Posted in Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Houserules, Magic, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, world building on Mar 17th, 2011
Last week, I talked about some house rules regarding persistent injuries that I will be using to both buff and weaken some NPCs I plan on using. Now, I’d like to talk about some rules I plan on putting in place for the effects of aging on characters. The creators of D&D always seemed to think that after [...]
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Posted in Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, Houserules, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, Skill checks, Star Wars, backstories, city building, storytelling, world building on Mar 10th, 2011
Time to get personal. I have several permanent injuries. I tore a groin muscle several years ago. I’ve had both ankles surgically reconstructed. I also have a bad back from being rear-ended 3 times in one year. Over the years, I have learned to compensate for these injuries. I still enjoy quite a few athletic [...]
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Posted in Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, city building, storytelling, world building on Mar 3rd, 2011
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the cantina scene in the “Special Edition” of Star Wars always irritated me. Han shot Greedo under the table. Greedo never got to pull the trigger. That was how the scene was originally scripted and that’s how it happened as far as I’m concerned. When playing [...]
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Zombies are huge in popular culture these days. The genre of zombie movies has experienced a popular reemergence and the familiar brain eating bad guys appear more in video games, comic books, and table top RPGs than they ever have before. When planning a session for my Urban Arcana game I decided to use zombies [...]
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Posted in Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, city building, storytelling, world building on Feb 24th, 2011
I have talked a number of times about my DM “notebook”. In actuality, it’s a series of text files, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets that I use to save favorite creatures, story notes, and caveats for myself to never use something again. Today, I’ve decided to share with you one of my favorite low-level encounters. I [...]
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Before the hippies in the audience get up in arms, I’m talking about campaign materials. (Also, I work mostly from my laptop when DM’ing so I don’t waste paper.) I’ve got an opportunity to run a campaign again and I’m going to be doing it in a new system. I’m running my first Pathfinder game. I [...]
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Anyone who is familiar with 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder is acquainted with the spells per day system. Depending on your character level and your ability scores you are alloted a certain number of spells per day of the levels that you are able to cast. Unlike 4th edition which utilizes At Wills, a [...]
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Posted in Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, RPG, Roleplay, Tropes, backstories, storytelling, world building on Feb 3rd, 2011
Amnesiac heroes are one of the most poorly used tropes out there. The worst example I can cite is Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Cloud was a tool. I’m still convinced to this day that they gave him amnesia because they were never sure how his character was supposed to develop. He’s not the [...]
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I thought that with the news that WOTC is releasing the Shadow Source book, I would write a post about how to roleplay evil characters for an evil campaign. Yes, I realize that Shadow Source is not synonymous with evil, you can play neutral or even good, etc. But sometimes, you just want to stop [...]
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Monsters are everywhere these days. From your seemingly unoccupied castle to your grandmother’s pantry, no space of considerable size is safe from the sudden appearance of a gelatinous cube or a gibbering mouther. Some of our long time readers may remember that I tend to lean towards using humanoids as my bad guys but today [...]
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