Tag: musing

April 19, 2007

Taking stock

Yesterday saw a rather large spike in readership, and I have no idea why. My stats didn’t show any particular pattern. If you stumbled by yesterday for the first time. . . and actually came back, I would love it if you dropped me a comment letting me know where you heard of this blog. For those of you who’ve...

April 10, 2007

Funky mechanics

In case the two people who read this have been wondering, I’ve been popping in and out of town a lot lately on business, which has cut into my posting rather dramatically. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to change anytime soon, so I will have to adapt. (Actually, Statcounter tells me that I have significantly more than two regular readers.) Anyway,...

March 19, 2007

Random Encounters

So, Angela has been running this game in which I am playing a Dwarven chef. She has been making her own random encounter tables. When I say random, I mean random. Last night’s random encounters included: A guitar pinned to a tree with a rusty knife.A field of strawberries.An abnormally large (~1ft long) cicada.A satyr walking down the road carrying...

March 13, 2007

Real Magic Items: random babblings

I don’t think I got on the ‘real magic items’ kick because of this article on the Wizard’s website, though it might have subconsciously led me down that line of thought. The article (for those who don’t feel like following the link) talks a bit about the “Big Six” magic item types in D&D: magic weapons, magic armor/shields, rings of...

March 9, 2007

Thoughts toward a new Monk (or two)

The other day, I met Jeff for lunch. Mostly, we discussed game drama and future gaming plans. One topic of conversation, however, was our mutual dissatisfaction with the monk character class as it is portrayed in D&D. As I see it, the monk has a split personality. On the one hand, he’s a martial artist. On the other, he’s into...

March 2, 2007

Magic systems, revisited

I’ve been thinking a lot about different magical systems in RPGs. I don’t particularly care for the Vancian fire-and-forget thing. I’m also not a huge fan of uses per day. I don’t have an issue with there being limits on magic use, but an absolute and regular limit seems very artificial to me. Though some people like it, I think...

February 26, 2007

CCRPG?

Will we see the merger between roleplaying games and collectible card games? If so, what direction will it come from? I don’t know much at all about CCGs. I’ve never even played Magic. I do, however, see RPGs embracing some CCG-like tropes. Exalted was explicitly designed with a CCG aesthetic in mind. More recently, D&D’s Tome of Battle: The Book...

February 21, 2007

Draconic Ecology

I had a subscription to Dragon Magazine back in the 1980s. I remember when the issues would show up in the mail. They tended to come around the same time every month (maybe the 5th or so? that seems familiar), and I’d be waiting for them. They were just about the best thing to show up in the mail. My...

February 20, 2007

The Tetris Effect

I played a lot of Boggle this weekend. Whenever I’ve looked at a block of text today, I have had to catch myself before I started making words. This reminds me of how the world looked when I used to play a lot of Tetris. I also have to stop trying to figure out how to use Boggle as a...

January 25, 2007

Game Drama

Last night’s Aberrant game had some player-drama. We are still less than a half-dozen sessions in to the game. Some of us are coming together into a cohesive group. Others, less so. One of the players believes that his character’s concept is dependent upon him having a secret identity. Another character is a telepathic spy who revealed the first PC’s...