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I picked up the Pathfinder chase cards, with an eye to using them in a 5th edition game. The conversion doesn't seem like it'd be too difficult (probably want to reduce the scaling of DCs), but what I really figured out from looking at them was that I wanted something meatier. So I've come up...

A funny thing happened to me the other day. I was telling a coworker about how I was excited for D&D 5th edition, and she was surprised because she thought I hated D&D. I corrected her and told her that I loved D&D, but I disliked previous editions... and that got me thinking. Actually, I don't...

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0878.html Spoiler free...

I just received my hard copy of Dungeon World, and would like to run a one-shot of it to get a feel. I'm in a bit of a pickle, though, as I can't decide whether I should invite my girlfriend to play. The problem is, when we play D&D, she gets really bored with the roleplaying, and really only...

I've been really into Boardwalk Empire. I'm in the middle of season three, and had a bit of an epiphany as I reflected on the story of it... The next portion of this post is going to be in a spoiler tag, as it contains spoilers for the first 2 seasons of Boardwalk Empire. So it occurs to me...

Sadly, everyone's Dear Aunt Sally doesn't have much say as to the order of precedence of the 'd' in dice notation. In the case of addition and subtract, it's obvious... 1d4+3 means (1d4)+3. However, what about 1d4*3? Should that mean (1d4)*3 or 1d(4*3)? Same question for 1d4^3. Is that...

Everyone knows the usual grounds for what tabletop RPGs can do better than MMOs: the fact that there's a human arbiter there means you have the flexibility to do literally anything. But it occurred to me recently that there ARE other ways tabletop RPGs can differentiate and elevate themselves...

I'm trying to think of all the different ways that damage can be categorized. Note that I'm specifically talking about physical trauma; the sort of things we'd think of as causing 'hit point damage' in D&D. So things like disease are probably not appropriate, but a fast-acting poison might be...

I ran D&D last night using a little cheat sheet* with example skill DCs, damage amounts, etc by level. I didn't have any stat blocks, and when we had a combat, I just gave all the enemies abilities on the fly. It worked out pretty well, but one thing that worried me a bit at the time was...

BlizzCon, the annual convention thrown by Blizzard in celebration of its own games, is this weekend, and they've announced the new expansion. I'm super excited for it, for reasons that aren't really pertinent here (*coughpandasandpokémoncough*), but one rather interesting thing is that they've...

A while back, someone on BoardGameGeek, someone I don't remember brought up a distinction that I've found rather revelatory. The idea was that there were two distinct forms of randomness in games; randomness which occurs before you act and limits the decisions you can make, and randomness which...

I just created this, and hope others might find it useful as well. It's a sheet for players to keep track of their character's state at the end of each session. Specifically, it's to keep track of: Current HP Remaining surges Expended daily powers (this assumes you never end a session in the...

Suppose I want to alter the system of magic. Let's say I'm going to leave divine magic as is, but arcane magic is completely removed, replaced with elemental magic based on three elements which have a paper-rock-scissors relationship (air sprays water; water erodes earth; earth resists air)...

I kind of want to run a campaign where the players are in a city state that gets invaded, and the PCs become the cornerstone of the resistance. My plan is to start it where the coming war is heavily implied, but it's still in the background and for the first few sessions the PCs just do their...

What if there was some very small amount of people, maybe a couple hundred in the entire world, who were immortal, unharmable, and unkillable. They could be tossed into hot lava, spewed out encased in volcanic rock, and trapped in their stony prisons for a thousand years, and then chipped out...

I'm wondering if anyone's put any thought into how people address each other in their settings, and in particular how different cultures in the same setting might address each other. For example, in the Shadows of the Apt series, which is what made me think of this topic, in the regions most...

For any of us who remember when Eberron came out, I think we all have 'fond' memories of the "trains, planes and robots don't belong in D&D!" whargarbl that was so prevalent... Well, history always repeats itself, and yet another popular fantasy RPG is experiencing growing pains as it...

I'm working on an RPG system in which you customize your own class, selecting multiple talent trees. In brainstorming ideas, I find that I sometimes thing of talent trees based on concept (e.g. witch hunter, paladin) and sometimes based on function (e.g. necromancy, sword-and-board). I'd like...

Simple question... How much have you played around with designing languages?

One of the things I really liked about 3rd edition was the variety in the classes. Particularly towards the end of its lifecycle, things like The Book of Nine Swords and the Factotum stick out in my mind as being wildly different in playstyle from other things out there. The d20 SRD lead to a...