CommentLuv

I heard from the Dice Bag that the author of the CommentLuv plugin is hosting a contest. To enter, all you need to do is post a relevant comment on any participating blog (including, as of this posting, this one). I presume that you may need to allow some scripts to function, too, if you use a Firefox addon like NoScript.

CommentLuv.com has details, including registration information.  From that site, in case you were curious:  “The prizes will range from cash via paypal to electronics such as noise-reducing headphones, memory cards, ipod speakers, and more.”

I really like the idea of CommentLuv, and I’ve been using it myself for some time.  (Although it cut out for a while after I accidentally changed something I shouldn’t have… oops.)  I know quite a few other blogs on the RPG Bloggers Network do, too.  Even if you’re not interested in the contest, give the site a look.

One other thing:  please don’t spam in an effort to win the contest.  For one thing, Akismet’ll probably catch it all anyway.  For another, you’ll just end up disqualified.  See the part about “relevant” comment, up there?  Yeah.

Hanging in the Balance

Game balance has become a relatively hot topic again this week among the RPG blogs.  On Friday, Unnatural 20 posted Game Balance is Unnecessary for Fun.  True or False? Among the responses is RPG Blog II’s Ok, Let’s Talk Game Balance.

It’s a topic that seems to occasionally recur since (at least) the release of third edition, and the release of fourth edition only seems to have given it new life.  Some people see game balance as a necessity.  Some think that it actually stifles the fun by normalizing everything.

I think one of the main problems is that the phrase game balance is used by different people to mean wildly different things.  Additionally, these different areas are of different importance to a given campaign.

Continue reading »

“We Split Up”

If you’re anything like me, “we split up” is one of the phrases you most dread hearing from your players.  You’re only one person — how do you keep multiple players involved in a game when their characters are all in different places, doing different things?  Party splits can’t help but lead to situations where at least one character is “out of play” for a while.

There are a couple of things you can do, both before and during play, to help in that situation, though.

Avoiding Party Splits

The least problematic way of dealing with a potential party split is to keep it from happening.  This tends to be best accomplished through out-of-character discussion before the game.  Simply ask your players to stick together as much as possible, and explain that this will help you give attention to all of them simultaneously.  This goes a long way to avoiding “we split up.”  It alone isn’t going to be enough, though.  Inevitably, a situation arises where the players feel it’s best if their characters split up.

Continue reading »

Pardon the Stray Electrons…

I’m playing some more with my CSS — toying with the idea of rewriting my theme from scratch, as it’s sort of cobbled together at the moment, and I’m sure it could be more efficient. Things may be changing in appearance somewhat over the next week or so. I’m working on the comments section first, so please excuse the minor variations in style while I find something friendly and aesthetic.

Losing Your Religion

The Dice Bag is hosting this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, and the topic is religion.  That seems like a pretty wide-open field, to me.  While I was considering possible subjects for my post, though, I reflected a little about the way religion is portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons (and, perhaps by imitation, in many fantasy roleplaying games).

Fantasy roleplaying tends to present pantheistic religions.  Furthermore, these are often of two sorts.  The first presents a pantheon of gods for each major race within the setting; this is how D&D handled the topic from first edition to third.  The second, which fourth edition employs, presents a single pantheon of gods.

Neither of these reflects the development of myth and spirituality in the real world, though the former is a bit closer.  In reality, different beliefs tended, naturally, to spring up in accordance with cultural divides (and therefore geographic divides, too).  Unless all of your dwarves are a single society, for instance, it would be more “realistic” for a distant clan to have an entirely different set of religious beliefs than the dwarves in the characters’ home region.

But there are many religious beliefs that are given short shrift by the typical fantasy world.  Monotheism is rarely explored as an option.  Animism and totemism tend to be relegated to global backwaters.  And atheism is rarely a factor.

Then I thought — what about a fantasy world in which atheism is the predominant belief?

Continue reading »