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In Defense of Daily Powers
One frequent complaint about the design of 4e is the concept of encounter and, especially, daily powers. The big Mike Mearls interview has given a lot of attention to this critique of it: Imagine Robin...
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Running a three (two)-stage (elite) solo (who killed your father)
Last week, one of my players’ characters met his father for the first time. Well, the ghost of his father, as his father was slain 25 years or so earlier… and the character is 26. And oh by the way,...
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Multiplayer D&D: My online utopia
One of the cool things about online console gaming is that when you want to play against a human opponent, you can. It rarely takes me more than a few minutes to find a Magic opponent on Xbox 360. (On...
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Two things wrong with That Post on Woot
I could say a lot about that post on Woot bashing 4e. Like most 4e-bashing, it bashes the edition in a lot of nonsensical ways. (You know, there are lots of reasons someone could not like 4e. It turns...
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Why I hate Essentials
I don’t, really. Except parts of it. Starting with the name. There’s nothing Essential about Heroes of the Starts-With-F Geographical-Unit books. They contain limited and limiting builds. There’s a...
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Running a game for kids
I have a game coming up that I’m running for third-graders — my kid, a couple of his friends, and one friend’s older brother and dad. I’ve decided on a few things: I’m going to simplify combat. No...
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Religious people vs. D&D
Every so often I see things like “Read an RPG Book in Public Week,” which I take to be aimed at demarginalizing RPGs. It’s a geek hobby even in a culture in which geeks supposedly rule, so let’s show...
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Reconsidering the Essentials Classes
I’ve been an avowed opponent of the Essentials classes. But something has been happening to me — I have softened. Part of it is that I had a misconception: that since feats are not listed on the level...
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The Platinum Badge
Justice, as we know it, is a modern conceit, no? The idea of innocent until being proven guilty, that it’s better to let a guilty man go free than to punish an innocent, and that there are procedures...
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The wrong direction for the presumed 5e
Mike Mearls is saying interesting things about the mechanics of D&D, which is leading a lot of people (including me) to believe we’re facing a coming Fifth Edition. I think Newbie DM was right when...
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