic Items – Part 1
I’m sure that magic items in D&D have been talked about for countless hours, but with Wizards of the Coast finally releasing Mordenkainen’s Magical Emporium for 4th Edition in September and my home campaign nearing the middle of the epic tier I’ve been wanting to talk about them here. The handful of times that I ran 3rd Edition D&D I was guilty of handing out items of a much higher level than the party, but I would try to balance it out with concepts like staves only having a small number of charges. The players/characters always loved it, but I would hear from other D&D players outside of the game that they didn’t like what I was doing and that they had the impression it was “contrary to the rules of the game” or something like that. I didn’t mind them much, but was very intrigued by what they were saying.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 5: OMG! I Made it!
In which Chatty comes full circle and ends up being a freelance designer of the games that brought him up into the hobby in the first place.
The Architect DM: Campaign Building
It’s good to be back! The first week of August saw us at GenCon and very happily winning a Gold ENnie award, and then in the weeks after I’ve been catching up on things post-convention and getting back into the swing of things. Lately I’ve been discussing and toying with the concept that the best world building happens through playing a campaign, and so I suggest the world building DMs out there spend less time before play and just jump into things with a published or a bare bones adventure and then let the world build from there. This also opens your game up to the possibilities for players to contribute to the world building which for me has always turned out better than I could imagine.
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