domains - feats - monsters - magic items - spells - patrons - and more
See More »A long while back, I posted a comparison of the treatment of religion, divine magic, and worship in seven different settings. This is relevant in that today I want to talk about the problems I have with clerics in fantasy gaming, particularly the various editions of D&D. These problems, I […]
There’s been a good bit of information distributed on spellcasting in D&D Next, most recently this; the broader ENWorld aggregation of information on wizards and spellcasting is found here. These pieces of information might or might not contradict one another, depending on how you want to interpret them. Today I’d […]
So, for Dust to Dust, we have introduced a number of games-within-the-game. I’ve commented at some length about Wizard Dueling before. This works well in LARPs, because even when things are scheduled well and everything is on time, there will be downtime that could stand to be filled. It’s just […]
On Memorial Day, I ran a session of the D&D Next playtest with Kainenchen, Stands-in-Fire, Samhaine, and two more friends. If, like my players and me, you have never before played through the Caves of Chaos, then either turn back or be comfortable with some minor spoilers. This will be your […]
This post will be something relatively close to liveblogging my reactions to reading through the D&D Next (I still think of it as 5th edition) material. Note that I haven’t played or run any of it yet, and won’t until Monday. Also, I can point to things here that contradict […]
I enjoyed writing the first two warrior societies so much that I thought I might do two more. I also left out any clear indication of fighting style for the Iron Temple in the last post, so I thought I’d mention it here. I mostly see these guys fighting with […]
A conversation about magic in the Marvel universe over in Google Plus today has me thinking about the greater role of magic in storytelling and games. A ton of different sources factor into my thinking here, starting with Merlin and the wizard-heroes of the Kalevala, continuing through the Wizard of […]
Creature design has always been tough for me. When I run tabletop games, I mostly use monsters out of the books. I can take credit for only a small number of the monsters in Dust to Dust. On the other hand, I’ve found that in almost every creative endeavor, the […]
It’s interesting to me how conversations about specific topics sometimes crop up in multiple unconnected places at the same time. Just as Ryan Macklin is discussing disadvantages and experience points in his blog, there’s also a lively exchange on experience points going on in Google Plus. The G+ conversation is, […]
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned warrior societies as a means of giving fighters more social connections and motivations to drive interaction with NPCs. I had wanted to include a few example warrior societies in that post, but it was long enough that I thought better of it. These […]
