We (and by “we,” I mean, “overly critical D&D players such as myself”) like to refer to problems we have with the game and pretend that they’re someone else’s fault. The truth is we probably just know too many people with bad attitudes. My point: there IS a problem with magic items. That problem is D&D players. Not ALL D&D players, mind you. Maybe your [Read the article]
By Jonathan Baldwin
– The struggle by the damned to retain his humanity may be a neverending, lifelong battle…
Minori was originally an NPC who appeared in a short lived Anime-style martial arts game. Her chi-based powers were designed around concepts like deception and poison. I wanted to create a character who, under the right circumstances, could end a fight without her opponent even realizing what had been done to them. That’s where the modifiers came in. I made her main attack both subtle [Read the article]
I’ve never thought of myself as an “Old School” gamer. I’m not nearly old enough to qualify. What I have been doing is following their blogs, puzzling out for myself what it is about the new-school that seems to offend. . . and why so much of what they have to say makes an odd kind of sense. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I [Read the article]
We’ve talked a lot on this site about adapting D&D 4th Edition to a more “Classic” feel, but if you’re burned out on D&D’s method of, “kill monsters, take/sell their stuff, and then go shopping,” re-skinning the game isn’t your only option. If you’re not particularly attached to a particular set of rulebooks, it may be more viable to look for something that was designed [Read the article]
I’ll admit, I’m a slow convert and I love my d20, but the more I read about FATE, the more tempted I am by it (I love universal systems. I don’t know why. It’s an illness). But since the game isn’t my primary area of expertise, I thought I would offer some counterpoint to the current direction of The Shack – specifically, how FATE relates [Read the article]
To finish off our Supers week at the Shack, we have Jonathan Baldwin’s take on the game – Mutants & Masterminds. I love comic books. I always have (it’s not exactly a secret). I love everything about them; the over-the-top story-lines, the colors, the grand and exciting battles, the ridiculous speeches and origin stories, rings of power, radioactive spiders, last survivors of a dying world… [Read the article]
So, we’ve discussed the reskinning of the many races of 4th Edition D&D. We’ve talked about making monsters unique and monstrous, and we’ve talked about ways to alter the way Magic Items are used in the game. What’s left? The fun part. Actually writing a setting – thinking about what makes up “Classic Fantasy” as a genre, and extrapolating outward from there. Let’s start with [Read the article]
In the final of 4 articles that deal with races in the Classic Fantasy setting, we look at taking certain D&D 4e races and reflavoring them into halflings. We’ve already talked about making monsters more memorable and monstrous, and up next we’ll give some ideas on the setting itself. For each of the following racial or subracial choices, all of the actual mechanical stats, powers, [Read the article]
Monster Truisms In classic fantasy, the following holds true almost universally: monsters are rare, monsters are either evil or instinctual (that is, operating on instincts humans cannot understand), and monsters are dangerous. Monsters do not think like humans. They have their own, alien kind of logic, or worse, no logic at all beyond the question of where their next meal is coming from. In short, [Read the article]