Update March 6, 2011: I’ve incorporated as much material as I’m likely to from the old site. It looks like the articles I’d posted to my old site have been migrated (look early in the archive, around 2003-2006), most of the rules documents I was putting together have as well. The …
Okay, yesterday I spent about 13 hours deploying the latest version of our product at work, the first major release in 18 months and most of my work since the beginning of June. About bloody time that one’s done. We’re starting our scoping exercise for the next one, but the …
Origin of the Name It is not explicitly spelled out in the D&D 3.x core books that play changes significantly through the various levels. The lack of this explicit statement has caused, for many people, a detachment between the levels of power and the styles of play appropriate to those …
So, October’s been rather lighter on posts than I really wanted. Between trying to get my act together health-wise (eat better, sleep more, work out better), a compelling project (Vale of Elsir map for Nik) and work (the next release of our primary service is now staging for release next …
A friend of mind is running a D&D 4e campaign and was unhappy with one of the maps he was using. In order to get a complete view of the Vale he was using several maps butted together. They had differences in color and style (which never looks good) and …
Just an aside, and entirely unrelated to the rest of this post, but yesterday was my 100th post to this blog. Not really meaningful or important, but I think it’s a little bit cool. — kjd Sometimes we overcomplicate things in the design of role-playing games in an effort to …
When I first read of the token pool mechanic in Iron Heroes (the core of which can be found on this site in the Open Gaming Content Library under Token Pools) I wasn’t pleased. I thought they would be a pain to track. In the last few years I’ve been …
In a recent thread in rec.games.frp.dnd, I was asked if I would really allow a player character to have “any bizarre talent of his level just because he feels like it”. The short answer: sure, why not? As long as it makes some sense for the character, I see no …
Some more experimentation. I’m generally happy with it but there are some things I’m dissatisfied with. Mountains, I’m mostly happy. A little artifacting still visible, but applying a bit more (or a different?) displacement map to it could solve that. Hills (the brownish-green bits) could do with a bit more …
One of the sticky bits I’ve faced in building monsters in Echelon is a lack of energy resistance and energy immunity talents. This was something of a challenge because immunity should cost more than resistance, but there are creatures in the RSRD (mephits) that are immune to one or more …