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You are here: Home / Archives for Newest Critical Hits

Mage: The Ascension Job

March 17, 2011 by Dave

It’s no secret that I’ve been a bit Leverage RPG crazy for the past few months- in many ways, it’s a system that just flat out “clicked” with me as soon as I played it. One of the outcroppings of that is my desire to hack it into other settings. I’m a huge fan of modern settings, and while Leverage RPG scratches that itch, there’s lots of room for modern games beyond heists and capers. Enter my early ideas about combining it with Mage: The Ascension, to which I (and as I discovered recently, many other gamers) have very fond memories of.

Filed Under: Critical Threats, Game Hacks & Content, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: leverage, Leverage RPG, mage: the ascension

Chatty’s PaxEast Highlights: 3 days of Fun Among Friends

March 15, 2011 by The Chatty DM

In which Chatty miraculously fits his highlights of a spectacular convention in only one 1500 words post. A record some will say!

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Featured, Musings of the Chatty DM, Newest Critical Hits, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Boston, fiasco, Gabe, games, gamma world, Jane MacGonigal, leverage, magic the gathering, Mouse Guard, Munckin, pax east 2011, Tycho

By The Seat Of My Omnipotent Pants

March 15, 2011 by Vanir

This past week’s D&D session was something of an experiment for me. As I mentioned last week, I procrastinated a bit too much. By that, I mean that by about 2 hours to game time, I had managed to be indecisive enough to know several major plot points – just not the specifics or the order in which they would appear. Not having any combat encounters worked out turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I had also invited a new player to the group over lunch that day. At this point, I was more than slightly worried the session was going to be a disaster and that we would wind up playing Snorta! for half the evening. Did I crash? Did I burn? Both? Hit the jump to discover the unthinkable truth.

Filed Under: Dire Flailings, Featured, Humor, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: bill o'reilly, reskinning, wing it

Pax East 2011: House Rules and Stealing from Other Games in RPGs

March 15, 2011 by Dave

Most Game Masters do it. Hacking your favourite RPG is as old as the hobby itself. However, one can often get bogged down with rules that defeat their intent and make the game less fun. Others have so many house rules that players and master alike get confused and lose sense of what game they’re playing.

Filed Under: Critical Hits Podcast, Game Hacks & Content, News, Podcasts, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Game Hacks & Content, gm advice, pax, pax east, pax east 2011

Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-13

March 13, 2011 by Gato the News Robot

From the Archives:: Interview: Randall Bills from Catalyst Game Labs, Publisher of Classic Battletech http://bit.ly/hTm5ML #charchive # Follow @BoardGameGeek, @RPGGeek, & @VideoGameGeek for great updates from Geekdo, and the chance to win microbadges: http://bit.ly/dKqMZt # We'll be a bit light on content this week as several of us (@DaveTheGame, @Bartoneus, @ChattyDM, & @loganbonner) are PAX […]

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

RPGs and Fiction: An Interview with Alana Abbott

March 10, 2011 by Shawn Merwin

D&D and other RPGs owe much of their development to fiction, and they in return have spawned an entire industry of game-related novels and stories. Can you write good fiction that is still true to the game? I talk to someone who has done so to learn the tricks of the trade.

Filed Under: Comics, Editorial, Featured, Interviews, Know Your Roll, Movies, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre Tagged With: fiction writing, world design, writing advice

That Almost Sucked

March 8, 2011 by Vanir

A good D&D campaign should tell a story. But are you telling the story, or are the players? Is it both? Neither? Some combination of both and neither? After the jump, I muse about stuff that works in D&D and stuff that doesn’t. And I turn evil, if only for a few minutes.

Filed Under: Dire Flailings, Humor, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre, Video Games Tagged With: 5x5, 5x5 method, DM, dungeon master, story, Storytelling, The 5x5 Method, world of warcraft

Agents of the Un-Kingdom: Alpha Dogs

March 7, 2011 by gamefiend

Imagine a dog that’s ALL bite. I mean seriously, look at the jaws on that thing. Funny looking, right? But if that weird little super-pug bites you it bites it doesn’t just break the skin…it breaks down your reality, your potential.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: agents of the un-kingdom, gamma world, un-kingdom

Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-06

March 6, 2011 by Gato the News Robot

From the Archives:: Chatty's Megadungeon: Foundations http://bit.ly/fwAB4Z #charchive # Embrace Chaos–the tag line for the 4th of Fantasy Flight's 40K RPGs! Called Black Crusade. http://bit.ly/fkXzhb /via @CharlesMRyan # Posted on Roll: Hypocritical Exploding Rat Swarm http://bit.ly/hqSVlA # RT @4eBlogs: Robert J. Schwalb: Encounter Alternatives http://bit.ly/hr0Esp #dnd # RT @Morrus: Upcoming D&D computer game! http://www.waroftheburningsky.com #dnd […]

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

The 5×5 Method Compendium

March 4, 2011 by Dave

Consistently one of our most popular articles here on Critical Hits (for which I couldn’t be prouder), The 5×5 Method is a planning method for GM’s that sits between giving decisions for the party to make so that their choices matter, and at the same time, isn’t so wide open as to make it difficult to plan ahead for those of us who aren’t as great building adventures on the fly. Just in time for GM’s Day, I give you this collection of links about the 5×5 Method.

Filed Under: News, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, 5x5, adventure design, campaign design, DM advice, The 5x5 Method

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