Tag Archives: rpg

on D&D Next part 1 of ???

My group’s playtesting D&D Next which is looking to be the follow-up to 4th Edition D&D. If you’re interested, they’re doing an open playtest that you can sign up at the link above, get to see the rules they want to show you, play and give feedback, there you go.

Anyway, we’re playing it.

Right now, they’re trying to distill D&D down to an extremely pure form, which could be played as is, or with modules added. In this context, ‘module’ means ‘optional rules’, but since it’s D&D, we have to use the same word for 5 different things I guess. From the looks of this playtest document, I think they’ve done a pretty good job at that. I suppose the hope is to win back all of the customers that stuck with an old version.

It feels a lot like the old Red Box Basic Set (The D&D I got started with). There’s some new bits added to the game, but it seems it’s trying to get the feel of early 80′s D&D. I’m hopeful that it will be able to hit other flavors.

That said, I don’t envy those trying to reconcile all of the different playstyles that D&D has supported over it’s almost 30 year history, but as someone who has liked them all, I like the idea of my ruleset to be able to support them.

Ryvencon 2011

So, there’s this thing, RyvenCon going on this weekend. It’s an online tabletop RPG convention. There are a bunch of games going on and we’re looking for players. This is a great way to get some extra gaming, without having to commit to a long campaign. You get to meet new people, and maybe try a game you’ve never played (or never get a chance to play)

I’m running Freemarket, a post-singularity science fiction game that takes place in a space station near Saturn. This is not your rayguns & rockets sci-fi.

You don’t need a fancy, special computer, usually just Skype and a web browser, maybe the ability to run Java (The Freemarket game needs a free program running to make the cards work).

Games being run

So head over to http://ryvencon.omnivangelist.net/ – take a look at the schedule, sign up for a game and do something different this weekend!

The Spirit of Christmas

This year, on Thursday, December 23 at 9PM Eastern Standard Time, I will be running a holiday themed Spirit of the Century game over Skype. It will be one session, 4-5 hours long.

Spirit of the Century is a pickup pulp RPG made by Evil Hat Productions. It’s pretty awesome in my opinion, so there’s that.

It’ll take place in the 30′s. If you have a holiday themed character concept, that’s cool, if not, that’ll be fine too.

Anyone who wants to play is welcome (at least until we run into the limits of a skype call). If you’re interested, please drop me a note (LWaSH crew – I’m assuming you’re playing unless you’ve told me otherwise)

We will be generating characters on the fly, and you don’t need to have played Spirit of the Century before.

Happy Holidays!

Looking to play D&D on Wave?

Quinn, a friend of mine over at At-Will, is running a contest. Pitch a D&D 4e game, get a Google Wave invite. Read more about it here:

http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2009/11/the-waves-the-thing-looking-for-gamemasters/

Submissions close this Wednesday, (the 11th), so if you’re interested, post your pitch on At-Will (100 words or less) and take a shot. (There are a bunch of waves pledged, so there are going to be multiple winners)

Fighty Update

I’ve made some pretty noticeable changes to Fighty, and I want to talk about them, so as few people have trouble as possible.

On Wave and mode.

You’re not really supposed to be able to edit a gadget in while viewing a blip, and with Fighty, I’ve learned why. If someone’s dragging the map around, and someone else is working with markers, they get really messed up. Also, the playback feature and the new items feature is practically useless, because every time someone pans the map, or zooms out, that’s a new change.

So, what I’ve done is made the map static most of the time. Here’s how it’s gonna work (for now)

Of you’re editing the blip containing the map (you can tell because you have text formatting buttons up top), everything works the way it always had. You can drag, add and delete markers, and they get updated everywhere. If you pan or zoom, they get updated for everyone in view mode.

If you’re in view (or any other) mode, you can watch. You’re able to pan around, you can zoom in or out, but someone in edit can recenter your map, or change the zoom level. You lose the add marker button. And you can look all you want, without triggering a wave update.

If this is horrible, let me know, this is the best way I can come up with addressing this issue, and it gets what to me seems to be a big usability problem taken care of, so I can focus on fun stuff (like getting icons to work), and maybe even some gaming.

Playing Without Figures

In high school, I played and ran AD&D, 1st and 2nd Edition. I never used miniatures or any other counters to track position in combat. As time went on, I became a GURPS guy, which had an extensive hex-based combat system.

When d20/3E came out, I was so far away from Fantasy role-play, and set enough in my ways, that I wasn’t impressed with the changes (a gamer not likeing a new edition of D&D, never!). I didn’t really dig into the system till 3.5 came out. I was in the group that was mad that miniatures were listed as required, I mean this is D&D isn’t it? All you should need is dice, paper, and your books…

And I moved on. The funny thing is, sometime between when I stopped playing 2E, and now, traditional RPG’s became a thing that required minis to work. I know this isn’t really true, because I remember playing and having a blast without battlemaps and whatnot.

Just recently, I pulled out my old 1e core books from storage, and went through it. Best I can figure is I either ignored or winged tracking who was and wasn’t in melee, how tough it would be for someone to engage/disengage, and flanking/terrain advantages.

I mostly play 4E these days, and I’ve always so far used counters & maps/tiles to track combat location. What I wonder is, how tough would it be do hold all that stuff in your head, and would it make things more fun?

Are miniatures no different from initiative trackers, power cards, and hit point tracks? Just tools that take some of the cognitive load off the players? And does the clear representation of the battlefield that they provide impair the narrative of an encounter?

Comments welcome.

Burning Wheel, a prelude to a game?

I finally got a chance to play a demo of Burning Wheel this weekend, and I’ve gotten over a bunch of my fears about running it. In order to get over the rest of my concerns, I want to run The Sword, a single scene demo scenario. (Also the one I played in for the record.

So, I want to try it this week. I’m do it in the evenings (EST 7-12). Drop me a line (wherever) if you’re interested with when would be best, and when would be right out. We’ll be playing over skype, and using http://www.catchyourhare.com/diceroller/ for dice. If things go well, I’d like to make a habit of this, but there’s no commitment to try.

For those of you who don’t know, Burning Wheel is a fantasy role-playing game. What makes it different (to me) from most others out there, is that since it focuses on what your character wants and believes, you end up with the sort of things happening in the game that mirror fiction better than most traditional RPGs. People new to role-playing games are welcome too, if you want to give it a try, I want to show you (this goes for any games I play).