This process owes its genesis to ideas I had while reading Justin Alexander’s Node-Based Scenario Design essay. This essay formalized processes I had been applying and helped focus my mind on them… and led to me to some abstractions I hadn’t considered before. An adventure, a scenario, can ultimately be …
I’ve been looking through some older D&D materials. I know I’ve seen something in at least one of them about non-linear adventure design, but haven’t been able to put my hands (or eyes) on the one I want. I remember a section in a book that talks about trying to …
As part of my research for these articles, I’ve been reviewing published guidelines for adventure design. In the last couple days I have reviewed DMG 3.5, DMG II, Green Ronin’s Advanced Gamemaster’s Guide, and the Pathfinder GameMastery Guide. They have all had much the same advice for developing adventures: devise …
In a recent thread in rec.games.frp.dnd, I saw a comment with regard to a matter of power balance in a focus-mojo-and-release idea that I thought I would follow up on. I think it does a fair bit to explain where I’m coming from in my game design and campaign expectations. …
This is a quick addendum to my last post, particularly the section on scope levels. I wrote how scope levels describe how broad an impact or influence entities can have. However, I didn’t write about how big I expect game elements of each scope level to be in play. This …
This article is a follow-up to my earlier Campaign Setting Design article. It expands somewhat on the idea of entities (there called ‘features’; I have formalized the structures somewhat). I will be providing some greater description of the techniques I use to develop settings and scenarios. In order to do …
I’m starting to come to the conclusion that there’s probably no real harm in easing the limitations of armor use on arcane spell casters. It is already fairly easy to build an arcane caster who can use armor without significantly impacting their casting ability. There are a fair number of …
It took me long enough to get around to it, but I’ve now finished copying my old articles and reference materials from my old site to here. A long and tedious task, but it’s done now. I’ve also gotten a few new ideas as to how I can approach the …
Converting RSRD abilities to Echelon talents is usually pretty straightforward. Many abilities in D&D 3.x are built up of smaller abilities, usually along a path of some sort. Feat paths are pretty obvious (weapon focus and weapon specialization are an example, as is the Mobility feat path leading to Whirlwind …
Actions in D&D 3.x got fairly complicated in the end. They range from full-round through standard action, move action, swift action, free action, to immediate action. Plus ‘not an action’, but since those… things people do are by definitions ‘not actions’, I’ll ignore them. There are distinct differences between them, …