Multiple Damage Tracks 2

I’ve been playing Echo Bazaar pretty constantly since I started a couple of months ago, and it’s what brought this to mind for me, but Samhaine pointed out that Smallville did the same, and as I thought about it I realized that it’s not a new idea, I just happen to […]


Crafting Systems Design: 4e Hack 1

I’ve been working on creating a decent crafting system for tabletop games for as long as I’ve worked on this blog, and then some. I’ve discussed some of the hurdles to doing so before; the things that make crafting interesting in MMOs don’t apply in tabletop gaming. There are big […]


Technoir: Player-side Review 1

Samhaine has recently been posting his GM-side analysis of Technoir, and I’ve been talking about it more or less nonstop in my posts, so here’s my actual post discussing it. In the second session he ran, I played Thornton “Pierce” Kimball, an investigator who had been working for Minnesota’s Big […]


More on Skill Systems, Particularly 4e 1

There’s been a lot of talk lately about skills in D&D 4e. Sarah Darkmagic’s last two posts (here and here) are a working summary of the current round of this discussion, and I can’t say enough good about some of Rob Donoghue’s posts on this topic, though you’ll have to […]


Martial Schools for 4e: Rowan Berserker 2

Way back in June, I worked out the first few powers for a Roux Swordsman character class and suggested additional attack descriptors that might lend more of a cut-and-thrust feel to 4e combat. Today, I’m working on the Rowan Berserker school, also taken from King’s Gate. They fight with shields […]


Hacking SIFRP: Arcane and Divine Magic 6

About a year ago, Wombat Warlord and I spent a good bit of time working out ideas to add a robust and flexible magic system to Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, because we liked the core of the system enough to adapt it to other fantasy settings. In particular, […]


Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying: Retrospective 5

From March of 2009 to March of 2010, the Monkey King ran a campaign of Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying for a group of six players, eventually expanding to seven. I’m not sure at this point how many sessions we played, but I would guess that it was somewhere between 15 […]


Tabletop Systems: What I’m Missing 3

At present, the tabletop systems freshest in my mind are Arcana Evolved (a cousin of D&D 3.5), D&D 4th edition, Technoir, Mage: the Awakening, Over the Edge, and to a lesser extent A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. This odd melange of systems and genres naturally leads to a […]


When a Bad Idea is the Right Idea 10

Often in gaming, characters are faced with options that are Obviously Bad Ideas, whether in terms of a plot hook, a magic item, a bargain of some kind, or a button that just begs to be pushed. Some characters are rational and cautious, and avoid such involvement; probably the most […]


4e Bar Brawling, Part 5: Sulimo 2

I’ve come to the last of the Bar Brawl power lists I created back in 2009. This set shows the beginning of some thinking about terrain powers; in this case, though, I was reskinning the character’s core powers to interact with terrain that I could know for certain would be […]