Things I’ve worked on, or that I’m working on, intended for publication.
The last couple of posts have talked about what abilities at different tiers should look like, from ‘realistic’ (for a fantasy RPG definition of realistic) through ‘legendary’. The first post was pretty non-specific, basically just introducing the labels, and the second described them in more specific terms. This post starts …
Lately I’ve been discussing abilities in terms of their realism or credibility. I use such distinctions when devising character abilities. For instance, anything a normal person could do, within training, is by definition ‘realistic’. Things that are of comparable scale and effect should also be in this category, even if …
Last week I showed how I might convert a Pathfinder base class (cavalier) to an expert path. I’m pretty happy with how it looks, even if it doesn’t quite conform to what I expect paths to look like (i.e. it doesn’t have an exceptionally shiny high-level power). For a first …
Yesterday’s post was a bit weak because I didn’t know quite where I was going with it. Today I’m on more solid ground. D&D and its descendants have long had the idea of race, of human and non-human characters. It’s been handled in different ways in different editions and in …
There are many kinds of rewards PCs can gain during a campaign. I posted yesterday about items of power, and this post will discuss monetary rewards. I’m going to admit to a bias here: monetary rewards usually bore me. The needful is… needful, in game money is useful, but it …
So far I have looked entirely at character ability, and not at external sources of ability. A common external source of ability is an item of power. In a fantasy setting this is most often a magic item of some sort. In D&D, magic items often come in several forms. …
Or perhaps ‘higher level expectations’. I have long held the opinion that D&D-based game have several modes of play. In old school D&D, the low to middle levels, from first to just-before-name-level, were a sort of ‘personal heroism’ level, before ‘making a name for themselves’ and becoming significant powers themselves. …
A couple days ago I wrote about the effort mechanic from Kevin Crawford’s game, Godbound. There is some great material in here, let’s see if there’s anything else I might want to use. Bundle of Holding If you find this post piques your interest in Godbound — and I hope …
Feats were one of my favorite additions in D&D 3e. To some degree they replaced the weapon and non-weapon proficiencies. More importantly, they gave a means of customizing characters that wasn’t class-based. Mostly; there were exceptions. It seems many other designers liked feats, even became enamored of them if the …
Games almost always limit how many times actions can be done. Some actions can be used at will without limit (attacking with a weapon). Others can be used a limited number of times per day (often 1/day or 3/day, or number-plus-modifier; ’rounds per day’ is a similar limit). I think …
