Haven't Had Much Time for Blogging But Plan to Be Back

In the last month I have gotten a real job, have had to relocate myself, and my stuff, twice, and will have to do so twice more in the coming weeks. Hopefully by October my life will have settled down enough that I can devote time to this blog again but until then there will be occasional updates at best.

The best,
Lewis F

The Art of RPG Haggling

While playing pen and paper RPGs, I have often witnessed a player trying to negotiate the price of an item with a game master controlled character. I have witnessed this as a player, as a game master, and as another player watching from across the table. This is a quintessential part of pen and paper RPGs and one I have seldom seen done well.

Fighters vs Wizards, A Simple Solution

One common complaint about D&D 3.5 is that spell casters completely outshine physically based characters (such as fighters, barbarians, rogues, rangers, etc.) at higher levels. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the first group as “wizards” and the second group as “fighters.” In my experience, however, this isn’t much of a problem around levels 5-8. Below that level, if anything, wizards are weaker than the fighter type characters. This is one problem I think everyone would like to see fixed in the new version of the game.

Trying to do Social Encounters in 5th Edition, Attempt #1: Failure

This past weekend I ran the second session of my 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game. Based on the feed back I got from the group, the session left something to be desired. When I was planning it out I wanted to try out some ideas I had for doing social encounters, a much neglected part of role-play games in most rule sets. I also through in a stealth mission and a sport called "Orc Ball." I thought this was going to be one of my better sessions but there were several points that I failed to consider in planning it.

How to Be a Good Game Master, Lesson 3: How to Attack your PCs with Finesse

This will probably be the last in my series of "better games by making things difficult for the players" posts. This time I will deal with the dos and don’ts of direct assaults on player characters (PCs). This is actually one of the more difficult things to do as a game master; at least, it is one of the things I have seen many game masters, including myself, mess up regularly.

First of all, this is not a guide for eliminating an annoying PC. That should be simple enough to do. A giant robot picks them up and throws them into a pit of lava. This post is about using a direct assault on your player characters as either a combat encounter or a plot development.

Shout-Out #2: Nerds the Gathering

All images in this post are under the copyright of Ryu S Stemp.

I've been meaning to do a shout-out for something one of my friends, Ryu S Stemp, has been working on. It's a visual novel call Forever Alone: Nerds the Gathering. In Nerds the Gathering, you experience an engrossing story about high school nerd angst, mostly to due with the fate of the Anime and Gaming Club. The story is told through the eyes of an intelligent, witty, yet socially inept girl named Michelle, or Mike for short. What's wrong with the Anime and Gaming Club? Well, all its members have wandered off, leaving Mike short a social life outside posting on random internet forums. The goal of the game? Rebuild the club!!!

Alternative 5th edition character: The Bow Fighter

Note: This is very out of date with the current version of the D&D Next (5th Edition) rules.

I talked to my group last night and the guy running our current game is going to be unable to run it for a couple weeks either starting the week after next or the week after that. As a result, we will be playing my 5th edition D&D game during the interim. That should lead to some interesting posts but in the meantime there is a problem: I now have six players and there are only five premade characters. Now someone could run a clone character of someone else but we decided to try an idea that came out of last session: the bow fighter.