Five good things I learned playing D&D 4th edition (or… How I learned not to care about diagonal movement!)

2

Posted by Sunglar | Posted on 12-03-2010

Category : Advice, D&D4e, Feature, Just my two cents, RPG, Random musings

Some of you might have gotten the idea from a previous post that I don’t like Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. Nothing could be further from the truth. I played the game for the better part of a year and had fun with it. Ultimately my players and I sat down to talk about it and decided to play something else, in this case Pathfinder. But I think 4th edition had many things to teach, lessons I’m applying to my current Pathfinder campaign, and will benefit others systems I play in the future. Let’s look at them…

1. The biggest lesson was to let go of my fear of “breaking” the game and get creative. When D&D 3rd edition came about the system codified so many different elements, everything was so closely interconnected that sometimes I feared eliminating a certain part of the system without worrying about the cascading effect it would have on the game. Thought years of playing I felt pretty comfortable with winging things, but making sweeping changes to the rules was something I was reluctant to do! D&D 4th edition’s simplicity meant I felt free to create modify and wing just about anything I could imagine.  This gave me the confidence to look back at 3rd edition, and now at Pathfinder, and shake off the false sense of strict adherence to the rules and feel freer to create, modify and learn from my mistakes. I now approach games with a more experimental outlook!

2. Reskinning, just taking the math and abilities of one creature and making up a new one from the foundations of that other creature, the whole idea is so simple I am amazed it took me so long to consciously do it. I owned tons of monsters book, a creature for every purpose. Now I can do so much with just one book just by describing a monster differently. I had fiddled with the details of monsters before, but now I just redress them and describe the effect differently, adding an ability here or feat there.

3. Making characters just a little bit tougher… Here is something I have tried to do for a long time, make those first levels more survivable and taking some cues form 4th edition I now make characters a little bit harder to kill allowing them to survive longer and face tougher challenges.

4. Making terrain an integral part of combat! I’ve always drawn detailed maps, and even had an adventure where the party fought in floating pillars above an underwater lake, but these instances were the exception not the rule. After playing D&D 4th edition I now plan my combats and challenges with an eye for how terrain can be integral to the situation, hindering or helping combatants as they interact with the terrain. I think this has been the change that has caused the biggest shock to some of my players. It adds another wrinkle to the tactical element of combat that some who are more interested in just getting their character close to the monster and beating it down resent. Still I think it creates a much richer and diverse combat experience.

5. Diagonal movement… Here is something I embraced when they changed the rules from D&D 3.0 to 3.5 but added unnecessary complexity to the game. If I’m willing to forego things like facing or other “realistic” elements why insist on this? Now calculating effects and movement is quicker, true it changes the rules, but hey it’s my game, I learned that lesson!

Theses are just five examples, but there were many little things I learned form playing D&D 4th edition. I still read reviews and rules for the system and talk with friends that play the game so I may learn more and keep growing as a gamer and a Game Master.

What have you learned for playing this or other games? Let us know…

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Initiative Tracking Tools

8

Posted by Youseph Tanha | Posted on 11-03-2010

Category : Advice, D&D4e, Feature, Freebies, RPG, RPG tools

Tags: , ,

Initiative tracking is very important when it comes to running a Dungeons & Dragons game. Gamers all over the internet have come up with some unique and creative ways for tracking initiative. I thought I would take a moment to talk about a few of my favorite initiative tracking tools.

DM’s Tracker by kbarapps
DM’s Tracker is my favorite tool to use when tracking Initiative, but I am somewhat wary to talk about it. DM’s Tracker is an initiative tracker for your iPhone/iTouch. The application allows you to set up players, monsters, and encounters. You can also use it to track each player’s condition. Whether they are bloodied, stunned, dazed, and so on. My wariness to talk about this app is because of how buggy it is. I have used it long enough that I am pretty aware of the bugs and how to avoid them or work with them. According to kbarapps twitter page the program is undergoing a rewrite and when the update gets published all the existing bugs should be squished and new features added. I am really looking forward to the update.

Printable DM
My second favorite option is the Printable DM created by Nephilim. Just download the PDF, print off the sheet and you instantly have a way of tracking Initiative order as well as conditions.

Index Cards
This is a cheep and easy method for tracking player Initiative and it certainly fits under the “keep it simple, stupid” methodology. Pull out some index cards for your players and your monsters. On the top left label each cards write the names of a different player or monster till you have enough for your encounter. On the top right of each card write down their HP and Bloodied numbers. Underneath the Characters name write down their AC, Fort, … On the bottom right of each card write down their initiative number order. (ie: 1, 2, 3…) That way if you drop your cards you can easily put them back in the right order. It’s also easy to track conditions.

What is your preferred way to track initiative? I want to know.

5 people like this post.
Unlike

“Blog of a new RPGer” interview

3

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 11-03-2010

Category : Blogging, Feature, Interview, News, Reviews & Culture, RPG, Site News

Interview As you probably know I love to interview interesting people from the roleplaying industry. Yesterday something really surprising happened: Gordon from “Blog of a new RPGer” asked if he could do an interview with me.

The result is an in-depth interview with me which you can read over at Gordon’s blog. We talked about how I got into gaming, running Call of Cthulhu, blogging and a lot more. Check it out!

6 people like this post.
Unlike

The Importance of Dice

16

Posted by Youseph Tanha | Posted on 08-03-2010

Category : D&D4e, Feature, RPG, RPG tools, Random musings, Video

Tags: , ,

Dice are a very important part of most role playing games. Without out a good set of dice you would not be able to roll up your character, let alone slay a dragon. They are just as important to people who play roll playing games as the story they are playing through. Some people take this very seriously. I remember reading a story some time back about a player who buried his dice in the back yard after a bad roll that resulted in the death of his character. Yet others are more than willing to share their game dice with a new player. It all depends on the person.

As important as dice are to players, the way they roll their dice is just as important.  Some people give them a quick shake in the hand and let them fly. Others will spin their dice  high into the air and let them drop down right in front of them. Yet, others will blow on their dice casino style before they roll. Each person is hopping that these little rituals they do with their game dice will improve the out come of what they roll. You can witness this first hand by watching Chris Perkins and the writers from robot chicken playing Dungeons & Dragons. Each person (most of which are new to roll playing and have never touched a d20 before) has their own roll style.

When I was looking at getting into Dungeons & Dragons last year I started by picking up the Dungeons & Dragons Foruth Edition RPG Starter Set. When I got home and opened the box one of the first things that poured out into my hands was my first set of dice. Up till this moment I had never owned my own set of dice. With the six multi-colored dice in my hand my mind exploded with possibilities of the other kinds of cool dice I could get. I think I spent hours that first night searching the internet for dice. That should show you how important dice are to me.

After looking though all the Steel, Bone, Hematite, Opaque, Translucent, Glitter, Speckled dice the internet had to offer I settled on a set of Green opaque dice with white numbers. Green being my favorite color and opaque making it easy to read the white numbers. Sometimes settling on the simplicity of just being able to read quickly what you have rolled is more important and time-saving then getting a crazy translucent yellow dice with elvish print that takes you way to long to read after it’s stopped rolling. That’s just my preference. Everyone has their own and that is what makes this topic so fascinating to me.

Recently my views on dice all came crashing to the ground thanks to a company called Game Science. One of the things Game Science states about their own dice is:

“My company makes polyhedral dice closer to casino specifications” (casino dice must be exact to a tolerance of .005″ – Gamescience dice have been measured with a side to side variation of .002″ to .006″)

So with a sharp edge on the Game Science Dice, your roll is truly random since their are no curvature variations. The sharp edges also allow for better stopping power.
Now, is all this true? I honestly don’t know. I think casino’s have have sharp edge dice for a reason and I think that holds some weight. Game Science has two videos on their website with the owner talking about his dice and why they are better then all other roll playing dice on the market. After watching the videos the guy lays down a pretty convincing argument. But he is such a good salesmen I also think he could sell sand to a guy living in the desert.

After watching these videos it’s hard for me to know if one brand of dice is truly better then any other brand on the market. I just don’t have enough validated facts to say one way or the other. As important as dice are to me and to roll playing games in general the biggest reason I play D&D is to have time set aside in my week to meet up with my friends and socialize. I don’t need casino grade dice to do that.

With all that said I drank the Kool-Aid and  ordered a set of Lime Green Game Science dice.

You know…

So I can review them…

11 people like this post.
Unlike

The A-Team: A model for RPG campaigns?

5

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 08-03-2010

Category : Advice, Feature, Fluff/Inspiration, RPG

The A-Team Yesterday while watching  an episode of The A-Team on TV, it struck me. Wouldn’t The A-Team make a perfect model for a RPG campaign?  Let’s look at the basic premise, which is summed up pretty good by the voiceover during the opening credits:

”Ten years ago , a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.”

So you have a team of military specialists (the leader, the face, the mechanic and the mad pilot), doing good deeds while hunted by the law. And when I think about it, that does sound like a cool premise for a roleplaying campaign set into almost any genre. I can easily imagine an A-Team in the time after the Thirty Years’ War, in the far future or in most fantasy settings without changing the basic premise too much. Of course you won’t have a pilot in most fantasy settings, but perhaps you can replace that position by a sailor or even a cleric.

The main problem with that kind of campaign is character motivation. What is the reason the A-Team helps people on a regular basis while being hunted by the military police? It’s definitely not the money they’re after, because in most cases they don’t even take the money offered. In my experience players usually need more motivation than just doing “the right thing”, so you probably have to think about what motivates “your” A-Team.

Another recurring element of the series is that the A-Team often creates custom vehicles to overcome their foes in a final fight. Some game systems support doing something like that. When I remember correctly Shadowrun had extensive rules for customizing vehicles for example. This aspect of the series could pose a problem especially when set into the fantasy genre especially when the technology level of the campaign is pretty low.

There’s one fantasy campaign, which suits that campaign model perfectly: Eberron. The basic Eberron campaign is set only a couple of years after the Last War and there’s a reasonably high tech level that allows the construction of weird devices and vehicles. A party could consists of veterans from the Last War, like a human warlord (as leader), an elven bard (as face), a warforged artificer (as mechanic) and perhaps a gnome wizard with some ties to House Lyrandar or Orien (for transportation). They could have been made responsible in parts for what has happened on the Day of Mourning and are now hunted. So they fled to the Sharn underground.

Of course you can’t copy the series completely. Doing basically the same story over and over again may work for a television series, but it will probably get boring for your players pretty fast. But I think the basic premise could help to create an interesting RPG campaign.

What are your thoughts? Do you think running a campaign inspired by The A-Team might work? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

4 people like this post.
Unlike

The State of the Game: Puerto Rico

1

Posted by Sunglar | Posted on 05-03-2010

Category : Feature, Just my two cents, News, Reviews & Culture, RPG, Random musings

Hello readers, I’m going to ask your indulgence for a moment because I intend to write about something very personal, gaming in Puerto Rico.

Recently I’ve become interested in the wellbeing and growth of the role playing community in the island. In a way I feel like it’s the least I can do for a hobby that has brought so many good things to my life. I had a lot of contact with the local gaming community while I worked in comic book/hobby store, but after I graduated college back in 95 and got a full time job I lost contact with the community. I never stopped playing and have longstanding friendships with people I met at the store. Heck, half of my gaming group hails from that time! For years I played with my group and some players came and went but I had little contact with what happened beyond my group.

Then about five years ago the gaming group grew and we integrated two smaller groups into one larger group with more than one GM running games. Some of us even made the trek to GenCon and I was really fired up. But then as it often happens we had scheduling conflicts, personal situations and back in 07 the group was again six of us playing by ourselves. Then I got invited to a group in Facebook, Puerto Rico Role Players and it changed how I relate to games.

A lot can be said about social networking, good and bad, but for me the group was a blessing. I came into contact with old friends from way back when I used to work in the comic shop and made new friends from all across the island. Through the group a new player joined and I came in contact with other groups. Puerto Rico Role Players became a place to exchange information, keep in contact, share news, and little by little we began recruiting more people, even some players who had moved away but still had ties to the island.

Through contact with other fans of RPGs I formed a better idea of the state of RPGs in. I am sure there are many much role players in Puerto Rico than members of the group, but a trend becomes obvious. Most of use began playing in school or college, played extensively during that time but once we grew older real life became increasingly complicated and regular gaming became harder. Most long lasting groups usually flock around one or more regular GMs that are often the glue of the group even when there is some player turnover. A complain often voiced among members of the Puerto Rico Role Players group is the lack of GMs or at least what many of them consider “good” GMs. I realize that is a matter of taste but the adjective is often repeated.

There are no locally published role playing games, so most of us began playing with quintessential game, D&D, some players I know have been playing since the late 70’s. In the 90’s World of Darkness became the “in thing” and most players you ran into were playing in some chronicle or other. I got to play in session with 12 and 14 players. I know of may people who used to play Rifts as well. I guess while I worked in the comic shop those were the three big sellers.

Another interesting phenomenon I experienced and have seen in other groups is that groups are usually LARGE. I have had anywhere from 8 to 12 regular players, and know of similarly sized group. There are many war gamers and people playing CCGs. Thought the group I’ve become aware of LARP groups as well!

There is a death of gaming stores and they don’t always stock all the latest games, so many players rely on the big book chains or online shops these days. What few shops there are usually don’t have areas where players can gather to game. The one store I used to visit that had space to game in, sold few new items and mostly dealt in reselling minis and getting special order merchandise or collectibles. And they are no longer in business… Most people played in schools, universities or at their houses. I believe this is one of the elements that make meeting new players difficult. There are no communal gathering places where you can go to and participate in a game.

This fact as well as the obvious generation gap among gamers were issues I thought the group could help address. Our hobby shrinks everyday we don’t reach the younger generation and teach them the joys of role playing. I know of at least one parent who runs adventures for his teenage son and his friends, but there is more we all can do. In the group we came up with the idea of gathering at the small cons and trade shows that happen around the island.

At first we just got together to meet and exchange ideas. Eventually we decided to participate in a local con as a group. We set up a table, handed out literature about the group, what RPGs are, and did gaming demonstrations for various systems. One of the group’s members builds incredible models for his games and we had them on display to show many of the things that can enhance the role playing experience. We even ran a game for new players that had NEVER tried out an RPG ages 12 to 20!

We had great fun, and the pictures you see in this post are from this activity. We have many more photos in the Puerto Rico Role Players group. While the discussion is mostly in Spanish I invite you to visit us, we speak English there. If you know any Puerto Rican who doesn’t know about us, please share this information with them, even if they are no longer in the island. They are all welcome.

As a group we have many great plans for the future and I’m convinced that the group can do much more to create awareness about RPGs and share the joys of the hobby with others…

So what is gaming like where you live? What do you do to let others learn about RPG?

8 people like this post.
Unlike
Page 1 of 912345...Last »