musing Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Neitherworld Stories

March 28, 2008

Tactical Combat Musings: Reach

Preliminary thoughts: Reach is normally ranked from 1-100. Anything over 100 requires ranged weapons (for a normal-sized person). Weapons have an effective range of reach. A long pike, for instance, might be useful at 95-100. A longsword might be useful at 45-55. Some natural weapons (including fists and things) would have no minimum reach. Some weapons may have a semi-effective...

March 27, 2008

Rethinking Tactical Combat in RPGs

Two months ago, I posted about my frustrations with how big monsters are handled in D&D. This is part of a larger frustration I have with tactical combat in RPGs. How to define this larger frustrations? Well, there are a number of things that RPGs tend to model poorly: size differences between combatants, positional advantages, the importance of mobility in...

March 17, 2008

Random observations (that aren’t mine)

On Saturday, Angela and I went for a walk and ended up talking mostly about gaming. Angela has a somewhat different perspective on gaming than I do. She never gamed growing up, but she had an old (1e) AD&D Monster Manual that she enjoyed. She got pulled into LARPing in college – first Vampire (which she didn’t really like the...

March 11, 2008

Ramblings on monster diversity, combat, and Oblivion…

A lot of people love monsters. Personally, I like reading bestiaries for fun. I can sit down with a Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, or Creature Catalog and read it cover to cover. I think Angela has MMI-MMV and has made noises about acquiring others. Do we really need that many monsters, though? If so, why? I’m pretty sure it isn’t...

March 7, 2008

Barbarian’s Dream House

It strikes me as odd, but I suspect that most D&D characters are technically homeless. This varies for other RPGs, of course. Many PCs in modern games have homes. Having a home in an RPG is often something of a liability. In a Mage game I played once, I sunk a ton of background points into a mansion. My PC...

February 26, 2008

The Price of Power

I’ve been reading C.S. Friedman’s Feast of Souls. It is pretty good, so far. In the world that Friedman creates, magic is powered by the spark of life. Most witches can only use their own life force to power their magic, which results in them tending to live shorter-than-normal lives. This isn’t a new idea, at all. Novels are full...

February 21, 2008

Taco Like a Pirate Weekend

Last weekend, I headed up to Capricon. Angela and Grace had a table in the dealers’ room. Not that my con-going experience is vast or anything, but it was the most well-organized con I’ve ever been to. The signage was remarkably good. The badges were made of hard plastic. The con suite was always fully stocked with a dozen different...

February 8, 2008

Fairness Rules!

I’ve been thinking a bit about rules that I’ve seen D20 as not handling well (or at all): disproportionately-sized opponents, facing, grappling, mass combat, surprise, mounted combat, and things like that. (The astute among you will note that many of these are related.) Most of my thoughts have been along the lines of attempting to create relatively realistic models for...

February 5, 2008

What if you don’t like carrots?

One assumption that I’ve been toying with is that PC advancement is tied to accumulated, earned experience points. For most, this is a no-brainer. I, however, lack a brain… so I had to question it. Once I did, I stopped and wondered… why, if D&D assumes an average rate of advancement of one level per 11 encounters, does it bother...

January 12, 2008

UPS: the big question

Does everything become a power? It could. I could do away with a separate skill list and set of ability scores and instead have a list of universally-available “everyman” powers. Do I want to go that route?

Tag: musing