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Recent Posts Tagged With 'rpg'
Dwarven Dice from Q-Workshop
If you look at many of the hobbies that we have, aside from video games, dice are a common element in a large majority of the games we play. Whether its Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40k, or Settlers of Catan they all use dice and as a result man...
Monster Manual 2 – In Depth #5
Now that it is nearing the end of 2009, at long last I bring you my final in depth analysis of the Monster Manual 2 and the creatures contained therein. While the book has been out for half of a year now, I still have not gotten anywhere close to usi...
Inq. of the Week: Friendly Local Gaming Stores?
Over the weekend I’ve done my fair share of video game playing, the most fun of which was easily several hours of playing four player New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. With the great selection of new games that have come out this Fall, it seems...
3 Rolls, 1 Check
This is a common occurrence in my game, and it might be in yours too: DM: The Baron tells you, “I haven’t seen the Duke.” Player 1: I roll Insight to see if he’s lying. Crap, rolled low. Player 2: I roll then. Mine is pretty h...
4th Power Project: Playtest Recap & Wealth
4th Power is my attempt to mash-up 4e and d20 Modern into an RPG that I want to play and run campaigns in, leveraging the stuff I like from both, along with other elements that try to fix what annoyed me about both systems. Well, on Halloween, I ran ...
D&D 4e One-Shots: Putting it into Action
As a result of playing four very different one-shot games at DC Game Day, I condensed my thoughts about one-shots into one simple rule: Everything important on the character sheet should come up during play. It’s an easy thing to say, but not s...
Convention Report: DC Game Day 2009
DC Game Day V was held October 24th and 25th, and Geek’s Dream Girl and I were there. It was a bit different than the game conventions I usually go to: it was held in a section of an office building in downtown DC, and it was 4 sessions of RPGs...
Inq. of the Week: Story Games, Or Whatever You Want To Call Them
How often do you play? Once a week is the most common answer, with several times a month being a close second. I was surprised to see such a showing for several times a week: to all you multi-game night warriors, I salute you! And one lone person ...
Review: “Kobold Quarterly #11″
There’s a reason every review I see of the Kobold Quarterly magazine compares it to the Dragon and Dungeon print magazines from years passed, even opening a PDF of the book and seeing the cover makes me immediately think of seeing those issues ...
Pain of Campaigning: Literature and Adventure Planning
Despite stereotypes that say otherwise, gaming groups are not monolithic in their cultural consumption. Most groups have a few shared interests (anime, sci-fi movies, etc.) and a few niche interests (history, literature, comics, etc.) This can read...
4th Power Project: First Level Characters
Previous 4th Power Posts Well, I missed my first deadline by not posting feats last week. They ended up being more tricky than I thought. 4e and d20 feats all seem to be more combat-oriented, which was always my complaint with systems like Call of Ct...
5 Tips For Running Dungeon Delves
I first encountered the “dungeon delve” at the exact same time I first encountered 4e. 3 linked encounters, designed to be played in a relatively short amount of time (45 minutes at the conventions). Dungeon Delve (the book) is full of th...
Inq. of the Week: Frequency of Play?
I have to apologize for the lack of an Inquisition for last week, with some of the things that have been going on for the last few weeks I didn’t even realize it hadn’t been done until Wednesday evening. Two weeks ago Dave posited a que...
Preview: “Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons”
Through an unexpected source, we were able to get our hands on an early copy of the sequel to last year’s Draconomicon, this one focusing on the metallic dragons. In previous editions, metallic dragons were good aligned, meaning that a DM would...
4th Power Project: Skills
I’ve got some core classes (which are pending some revisions), some at-will powers, and some other powers. Next step is relatively simple (but not without some thought): skills. While skills are not trivial in 4e, they ......
Preview & Review: “Primal Power”
Late last week, with a copy of Primal Power in hand, I decided to give people a chance to preview the book by asking questions that I would answer on Twitter as well as at our page on Facebook. Below I'll share most of the questions and answers from...
Leveling Up As An Inexperienced DM
I still consider myself an inexperienced DM. the 4th Edition campaign that I'm currently running has just passed twenty adventures and is the longest campaign I've ever run. Hell, it was the longest game I've ever run when it hit ten adventures back...
Statement from Wizards of the Coast Regarding Fansite Toolkit
Months back, Wizards of the Coast released their "Fansite Toolkit", essentially a package of images that could be used for bloggers and similar in exchange for agreeing to, well, a lot of terms about citations, trademarks, and usage. The release rais...
Inq. of the Week: Gaming Women
Gaming genres were the topic last week, and not altogether unexpectedly, fantasy came out on top, with 95% of voters saying it’s what they enjoyed. Second place, with science fiction, took 72% of the vote, which says I need to get in more Trave...
4th Power Project: Classes, Part 3 (Other Powers)
The beginnings of some at-will powers were posted last week- not all of them by any means, but I figured it was a start. Now as I mentioned then, at-will powers should come up fairly often, and be the stand-bys. The other powers are Per Scene (former...
Our Ladies of Sorrow: Modern Gaming, Scary Women
To D&D players, it can take some explanation of why I like modern gaming and put it on my list of favorite gaming genres. I like that there’s no buy-in, and I find that it’s easier to pull off horror and weirdness stories since the ch...
Interview: Matt James, Co-Author of “Monument of the Ancients”
“Monument of the Ancients“ was published in Dungeon #170 and is an adventure set in the Forgotten Realms for 13th level characters. The capsule description is thus: If myth and legend are to be believed, the ......
Inq. of the Week: RPGs in Various Flavors?
I've really enjoyed reading Dave's posts about his 4th Power project and adapting the 4E D&D system to a modern setting game as well as the comments on those posts, but it's started me thinking about the genres of RPG that people play and in add...
The 4th Power Project: Classes, Part 2 (At-Will Powers)
So here's what I think of as the next step, or at least a defining portion of the next step: at-wills. At-will powers accomplish a few important things in the game. They serve as the powers you will use the most, and throughout your entire career adv...
Making Your 5×5 Campaign Plan Into A Grid
Hello, my name is Viriatha from Bard of Valiant, and Dave was kind enough to let me talk to you about how his 5×5 Method inspired me to morph it for my own game. Maybe it’s the gamer in me but when I first read the post title “The 5&...
Inq. of the Week: Tell Us Your Critical Hit Story
We're coming up on our 4th anniversary this week (expect our usual yearly wrap-up this Thursday), and this year, we thought we'd do something fun. At gaming conventions this year, we asked our interview subjects about their favorite critical hit stor...
The 4th Power Project: Core Classes, Part 1
Here's some actual crunch: the core classes. Just as in d20 Modern, there's one base class for each ability score. This setup is intuitive, and also allows for the different kind of teams you see in so many shows and movies....
Review: “Fantasy Craft”
Fantasy Craft is a D&D 3.0 OGL full-service RPG that boasts a robust set of classes, innovative and interesting feats, and a refreshing skill-based system of spell casting. With systems for item crafting, downtime for players, acquisition of hol...
The 4th Power Project: Core Design Elements
This week I'm going to tell you what my goals for the game are and some broad strokes as far as the rules go. However, I'm going to cover two things up front, which may disappoint some of you....
In Depth: 4E Assassin and Q&A with Mike Mearls
Last week Wizards of the Coast released a new class for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition called the Assassin, an exclusive class only available to subscribers of their D&D Insider service. I was very intrigued by this new class, so I asked if...
