What are hit points? Historically, they were a measure of health and toughness, but over time (much like armor class) that got more and more abstracted until you’re left with some incongruous trappings (like tying them to constitution) and a simple reality: They’re a pacing mechanism. They measure how long something stays fighting, which in […]
Blog
Situation – The Problem
This all began with @sarahdarkmagic raising an innocuous question on twitter: how to run breaking into a castle in 4e. Specifically, the issue was that doing it as a skill challenge did not provide the right feel, which was more fast and skirmishy, taking out guards and such. Now, I could argue that a skill […]
Pacing
The first post-holiday game of the Cold War game I’ve been running was last night. Coming back from a break is always rough, and there’s often a fear the game will have lost it’s inertia during the hiatus. Thankfully, things went off very well, and we had a great adventure chasing shadows and lightning in […]
Gamma World: Vehicle House Rules Rough Draft
So, vehicles. They exist in Gamma World, but they’re poorly supported. Here’s a very rough sketch of how I might handle them in mine, if it came up: – Vehicles have hit points (a given) and sometimes a resistance to physical damage. Size the hitpoints about how you might a monster of a level on […]
Hack: Use Your Grid-Maps With Fate
So, I love our semi-abstract method of zone maps in Fate, but playing and running (far more run than play) 4e has left me a little bit bitten by the maps-and-minis bug. There are times when I’d like to see Fate happen with a little more of a rooted, concrete, tactical map-reality. So that’s been […]
Skill Challenge Preview
So, the preview for the Skill Challenge chapter of the DMG II is up here and careful readers may note a reason I’m particularly curious to see it. The skill challenge they present is, by the by, also a decent illustration of how to do a seamless skill challenge. While the DM can absolutely explicitly […]
OK, it’s on
D&D, my place, noon on saturday, running til 5 at the latest. 7th level characters, usual treasure rules (1 7th, 1 8th, 1 6th or 3 7th level items, plus cash equivalent to a level 7 item). Classes are limited to those in need of showcasing: choose from Artificer, Barbarian, Druid and Shaman. If we […]
The Subtle Hand of Awesome
I’m a big fan of the Birthright setting that TSR put out back in the day. It hit a lot of notes I really liked – the world felt populated, politics had a powerful role, monsters felt mythic – it just rocked. But one subtle note always impressed me. In one of the nations of […]
The City Challenge
judd_sonofbert put forward a really fascinating challenge to try to capture the feel he enjoys about China Mieville’s New Crobuzon (The city from Perdido Street Station and other books) using D&D and it’s magnificent weirdness as a starting point. The rules, such as they are, can be found here, but in short, they call for […]
The Whiff Factor: GUMSHOE Edition
As a part of getting my head wrapped around the upcoming GUMSHOE game Mutant City Blues game from Pelgrane (think the Powers comic book as an RPG), I decided to sit down with The Esoterrorists and give it a read. I’d heard some mixed reviews (1, 2) about this game both online and off, and […]