In which Chatty miraculously fits his highlights of a spectacular convention in only one 1500 words post. A record some will say!
By The Seat Of My Omnipotent Pants
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.
Pax East 2011: House Rules and Stealing from Other Games in RPGs
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.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-13
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 […]
RPGs and Fiction: An Interview with Alana Abbott
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.
That Almost Sucked
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.
Agents of the Un-Kingdom: Alpha Dogs
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.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-06
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 […]
The 5×5 Method Compendium
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.
The Architect DM: How to Improvise Fantasy Buildings
In an ongoing effort to help new and experienced tabletop RPG storytellers improvise and design locations, I started by talking about urban open spaces and provided what I called a design toolbox for that purpose. In this post (and most likely several future posts) I will attempt to provide an extensive and easy to use design toolbox for “Fantasy Buildings”. What types of buildings fall into that category is not set in stone, so I invite you to comment on this post or suggest on twitter (tag me with @Bartoneus) any types of fantasy buildings that I don’t cover int his post that you think should be included in future posts on the subject.
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