I can’t write a long post today (rejoice) because I’m about to start work. However, I wanted to bring a hot 4e subject and wanted to launch a discussion about it over the weekend. My players are sick and tired of me harping on and on about the length of combat in 4e. Apparently I’m […]
Making Your 5×5 Campaign Plan Into A Grid
Maybe it’s the gamer in me but when I first read the post title “The 5×5 Method” I immediately visualized a grid. When I read Dave’s post, I got that feeling but it seemed more like a tree than a grid with branches flowing from one another and even sometimes intersecting.
Creativity and the RPG Mind: Part 1, Introduction
With the recent completion of my series revisiting Robin Laws’ Rules of Good Game Mastering, I’ve been thinking about starting a new one. Then it hit me. What if I tackled creativity and it’s role in regards to RPG players and GMs . You see, I’m well aware that I have a high level of […]
Friday Chat: The Issue(s) of Combat length in D&D 4e
This post is inspired bu a Twitter discussions I had last week. As my player level up right into paragon level, I noticed that the length of combat in D&D 4e kept increasing. We often break the 90 minutes point for ‘normal’ encounters and massive boss-level fights will easily eat up most of our 3 […]
I Didn’t Know You Could Do That in 4e – Social Combat -or- Making Charisma the Overpowered Attribute for Once
So. You’ve seen movies or comic books where people can use their words as a tangible means to fight. You’ve been impressed by witty insults in swordfights, fierce battle cries, and people who use words to defend themselves with more than a snippy comeback.And you’ve thought to yourself, “Self, wouldn’t it be badass to be able to do that in a role-playing game?”.
Well, I believe it not only to be possible – but easily done in a variety of handily house-rulable forms. And not just the charismatic few who use as verbal buffs in combat to help allies or intimidate enemies – but that any characters can use a well-placed jibe to throw an opponent. Elan would be proud.
Adventurers Anonymous
Storyteller is the author of the RPG blog Beneath the Screen, and a content developer for Nevermet Press. He is proud to be back at ChattyDM’s blog for the one-year anniversary of his first guest post ever on the blogosphere, which he wrote for ChattyDM last year. Without further ado, onward with the guest post! […]
Minimum Session Prep: Listen
Hi, I’m Brent P. Newhall, and I feel bad about this post. I originally promised Chatty a post aimed at newbie DMs, describing the absolute minimum prep needed for a D&D 4th Edition session. And while I’ll cover that, I realized there’s a bigger issue that needs to be addressed. The amount of preparation required […]
But my father was a blacksmith! – Crafting in 4E
Hi there. My name is Rob, a.k.a. “A Hero”, from A Hero Twice A Month. While I can be a chatty DM at times, I am not the ChattyDM. Still, he was nice enough to let me post my thoughts about crafting items while he is off on his GenCon hiatus. When the game designers […]
For new GMs: Worldbuilding is storytelling: complication, complexity, micronarratives, and your precious little fantasy world-baby
It’s the autism-spectrum version of playing god: surveying charts and tables and lists and believing, for just a moment, that a world can be contained in such a form. Elves and dragons are less unbelievable than that power fantasy.
Robin Laws Revisited: The Complete Series
This post bring together all the articles I wrote about Robin Laws of Good Game Mastering from January 2008 to July 2009. For those who haven’t heard or seen it, this book, published in 1999, gives advice on being a Game Master (irrespective of game systems). The series was aimed at revisiting it in the […]
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