Experimental posts, things that will most likely be recategorized when I’m done, but want some serious examination and discussion.
Most roleplaying games I’ve played have the PCs at more or less full ability at all times, unless they have exhausted their resources or are otherwise specifically constrained. There are a few exceptions, and I’d like to explore them a bit. In 13th Age, a d6 is placed on the …
A few days ago I posted a surprisingly provocative question on Facebook. I expected many of the reactions (most common response: “Yes”), there were suggestions I have no idea what I’m talking about (I’ll leave that for other to judge), and some interesting and actually insightful comments. More Interesting Comments …
A couple of years ago I wrote a post On Hit Points and Healing, and a couple months after that a post exploring the Implications of Changes to the Hit Point Model. According to my logs, it seems both have been fairly well-received. It occurred to me recently that the …
Yesterday I described some things I don’t like about Pathfinder cleric subdomains. Now it’s time to think about what to do about these things. I think I’ll do this in several passes, since so far I’ve found the solutions I come up with tend to interact with more than one …
I’ll start by saying that I like Pathfinder’s domains and subdomains. Domains provide a structured means to collect divine spells and granted powers so they can be assigned and associated with gods in a structured way. Pathfinder expanded on the D&D 3.x model by adding an intermediate power available to …
I’ve been thinking for a long time about how to split up populations. There are many possibilities: race, class, faction, alignment, level, profession (distinctly different from faction), and so on. In D&D 3.x these appear to be handled pretty inconsistently. Analysis Before delving too deeply into solutions, let’s think a …
Erik Tenkar runs the Adventurer Conqueror King or Die! campaign most Saturday nights. The session reports I’ve been posting for the last couple months are shameless pandering to his ego (in exchange for a 10% increase in XP… I’m not proud). We recently acquired henchmen who accompany us into the …
Demons and rituals are both staples of fantasy. I’d like to see what I can do with them, especially integrating these topics with ideas from the Books and Libraries reworking I am doing. D&D a much better job here overall, with a great deal more material and application in the …
Tomes, grimoires, dusty libraries, all have been used in any number of stories. They have varying importance in role playing games, from terribly (and terrifyingly) important in Call of Cthulhu to being MacGuffins in certain adventure scenarios to being where you can exchange gold for questions answered. I have noticed …
For some time now I’ve been dissatisfied with how some cleric domains are implemented. Overall there are things I like, and places where I find them lacking. I think domains can use a general tuneup. Things I like about D&D 3.x domains: They provide a set of related spells that …
