I've been reading "The Dungeon Master Experience" article's by Chris Perkins for about 6 months now. He's been writing them longer than that but I came to the show late and frenzied my way through the archives pretty quick. These are some fantastic articles he's written and are well worth the read. As of this last Thursday though, 03/21/2013, his 4th edition campaign is over and so may also be his articles on this topic. There is still the possibility he'll return when his D&DNext campaign gets underway with new Dungeon Master Experience articles, but I would be surprised if he did so. I wouldn't be surprised to see him return with a new series of articles though.
In the meantime, I highly recommend visiting their archives, sorting by Category and reading every one of "The Dungeon Master Experience" articles available. There's lots of good advice and general entertainment, ranging from designing balanced encounters (and whether or not you even should) to how to create a game world that feels truly alive.
'til later...
Don't Blink
I was thinking about what a game with Weeping Angels in it would be like, which led me to wondering what mechanic to use to see how long a character could keep their eyes open without blinking. In Renaissance, a round is only 3 seconds. After a little experimentation I guesstimated that a character, in Renaissance, could keep their eyes open for a number of rounds equal to their Con score before they would need to start making Con rolls. In terms of other game systems, which use 6 seconds (D&D 3.0 and 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e too I think), you would need to limit that to half the character's Con in rounds. Regardless of which system I use, I can't wait for my next Halloween game!
Have you ever played in or run a game with Weeping Angels in it? If so, tell us about it in the comments below, I'd love to hear your stories!
Have you ever played in or run a game with Weeping Angels in it? If so, tell us about it in the comments below, I'd love to hear your stories!
Chaos Summoner
I've been cogitating on a Stormbringer inspired summoning class for Pathfinder recently and finally hit some inspiration last night and threw this together this morning. It's not quite done, there are some durations to work out, I need to build an Aspects list and their effects and, of course, do some testing but I thought I'd put it up here today for your perusal and preview.
The Sandbox Campaign
I've been doing a lot of reading recently, re-learning how to GM and prepare adventures. Over the years I got into the habit of having no preparation beyond a general idea of the plan and a book from which to pull names. Thoughts and plans are beginning to coalesce and today I've been pondering Campaigns.
How Much Realism Is Too Real
In the past I've been a strong advocate and supporter of realism. I still lean towards realism in my design and planning but I've started re-thinking my opinion on the matter recently. There is such a thing as too much realism. For example...
Believable Villains
Light and Dark can be found in everyone. It can be fun to have a villain that is pure evil, with no redeeming qualities. In such cases the players don't have anything to feel guilty about when they defeat the villain. However, in mortals (and immortals if you take your cosmology cue from most polytheistic religions) Good and Evil can be found within everyone.
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