Talking About Sex In RPGs
Posted: April 24, 2011 Filed under: Campaigns, D&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Humor, Legacy D&D, Other Systems, RPG 1 Comment »
Book Sale Finds
Posted: October 23, 2010 Filed under: Campaigns, D&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Legacy D&D, Other Hobby, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden Leave a comment »I went to a book sale today that the county library administration holds twice a year. They have millions of books all at very cheap prices. I’m probably gonna go back on “10 cents per book” clearance day where the unwanted leftovers are sold off. But today was the first day, which is one of the optimal days to go to find things. I had a sharp lookout for history books, with India, China, Japan and Africa in particular, as those are the places that I inject culture from for Spirits of Eden. I found something else while I was there though…
Guns In Fantasy
Posted: October 6, 2010 Filed under: Adventures, Campaigns, Copper Coins!, D&D, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Legacy D&D, RPG, Spirits Of Eden 1 Comment »When I first started gaming I used to be very against the idea of firearms in Fantasy settings. This was before I really understood the game mechanics well enough to ascertain that a wizard who can basically shoot fire all day will always just be better than the guy with the pistol, and also before I was imaginative enough to figure out how the aesthetics might coexist. To me, guns were a modern or sci-fi deal, and there was no real heroism to having a gun, nothing really cool about it. Having a sword or a bow and arrow was always fantasy to me instead. As with many things, nowadays I feel much differently.
Images That Say D&D To Me
Posted: September 18, 2010 Filed under: Campaigns, D&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Legacy D&D, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden 2 Comments »The old school blogs have a small meme going about D&D cover images which “say D&D” to them. I found this interesting and wanted to contribute but I ran into some problems. I haven’t actually played or really spoken of (outside of reviews) a variant of D&D in any great capacity for months now, I don’t know how much I qualify to talk about that, so I will just open it up to mean fantasy RPG in general. I also don’t really care about any D&D cover of any edition, so I thought I would open it up to maximum potential sacrilege by just using whatever image I have lying around that’s inspired me lately. So really it’s not the same meme at all, but this isn’t an old school blog at all, so that’s okay. And you know me, so you know these images will be anime images. (Give the post some time to load its images, as they are rather big. Click on them for larger sizes.)
Loot And Encumbrance
Posted: August 31, 2010 Filed under: Adventures, Campaigns, Copper Coins!, D&D, Fluff/Inspiration, Homebrew, Houserules, Legacy D&D, Other Systems, RPG 3 Comments »In the process of writing an RPG that at its core wants to support dungeon-looting play more than is usual, the idea of encumbrance plays an important part. In older editions of D&D, the particulars of how you are going to get loads of loot out of a dungeon are important. Encumbrance systems are there to essentially limit the amount of crap you can make off with in one go. As a party, if you were expecting to collect a lot of junk then you needed to prepare for the eventuality by hiring minions or buying pack animals, or you had to settle for not being able to make off with a thousand pounds of gold.
A lot of modern gamers, myself included, don’t really have the patience to deal with this completely. I like the idea of encumbrance – it forces a meaningful decision. If you are in a large enough dungeon, then at a certain point you either stop collecting loot, or you toss some and grab stuff preferentially for its value or utility, or you have to leave with the stuff you have, and return later for the rest of the stuff. Each of these decisions can provide a wealth of roleplaying and challenge opportunities depending on the locale.
D&D 4e Vidya Gaem
Posted: August 23, 2010 Filed under: D&D, D&D 4e, News, RPG 1 Comment »I don’t normally do these short little posts for other people’s news items, but I wanted to point out this interview about the new Neverwinter Nights. I want to point it out because it sounds pretty awesome. Rather than an MMO or traditional solo RPG video game using 4e’s rechargeable powers and balanced class rules, it is a cooperative video game online tabletop experience thing that will employ those attributes, hopefully bringing the tabletop and video game worlds ever closer. Players will connect to a server to play games of NWN 4e together, and while Solo play is supported, it will also be more challenging (much like in D&D 4e). I’m picturing Fantasy Grounds but with gameplay and hopefully a robust character model editor. This could be good enough to help WOTC overcome the whole game table fiasco people still cite. The talk of user generated content is really good, even if the opening game content so far sounds kinda weak (I’m not altogether enthused with the city of Neverwinter). I’ll have to wait until the final implementation to see whether or not this is as completely frickin’ awesome as it is in my head (because let’s face it – in my head most anything seems completely frickin’ awesome).
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Spiritual Talk