D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 8

A new playtest packet for D&D Next dropped last Friday, and in accordance with prophecy, I’m writing up my thoughts on same. They’ve hugely overhauled all of the classes – heck, they even changed the name of the wizard class – so let’s just jump right in. A quick glance at […]


Four New Spells: The Atrous Spike

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 […]


Races in Fantasy Gaming: Elves

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caoilte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving our […]


Downtime Actions in Tabletop Gaming

It’s been a month and more since Mearls posted When Adventurers Aren’t Adventuring, in which he explains that D&D Next will offer rules for things that happen while the heroes are at home or otherwise off-duty from heroics and/or treasure-hunting. I think it’s fair to say that this has been […]


Divination in Gaming, Part Two: LARP Edition

About a week ago, I wrote a few words about the function of divination in tabletop gaming. As is common in this blog, I’m coming back to discuss how the same idea works in live-action gaming. Just like every other time I’ve posted about LARPing, I’m really talking about the […]


Divination in Gaming, Part One

Last week’s Legends & Lore post touched briefly on divination magic, sparking an ongoing conversation in the D&D Next community about the application of divination magic in games. This is the kind of conversation that applies across gaming of every kind – tabletop, LARP, video games, occasionally even board games. […]


D&D Next: A Revised Sorcerer

One of the early public playtest packets included the sorcerer class. On its face, it is an arcane class that uses a spell-point system rather than Vancian casting – nothing to get excited about. The packet presented only one sorcerous bloodline for use, though, and that revealed a great deal […]


D&D Next: Additional At-Will Weapon Attack

So I have been thinking about how I would rebuild the long-neglected sorcerer for the current D&D Next environment. Though this is not currently well-supported in D&D Next, one of the best design lessons of 4e is that characters should have two clear at-will options that are constantly available. (Actually, […]


D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 7

The new D&D Next playtest packet came out just as I was leaving town for the weekend, but better late than never, right? Three major areas have changed in this packet, along with a few smaller changes that (for whatever reason) they declined to document in the Read This First […]


Monsters of Aurikesh: Thralls of Mask and Orb

It’s been rather a while since I’ve posted any Aurikesh content. Admittedly, they’re of interest to a narrower group than some of my other subjects, but much like I said the last time I wrote a Monsters of Aurikesh post, I want to get better at creature design. Also I […]