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 […]

D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 5

The new D&D Next playtest packet came out today, and it’s as dense with changes as any packet we’ve yet seen. Only races have gone mostly unchanged, I think. I am surprised by a lot of these changes, and the early summary is that I hope most of these changes are experiments […]

Iron Kingdoms: Player-Side Review 4

A few weeks ago, one of the guys in my gaming group ran two separate one-shot sessions of Iron Kingdoms, in preparation for a longer-term campaign that he’ll soon be starting up. My schedule, particularly preparations for Kainenchen promising to put up with me for the rest of her life, […]

Random Determination in Gaming

This post by Ethan Skemp, and this comic by Randall Munroe, both comment on how humans process randomness, with a slant toward two different types of games. Through our unstoppable powers of pattern recognition, we are excellent at constructing narratives out of events that are either seemingly or literally random. […]

New Warlock Invocations for D&D Next

In my Aurikesh campaign, I have players using the Sorcerer and Warlock classes released in the 10-8-12 playtest packet. These classes were cut from the more recent packets, and enough of the other rules were rearranged to make it difficult to play these classes alongside up-to-date versions of the others, […]

Alignment 4

A few weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast released the Monk for the D&D Next Public Playtest. In that version, Monks had to belong to the Lawful alignment. I found this strange and objectionable, for a couple of reasons, and that has led to this post, which is about alignment […]

The Lore Game: Basics 3

In LARPing, there is a playstyle (not exactly a character archetype) defined by deep engagement with the setting lore and ardent pursuit of its mysteries. This area of gameplay is of particular interest to me; my first long-term character, in Shattered Isles, was a dedicated scholar, and the enjoyment I […]