Follow the adventures of TextChatty as he tries to survive his first day in his apartment. A Twitter text-based game played a few weeks back.
Epic-Tier Anything Sucks
There’s been a lot of talk around here lately about epic tier games in 4e (and how it isn’t very much fun, and how we’d all rather have our ever-regenerating livers torn out each morning by eagles than play characters over level 20). I haven’t had any experience with epic tier play in 4e yet, but from the sound of it I cannot wait. I have, however, dabbled in the cosmos-shaking power of epic level characters in previous editions. It sucked too. Let me tell you about it.
Redesigning the Epic Tier
Both Sly Flourish and I have talked a lot lately about the issues we’ve run into at epic levels in D&D. While there are certainly rules issues, I believe fixing them all would take up a lot more than single column. However, I do have some ideas on alternate ways to restructure how the campaign […]
The Scaling Woes of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons
D&D 4e is a wonderful refined combat-focused RPG but it scales poorly as levels increase. While many of the elements of 4e scale along a linear path, many powers and effects scale at a much greater rate resulting in large imbalances between PCs and the threats they face at higher levels. This makes it hard for dungeon masters to challenge PCs.
Chatty’s Dream Design Project: An Interactive Primer-RPG
In which Chatty posts something that’s less than 500 words about what his dream game design project would be like. Hop right in and discuss!
Teach Kids to Game: Nico and Rory’s Stories
In which Chatty revisits most of his “Playing with Children” posts and represents them in anthology form to celebrate “Teach Kids to Game” week.
D&D Zombie Apocalypse, Part 2: The What Ifs
In which Chatty asks a series of questions about the why and the how of a zombie apocalype in a fantasy world and comes up with solid ideas for campaign plots.
If The Dungeon Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy
I’ll admit it: I’d been dreading running last week’s D&D game. It had been over a month since we played, and my trepidation was as much laziness as it was not wanting to dungeon crawl. I’d imagine it was much more my fault than the dungeon module we were running, but I’d somehow managed to suck all the fun out of the game for me. That’s the last thing you want running through the DM’s mind in any group — sooner or later things start to suck for everybody else. A few months later, the group breaks up and one of your roleplayers goes to prison for stabbing a minmaxer. I knew I had to do something. But what?
The Architect DM: On Modern and Futuristic Settings
I’ve talked quite a lot about worldbuilding and running roleplaying games in fantasy settings, but I’ve been planning on addressing modern and futuristic RPGs for a long time as well. One of the big hurdles that I have to overcome when thinking and writing about modern/future settings is that they seem inherently more difficult to deal with than their fantasy counterparts. For a modern or even a historic RPG I believe the difficulties come from the game being based in a real world that brings with it a vast amount of expectations from the players. If you’re running a game in these settings and a player at your table knows more about history than you, it can become very intimidating to even try to plan or run the game. Science fiction and futuristic games are a little bit better, but you’re still dealing with a lot of heavy science and realistic elements that can lead to issues where they might not have arisen in your typical elves and magic infused setting.
The Harsh Lessons Of The Starfish Man
Once upon a time, back in high school, I had one of the most epic dreams of my career. In it, an evil man wearing a starfish mask and his army of dwarves had invaded my grandmother’s back yard and were kidnapping my best friend’s dad. A decade later, I based a campaign on this idea, and discovered the true meaning of Christmas. And by Christmas, I mean PAIN. Read on to know how my discovery can make your campaign better. Or something.
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