Balance… is tremendously important to any RPG. If you don’t think it is, then you don’t understand what balance is. It doesn’t help discussions that there are actually two types of balance with regard to playing RPG, both of which get confused for the other if the discussion isn’t precise enough or the idea isn’t understood well enough. To help everyone, here are the two … Continue reading Understanding Game Balance is Important
The third season of D&D Encounters began today, and so a few players gathered with me, my DM, as we played the first session of the newest version of The Keep on the Borderlands. I have very fond memories of Keep. It was one of the very first adventure modules I tried to DM (badly, I might add), and I used it again as the … Continue reading Back to the Keep on the Borderlands
There are quite a few games I’ve picked up recently that I’d like to get the chance to play sometime in the next few months. It hasn’t helped that there’s a lot of Other Games interfering at the moment – for instance, a big Magic tournament on Saturday, and then the BattleTech league I’m running. Mind you, BattleTech will consume my attention for only a … Continue reading Games to play…
Well, it’s finally gotten to Ballarat: the 4e Dark Sun Campaign Setting, and both Josh and I have our copies. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of the Creature Catalogue yet. I hope that it isn’t too far behind. Tell me again why we had the Dark Sun Game Day a week-and-a-half ago when there was no Dark Sun product available in Australia? In any case, the … Continue reading Dark Sun Campaign Setting… at last!
Last Friday’s D&D session saw Martin run the best session of the campaign so far… all three sessions of it. The most glorious moment was when my character declared that he was arresting an NPC for war crimes (who we’d been chasing for most of the previous session), and the NPC exclaimed “it’s a fair cop, guv!” and surrendered. Well, perhaps he didn’t use those … Continue reading My ardent is 2nd level!
I’ve just ordered some Game Science Precision dice from MilSims. With any luck, they’ll arrive early next week, and for the first time I’ll have dice that are properly random, rather than weighted. Heh. Dice are interesting things. As a DM, I tend not to worry about the randomness of dice too much – I roll so many, and the PCs are there or not … Continue reading Dice! and other stuff
One of the EN World regulars (Festivus) has posted pictures of the new D&D Basic Game – you can see them here. One of the slides show a few powers. So, transcribed for your entertainment… here they are! Hypnotism – Wizard Attack 1, at will, Ranged 10, Int vs. Will. Target: 1 creature Hit: Choose one of the following effects: * The target uses a free … Continue reading A few Red Box Powers
This week, I’m GotW on RPG Geek. I’ll be answering questions about gaming – mostly my RPG gaming – thoughout the week. The thread is here if you want to visit. It comes as I’ve just finished up P3: Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress with a good session today; the group worked really well together, defeating the foes that were thrown at them. I slightly tinkered … Continue reading RPG Geek of the Week
I know the Essentials isn’t 4.5e… for one thing, the changes should be freely available for those of us with the 4e books (I hope!), but there are a few rules changes coming in those books and the related rules updates. Magic Item Daily Powers Possibly one of best “this is fiddly so we got rid of it” changes is this: Magic Item Daily powers … Continue reading D&D 4E Changes coming with Essentials
GenCon is on this weekend, and by some strange co-incidence, the Call of Cthulhu game I had planned for this weekend won’t be going ahead. So, it looks like a no-roleplaying weekend for me, while a lot happens over in the States. As DaveTheGame said to me on twitter: “There’s only a finite amount of roleplaying in the world, and it’s all being used elsewhere.” … Continue reading No roleplaying, but some BattleLore
