Why do you play a Fighter? Why do you play a Cleric? Why do you play a multiclass Fighter/Cleric? Why do you play a Paladin? What’s the difference between a Wizard and a Sorcerer? Why an Assassin and a Thief? And is it Thief or Rogue? Warlord or Marshal or Bard or Fighter? Or Jester? The selecting of a class for your character is one of the boldest choices you can make as a player. More than...
From my perspective, one of the more unexpected offshoots of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is Fourthcore. While tournament-style adventure modules have been part of the D&D experience since the earliest days of the RPGA Tournaments, D&D 4E always seemed to stress balance both among character classes, monsters, and encounter design. But with Fourthcore, balance takes a backseat to creating a...
One of the aspects of gaming that’s fun to me is getting to do big things on a small scale. Games let us traverse nations, explore caverns, create railroad empires, fight wars, and conquer the world all in the course of the evening. These are big plans. The kinds of plans which are hard to swallow in one bite or explain in one breath. Luckily, most games we play provide us with a fairly...
Oh boy! Oh boy! It's that time of the week, again. Yes! Board Game Night is finally here! Thank goodness. Work has been dreadful. The sort of drudgery and frustration that only Cinderella seems to understand. You've been looking forward to this all week long and tonight's the night at last! It's time to prepare. Only 30 minutes to go. Of course, you would have been prepared earlier...
And the PDFs keep on comin'. We have the usual excellent variety of new and interesting PDFs. Along with those we have some more from Frog God Games, WotC rereleases, Adventures and even some April Fool's Day PDFs. The Spotlight: Most Interesting PDF of the Week is from a company that's long been a favorite of rpg fans and they have just released their newest book for their core line, the...
Yet another of my creations languishing in the virtual darkness for years, I present to you the Wildlord prestige class for your gaming goodness. In addition, there are two NPCs for instant implementation. Enjoy! Wildlord Wildlords are carefully selected by the forces of nature for their superior intelligence and benevolent countenance. A wildlord is able to separate the necessities of...
There are two basic ways to go about designing a game: try to complete everything in the game from the get-go, or sketch out a rough set of rules and fill in the rest later. Neither way is really wrong, but each results in different challenges. When you plan everything out initially, it requires a lot of work. It’s possible you might lose interest before the project is complete. Another risk...
It strikes me that I haven't covered any of the Holy Trinity of Gateway Games here on EN World yet, so why don't we rectify that? If you're unaware, I'm talking about the three games that most people suggest you break out to try and entice new people into the hobby, those being Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan and the subject of today's write up, Ticket to Ride. Originally released back in 2004...
Attention Economy Our attention -- as a variation of our time -- is a very real commodity that we spend foolishly or wisely, but based on our own values and desires. Everyone has a different set of needs and attention spans. Some of us -- me especially, developed coping mechanisms when we're trying to pay attention to something that isn't holding all of our interest -- we doodle. Doodling...
My personal preferred style of D&D is pretty heavy on exploration. To me, D&D is about braving the unknown, confronting the wild, monster-filled world, and engaging with it. It is the different lands, different peoples, different ideas that make D&D interesting to me. I don’t play D&D for the encounters or the stories or the characters per se, I play D&D for the sense of discovery and surprise...
One of the OSR game systems that I’ve really come to admire and enjoy is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game – or DCC RPG for short – by Goodman Games. Those gamers who are familiar with my Neuroglyph Games blog site may have noticed a few recent entries talking about my starting up a DCCC RPG campaign, and even taking a stab at building my own unique world setting. My players have...
Sheesh. Stressful week! My life is pretty idyllic in a whole lot of ways. I consider myself to be a very fortunate man as well as one who works hard to have a really great life, full of people and activities that make me happy. But I’m hardly immune to the ravages of stress. The last couple weeks have seen some fairly rough news for close friends. I wouldn’t trade away my empathy for...
This week we have some solid PDFs coming out. We have 8 new PDFs, but we packed in this week's WoTC rereleases into last week's Pretty Darn Fun and there were virtually no new Adventures for the week. However, the Spotlight: Most Interesting PDF of the Week is actually a large selection of new PDFs all from one company, spanning two different game systems. A lot of good product this week...
In my D&D 3.5 Planescape campaign, the heroes have clashed with a chaotic organization called the Tacharim and its leader, Doctor Valran Stonefist, for more levels than I can remember. The Tacharim kidnapped modrons from the Great Modron March, and Valran used them in experiments to try and “improve” on the mortal form. Because modrons are immortal, they vanish when killed, returning to...
The process of designing games is often a thrilling endeavor. You get to create: monsters, maps, worlds, classes, races, and practically anything else you can imagine. Often, this is the ‘fun’ stuff. The real work is usually getting it all to work out how you imagined. Nine times out of ten, when I create a game it doesn’t come out the way I imagined it would. Okay, it’s probably closer to 99...
Richard Garfield is probably responsible for more people spending more money on a single game than any other individual on earth. After pretty much starting the Trading Card Game genre single-handed thanks to coming up with Magic: The Gathering, he's had free reign to develop other games safe in the knowledge that his reputation (and probably his bank account) is solid. Of course, we've...