If you want a very good (albeit mostly positive) review of the 4e Core books, look no further than Martin Ralya’s. I don’t think I can beat it in terms of depth, style and entertaining values, but I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on the book in my own rambling style. The latest […]
Inq. of the Week: Funny Gaming Quotes CONTEST
So far, we have nearly 200 votes in last week’s poll about what your favorite edition of D&D is. Currently, 4e is in the lead, with 3.5 possessing a pretty strong second, and every other option getting some love (even 3.0!) We’re going to let the poll run another week. For this week, we’ve got […]
First Crop of 4e Tools
I wrote my monthly column for Johnn Four’s Roleplaying Tips newsletter last night. It was a 1500 word article on teaching a RPG to new players, I’ll repost it here as soon as Johnn puts it on his site. That also means that I have no meaty article for here this morning… time for some […]
I Don’t do Paladins Really Well…
I just finished reading/browsing the D&D 4e Core books. As I let my impressions simmer and fuse into a hopefully unified set of impressions for my reviews, a multitude of D&D souvenirs come to the surface. One thought that surfaced this morning was that Paladins have the shortest lifespans in my games. You see, I […]
Chatty on 4e: Exploration vs Competence / Fun vs Satisfaction!
I’ve mentioned in older posts that D&D 4e seemed to go back to the roots of the game for simplicity of Game Prep and monster stats. So far this has been true. At worse, game stats for level 30 creatures take one full column of the Monster Manual. Such baddies are usually limited to 4-5 […]
Gaming in Ancient Rome
A friend sent me a link for something really interesting, it’s an auction by Christie’s for a d20 from Ancient Rome! It looks like the Caesars may have been playing D&D pre-1st Edition. From the site: A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE Circa 2nd Century A.D. Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with […]
An Unusual Source for RPGs and Game Design
Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while, and is worth revisiting as you plan your next campaign or sit down to design the next great game. Our biggest source of traffic is, of course, Google. Thanks to all the tracking software whojidgts, we have a comprehensive log of the search terms used […]
Story Contest results
I’m slowly catching up on things. A few weeks ago, I launched a contest to get people to submit Characterization tips to help me and my group get better tools to create better integrated adventuring parties. Well I had about 40 tips from 20 people. Quite a nice turnout given that characterization is not the […]
How to Compare Birds to Fish
A common topic has come up several times throughout various discussions that has been wracking my brain lately. The discussions it has been most prevalent in are ones that pertain to game design, and specifically tabletop games or computer games. About two days ago a reader commented on my post which was mostly ranting about […]
Chatty’s Debate: How far can a DM go?
Okay… I may be swamped but there are limits to what I can tolerate in other DMs. Heather’s been comparing her experience with her Game Day DMs and what she is reading in the DMG (she is a newbie RPGer and wants to try her hand at DMing. However as she reads, she is getting […]
Recent Comments