Recent content by Distracted DM

I have to think that whoever said "the next Forgotten Realms" was talking about it from a "kitchen sink all-encompassing setting," not a comparing the actual content. 'Cuz in my mind Golarion is closer to Mystara or Greyhawk, probably moreso the former, than FR.

I agree that verticality's important, as are a big room here and there, but I also think that one thing that makes a dungeon a dungeon is tight-squeeze spaces. I had to coach one of my parties recently to use choke points to their advantage- I briefly agonized over the decision of whether or not...

The HP convo makes me think of this thing I saw recently: I think the title explains itself well enough. Not sure how I feel about it, though. I think there's a behavioral/mental reason behind the fact that there have always been rules and house-rules to avoid death at 0. Like, we can't...

I've done a lot of point-crawl "abstract" dungeons, but more often I do pre-planned dungeons and pretty much everything here ^^^ covers what I consider important. Frankly I didn't consider a couple points, like one-ways.

Yup! I wasn't really referring to PCs being instakilled, I think the discussion comes from people trying to simulate every event in the world with the game's rules. "How can the warrior-king (an NPC) have been killed by a single dagger stab while asleep?! His traitorous wife with a dagger does...

Yup! They're enough to simulate what's needed in a combat situation, and many narrative situations. It's just that once you go to narrative stuff like "hero murdered in his sleep with a dagger to the heart," then you need to just say "anyone could be killed if they're helpless in a non-combat...

Does anyone know what happened to this product line? It's not on the Petersen Games site anymore, and the book itself is out of print. I don't know of a legit way to get ahold of the PDFs either.

Everyone knows fireball is a 3rd level spell, can't go around altering sacred cows! 😆 Only sort of kidding there IIRC fireball capped out previously, I'm thinking of 2e- that was one reason to pull out delayed blast fireball, bigger damage cap!

Not only that, but unless one of them tanked recently, there are two DnD MMOs currently. Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Neverwinter.

Carrot's Destiny is Dominion, becoming king of Ankh-Morpork.. or maybe that's his fate? Either way, Carrot, Vimes, and Vetinari have been actively fighting against it since Men-at-Arms. It's definitely not one he chose himself, he must've rolled it and not liked the result 😆

I've been getting by with it as my primary income for a few years now, 3.5-4hr sessions for $40/seat. If you think you run a good game, don't be afraid to set a higher price. The quality of games out there is really mixed. When I started I was doing $35/seat, and I tried lowering to $25 as a...

It adds an extra layer of decision-making for the player. Each new rest is an opportunity to think about what would be most useful the next day, it might even encourage more scouting/information-gathering, whether it's via physical or magical means. Also, I noticed a sentiment from some...

Plus+ thread, because I'd rather not have to justify/defend why I'd want to bring back old prepared Vancian casting. Rather than remove the current spell slot method, I'd rather create an incentivized option for the old prepared spell-Vancian casting. Incentivizing likely means enhanced power...

After some searching for curiosity's sake, I found this homebrew, btw. Might be time to make a thread to brainstorm around how to bring back classic vancian prepared spellcasting. Or look and see if there are more ideas. Rather than extra slots.. maybe the answer is in character level-based...

That's very setting-dependent- how widespread such knowledge is, communication between towns, etc.