Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve put 15k words into a playtest document for Quintessence, and today I got to a span of rules I’ve seriously dreaded writing. The 4e brawler build of the fighter class is about the only version of grappling rules I think I’ve ever seen in […]
Dear Design Diary, While I was away for Thanksgiving, thanks to the unflagging support of Kainenchen, I started working with some ideas for a new fantasy roleplaying system for tabletop. I particularly want something that borrows a bit more from the style and substance of LARPing, without sacrificing usability. When […]
There are a lot of lessons of good game-running that carry over between tabletop and live-action gaming. This post, though, concerns itself with an area in which the two are quite different. As usual, I’m talking about a certain band of LARPing, not all LARPing. (There are almost no statements that […]
With a lot of my posts about game design, I talk separately about how things work in tabletop games and live-action games. When I came to the topic of lore skills, I first discussed how they work in a number of local LARPs, because I feel like LARPs have a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Over the weekend, I learned the word atrous from playing Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. It’s not the main topic of this post, but I strongly recommend this game if you liked the classic Master of Magic. (I’d love to see a Myrror-like addition to Fallen Enchantress, though it has to be […]