Once upon a time, I adored 3rd edition D&D. I thought it was the best edition of D&D ever. Then Paizo came and tore up my good feelings, stomped on them, poured gasoline over them, set fire to them, and then buried the ashes in a garbage pit and stomped on them some more. No, not really. It is true, however, that a lot of … Continue reading How Paizo made me hate 3E
In our last session of my Castle Greyhawk campaign, Peggy’s magic-user “Mya” used her magic to destroy an altar to the Chaos Gods. She was promptly cursed by those gods, who made it impossible for her to heal. Luckily she was able to get the curse reversed (Into the Woods line there) at the temple of Rao, although she’s now engaged on a quest for … Continue reading Faith in D&D
I picked up Dark Chateau earlier today, another part of the Castle Zagyg series of modules from Troll Lord Games. In actual fact, the copy I’d ordered from MilSims hasn’t arrived yet – I picked this up as a pdf, as it was on special with a bunch of other Castles & Crusades adventures at RPGnow. I then printed it out in booklet form and stapled … Continue reading More conversions
Once upon a time, there were these D&D designers who decided that clerics were boring. Why should every cleric have the same powers, even though one cleric was a priest of the god of battle, and another was a priest of the god of love… Now, all of this makes a lot of sense. It really does. Why should the powers that one god grant be … Continue reading The trouble with speciality priests
Well, I’ve spent a few happy hours today preparing for Friday’s session. I started running this new Castle Greyhawk game a fortnight ago, and between then and now have picked up part of Castle Zagyg by Gary Gygax. So, I’m integrating my CG material with his… Of course, all of Gary’s material was originally for oD&D, ported into Castles & Crusades, and now being ported … Continue reading Preparing for Friday D&D
At the beginning of this year, I’d planned to wrap up my Sunday afternoon (Ulek) campaign and start up new a 4e campaign for that group with Keep on the Shadowfell. I’d also planned to continue running the Friday Nighters through Savage Tide until we finished it (most likely at the end of 2008 or in early 2009) and then start playing 4e. The latter … Continue reading D&D 4e Dungeon Design Experiences
You know, it’s really weird, but the 4e cosmology as described in the new DMG seems almost perfect for Greyhawk. Let’s face it: if you, like me, rely primarily in the 1983 boxed set and the Gygax “Gord the Rogue” books for inspiration, along with the early AD&D adventures, there isn’t really all that much information on (a) the origin of the world and (b) … Continue reading The new D&D Cosmology and Greyhawk
(split out from original discussion) As we discovered last session, Use the Force has some problems when it gets used against PCs – especially with Move Object. (10+d6 damage? Ouch). What gets me is the weird scaling of these powers. Trained/Skill Focused UTF (which is what any decent Jedi should have) and a 16 Cha goes from +13 at 1st level to +23 at 20th … Continue reading Star Wars – Fixing Use the Force?
In 4e, if the DM wants to have a succubus have the king under her control and rule the kingdom through proxy, the DM can do so, without needing the monster’s statblock in the Monster Manual to back up that decision. From what I can see of 4e, this is a huge shift from earlier thinking of D&D (especially 3e), where every little ability of … Continue reading D&D 4e Monster usage philosophy
JeDi Wiker recently made the point on EN World that he finds the new D&D 4e monster names ((“kobold skirmisher,” “hobgoblin warcaster,” “deathjump spider”) too similar to D&D Miniatures naming conventions, which thus lessens the D&D feel of the game for him. I do think that the CMG and new D&D names are very similar, but I don’t think the design decision was “let’s make them … Continue reading D&D Monster Naming Conventions
