Virtue: A Homebrew Alignment Variant
There’s an RPG blog carnival going on, and the topic is homebrew. It’s certainly a broad topic. To some extent, every campaign is homebrew. Even if you try to run completely by the book, avoiding house rules, there are still rules interpretations to be made. The interpretations of your table are not going to be the same as the interpretations made by another GM. Roleplaying is an inherently creative activity, and even in a game sticking entirely to published sources — the official rulebooks and official modules and official everything else — differences of interpretation and of player character action and personality are going to lead to differences in play.
This is, I think, the biggest strength of roleplaying. You can play Monopoly or Risk by the book, and it will be the same experience every time. You can run through Keep on the Shadowfell as published, and it will be subtly different every time, because every GM will need to interpret and improvise, and they’ll do so in different ways.
We all homebrew.
Categories: My Campaigns, Original Game Content | Comments (3)
Battlegrounds: Clock Tower
Last time around, I took a look at the alchemist’s lab, a fairly common genre trope, as a potential fight setting. This time, the setting’s not quite as common in fantasy, but it poses some intriguing possibilities. Namely: the clock tower.
If you’ve ever played Castlevania or watched Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, you probably have an inkling of where this is headed: a standoff between the party and their opponents that takes place amid the mechanism of a very large clock. Or any large mechanism, really. Gears and chains and pendulums; pistons and pulleys and chimes — it’s all good.
Categories: Battlegrounds | Comments (5)
Round-Robin Gamemastering
Sometimes, nobody wants to be the game master.
This presents some obvious problems in a roleplaying game. Most systems — all of the most popular ones — rely on the presence of a GM in some capacity. The GM sets up the story, runs the NPCs, awards any rewards, makes judgement calls regarding rules, and perhaps mediates any player disputes. What do you do without one?
It’s possible to jury-rig some form of randomized system. The first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide included a random dungeon generator. The fourth edition, coming full circle, also includes a much-abbreviated random dungeon and encounter generator. There’s a short segment entitled “Playing Without a DM” too, which reads in part:
If all you’re looking for is fun and exciting combat, with no more than the barest hint of plot or purpose, a random dungeon with a random encounter deck is all you need.
Categories: Advice | Comments (6)
News roundup
A couple of shorter topics that wouldn’t make for good single posts (at least by my wordy standards).
First, a quick update on my fourth-edition monk replacement class. I made a number of minor changes a couple of days ago, and it’s looking good so far — at least at lower levels. I still haven’t had a lot of opportunity to test it at high levels. I have my eye on a couple of things that seem as though they might be overpowered right now (World Breaker’s Hand and the epic destiny “encounter-power-as-at-will-power” trait being the two biggest).
All told, balancing a class in 4e is a tricky process. If any of you are actually using this class (or a variant) in play, I’d appreciate any feedback; it’ll help me get it to work.
Categories: Industry News | Comments (0)
Shadows in the Shadows
Most of the iconic undead monsters are present in the fourth edition Monster Manual, but there’s one that’s conspicuous by its absence: the shadow. This low-Hit Die creature with its weakening touch was a staple of the low levels of many of my early campaigns — I just loved the imagery, I think. Shadows creeping across the floor or wall to reach you and suck the warmth and strength from your body…
(Shadows didn’t move like that, necessarily. But in my campaigns, you bet they did…)
With that in mind, and vague thoughts about testing the monster-adaptation process tumbling around, I present: the 4e shadow (following the jump).
Categories: Original Game Content | Comments (4)
