D&D Next: A Revised Warlock

This is another of those things that I am not entirely sure it’s okay to post, so if someone from Wizards of the Coast comes across this and tells me to take it down, I will do so, with apologies. (That said, I suspect a lot more than this has […]


D&D Next: Perspectives on Healing 1

The last few Legends & Lore posts have touched on issues around healing in D&D Next, as have a number of the blogs I read, so this is me, casting my chapeau in again… jauntily, of course. As one does. The driving conflict here is whether D&D Next will adopt […]


PvP: Boffer LARP Edition 10

A couple of weeks ago, Harbinger Readers JohnKazuo and Ms. J replied to my post on PvP design to specifically address the dynamics of PvP in LARPs, and now I’m returning to the topic. To state a few things up-front: this has a lot to do with pure aesthetics, and I […]


D&D Next Design Idea: Giving Ground 7

Kainenchen and I have been talking about the economy of actions in D&D Next lately, particularly in light of the fact that most characters have no way to spend their reaction in a round unless someone provokes an opportunity attack. Further, D&D Next needs more movement in combat (since we […]


Video Games as Art 5

Video gaming, as a medium, lives now in a constant state of public debate over when it might bridge the gap into being an art form. A conversation sprang up the other day in G+ over this article, and I had enough that I wanted to say that, well, here […]


PvP Design Principles 3

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about some of the high-level principles of PvP design. These principles readily apply to video games and LARPs. I want to be clear from the start: this is not master-class level stuff – for that, you want to talk to Stands-In-Fire. Quite seriously, the […]


D&D Next: Spell Design 1

It’s long established in this blog that I like to talk about spells and magic, and today is another of those days. D&D Next spell design is currently a bizarre melange of new ideas and old spells that have been with D&D for two or more editions. For example, lance […]


New Games in the New Year

This post was written for the second annual New Year, New Game blog carnival hosted by Gnome Stew as part of the 2013 New Year, New Game challenge. I started my Aurikesh game recently enough that I’m basing my comments on that, but overall this is a post about how […]


Skill Challenge Design, Part Two

I’ve been posting a lot lately about the work I’m doing on skill challenges, and now that I’ve had a chance to run two of them by my players, I’m posting about what I think worked and, more importantly, what I think didn’t work. Fair warning – this gets a […]


Alchemy System for D&D Next

In the few weeks since my last post, I’ve been working off and on to put together a skill challenge that would also work as a crafting system for Alchemy in my campaign. The system that I’ve put together still has some kinks to get worked out – which is […]