Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve put 15k words into a playtest document for Quintessence, and today I got to a span of rules I’ve seriously dreaded writing. The 4e brawler build of the fighter class is about the only version of grappling rules I think I’ve ever seen in […]
Dear Design Diary, While I was away for Thanksgiving, thanks to the unflagging support of Kainenchen, I started working with some ideas for a new fantasy roleplaying system for tabletop. I particularly want something that borrows a bit more from the style and substance of LARPing, without sacrificing usability. When […]
In a recent post on rogues, I discussed some of the issues surrounding 4e’s implementation of skill challenges. I’ve had a few days to give it more thought, and the idea has expanded in my imagination into something I might try to publish as a PDF, someday when I have […]
In working on Dust to Dust, one of the significant areas of design theory discussion has been which rules to reveal and which to keep secret from the publicly-posted rules. That secret rules exist should be no surprise to most gamers; in one form or another, it’s a practice as old […]