When it comes to structuring a robust lore game, many games include knowledge or lore skills. These skills serve, on one level, as background: a character-sheet indication of who the character is and what she does. On another, they represent a path for additional exposition. In some games and to […]
The final-final update to the playtest packet offers a second paladin oath (apparently this is where they’re storing the avenger class now?), some tweaks to paladin spell DCs (not paralleled in the ranger, for whatever reason), and a huge revision to Wild Shape and the Circle of the Moon, over […]
“You can ride without a saddle, Lord?” he asked me.“Without a horse, tonight, if necessary.”—Excalibur, by Bernard Cornwell In my recent post on the latest playtest packet, I wrote about skills and proficiencies a lot. I thought about it some more, and now I want to recapitulate and, for my […]
Back in March, I was playing a lot of Torchlight II, and I created an Outlander class for D&D Next, because arcane archers and creepy gunslingers are awesome as hell. Now that we have the last D&D Next rules set we’re going to get until actual publication (presumably), I’m updating […]
The new Legends & Lore post from Mearls talks about the concept of Class Groups, as well as some of outbound design ideas behind the Mage class in the last two playtest packets. Kainenchen has already written a post about this topic, so by all means go read her post first. […]
I’ve been running a campaign throughout the playtests to date, and like any other campaign I’ve ever run, creating my own rules content is just part of how things go. When D&D Next stopped supporting the warlock (quite a long while back), I decided to make my own, based on […]
Wow, crazy – this might be the last of my reviews of a new playtest packet. Or not; there are a number of notes in this packet that suggest that it isn’t quite as final as they’ve claimed, such as the reference to additional paladin paths coming out… eventually. Anyway, the […]
Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. –“The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot Now that another DtD event has been put to bed, I can get back to writing here – and […]
So, a week or so ago, I asked my pals in G+ to talk up my blog in the Comments section of The Gamer Effect‘s post about their $50 Gamer Giveaway. A Brief and Tragicomic Digression I don’t know enough about the market value of a gamer to guess whether […]
Thanks to my success in writing advice for my fellow Eclipse colonists, I’ve decided that I can and should write occasional advice columns for others. In-character advice is probably funnier (even for games I don’t play), but if someone wanted GMing advice, I’d be happy to answer those, too. Right, […]