As you may know, we’re working on “Under the Seas of Vodari,” a Kickstarter stretch goal supplement for Seas of Vodari. D&D has rules for magical interactions underwater, but if all or much of the campaign takes place there, maybe you want to cut out things that underwater spellcasters never […]
In a boffer LARP campaign, it does a lot of good for the wandering-monster gameplay experience if the players have a steady supply of reasons to move around the game site in small groups. That is, it both improves the experience of being a wandering monster (and yes, people playing […]
In a recent conversation with the inimitable Samhaine, we discussed having PCs lead the overland escape of a large group of NPCs – think of it as the Fellowship shepherding the people of Rohan from Meduseld to Helm’s Deep, the travelogue format of zombie horror, or the terrestrial version of […]
There’s a widespread acknowledgement, I believe, that the initiative rules found in D&D, and indeed in most games, are not great and even detract from the game, but they are the least-worst option available. In this post I’m going to talk a bit about the problems with the current model […]
In a G+ thread discussing one of my UA breakdowns in Tribality, Jim Carstensen said: I’d welcome your input on “half feats” that grant +1 to an ability score. On one hand, it’s half of an ASI so you are getting value. But on the other side, it seems like […]
When I first saw monster stat blocks in the D&D Next playtest, and again upon the release of the Monster Manual, I was surprised at how much of a return to 2e-and-earlier form they resembled. They have some of the formal action presentation of 4e’s creature blocks, but they’re much […]
The final three-day event of the Dust to Dust LARP campaign ran last weekend. Dust to Dust has been a part of my life since 2006, and even though it has to end, I still have a hard time believing that it is done. I’ll probably be writing a lot […]
I liked the Innistrad block of M:tG so very, very much, and I loved Plane Shift: Innistrad. There’s just one really important thing from Innistrad that it didn’t have: the Geist-Honored Monk. As it happens, I don’t know the M:tG canon for this card, but I found it fascinating. What […]
Back in the 3.5 DMG II, there were magic items that benefited the whole party. I don’t remember the details of their design, and I’m deliberately not going back to look them up now, but I always liked the idea – company banners, totems, that kind of thing. I was […]
I wrote the Spirit and Exorcism domains a few months back, and they got me thinking about domains that imply totally dissimilar approaches to religion and spirituality. Here is another, perhaps more suited to sinister gods, such as the Blood of Vol in Eberron, but gods of battle such as […]
