By Brent on 23 June 2011
I’ve been listening to a series of lectures on historical castles, and it’s changed how I think about castles in an RPG setting. Debate about castles rages, naturally, so take all this with a grain of salt, but: Castles were not just fortifications. Indeed, fortification was a relatively minor element of their function. Castles were homes and symbols of power. Many of them were built to look imposing, and were actually hard […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 21 June 2011
D&D 4th Edition makes death rare. A player-character can be knocked unconscious, and one can be dying, but actual character death is generally uncommon. Character death is a big driving force for players, and provides the primary dramatic tension. Death is always scary. For a long time, the possible death of your character (usually via poor Hit Point rolls and good monster Hit Dice rolls) created […]
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By Brent on 18 June 2011
(I’m really unhappy with the way this blog post turned out. But I can’t think of a better way to write it, and I’d rather have it released than sitting in my drafts folder for months. So, here you are.) Last night, as I waited on yet another piece of software, I looked in on the Four Winds Tavern, a freeform IRC channel gamefiend of At Will runs on his 4eAtWill.net IRC server. Folks were conversing, […]
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By Brent on 17 June 2011
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I finally finished my Dark Sun adventure. I was so excited that I looked around for other half-finished adventures, and found one. But it wasn’t half-finished. It was 99.9% finished. Literally, I just had to update some stat blocks and I was done. So. If you’re interested in holding off a war party of hobgoblins, then tracking them to their underground lair, check out The Hobgoblins […]
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By Brent on 5 June 2011
RPG geekery to follow. Just finished reading You Are In The Tarrasque over at Daily Encounter, and it has me thinking about how to use the Tarrasque in a game. For those unfamiliar: in D&D, the Tarrasque is a massive, dinosaur-like engine of destruction that wanders the world annihilating things. Imagine a feral dragon with a stick up its butt and a hatred for the world. Its purpose is to rampage through cities, destroying them. The danger here […]
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By Brent on 1 June 2011
I’ve been talking with the great folks on the #4eDnD channel at 4eatwill.net about storytelling in RPGs. (Yes, another role-playing post. It’s been on my mind.) One chatter was telling us about the plot he was pulling his players through, and we were advocating for more player choice. Everyone agreed. Great. But it got me thinking: what if the players don’t want a lot of choice? There are […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 26 May 2011
So, @gamefiend opened up an IRC channel: #4eDnD at 4eatwill.net. Background: I love IRC in my bones. Perhaps my first major online experience (certainly major; not sure if it was first) was my involvement in the Sci-Fi Channel’s IRC servers, where I spent most of my time. Literally. Those were my friends back then. Anyvay. I left, years passed, and @gamefiend started up #4eDnD. I love gamefiend, love the games he ran […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 25 May 2011
Nearly a year ago, I decided to celebrate the release of D&D 4E’s Dark Sun campaign setting by writing and publishing a Dark Sun adventure. I got the writing part done okay, but not so much the publishing. I created a conspiracy, a set of characters, and some tough monsters. I got about 80% done, then stopped. I let other things get in the way. It’s embarrassing. So now it’s time for me to rectify that mistake. […]
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By Brent on 25 April 2011
Been listening to Merlyn Bragg’s audiobook The Adventures of English, which traces the history of the English language starting from its earliest days in England. Which sparked some ideas about languages in role-playing games. D&D-style worlds usually have half a dozen languages: a Common or Basic tongue that’s known by 99% of civilized people, a few species-specific languages, and maybe a few religious or otherwise esoteric languages (equivalent to Latin and Ancient Greek in our […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 14 March 2011
There are a lot of interesting theories out there about what a “story” means within a role-playing game. The simple view sees the GM as the controlling narrator, with the players reacting to the GM’s story. In this view, the players are fundamentally passive, struggling to overcome the GM’s challenges. The PCs are trying to survive or otherwise get past the current obstacle. This is an outdated paradigm, though a lot of games default to it. The other extreme […]
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