A Butterfly Dreaming » Philosophy and Rants

The Year is 1806…

Scott — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:00:52 +0000

Fantasy roleplaying games, as a rule, are set in fictional medieval or early-Renaissance Europe. There’s certainly nothing limiting them to that setting, though; Dungeons & Dragons alone has featured settings derived from the ancient Middle East, China and Japan, and South and Central America. The ancient world, the medieval, and the modern era have all [...]

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The Year is 1806…

Launching a Campaign: Realism vs. Ease

Scott — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:14:39 +0000

As I prepare to launch a new campaign, I’m running into the early decisions that help shape one. They seem like useful candidates for blog posts, so today I’m going to consider one of those early decisions: How much should I emphasize realism (or verisimilitude, if you want to get semantic) in the game? Most [...]

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Launching a Campaign: Realism vs. Ease

Cool Alone Isn’t Enough

Scott — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:57:11 +0000

So, it’s been a while. In the midst of that real-life stuff that I’m not going to get into, my games more or less evaporated, and lack of gaming leads to lack of inspiration to write about gaming. Things seem to be picking up on both fronts, though. Fingers crossed for the gradual relaunch of [...]

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Cool Alone Isn’t Enough

Adding Fear to Your Game

Scott — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:45:15 +0000

…Okay, obviously, my last plan didn’t quite work out. So, rather than tempt fate again, I’ll just say I’ll post when and as I’m able, and leave it at that. Moving on… Happy Halloween. In keeping with the spirit of the holiday, I thought I’d say a little about fear in your game. Maybe you’re [...]

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Adding Fear to Your Game

Pathfinder Sells Out

Scott — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:45:51 +0000

According to Paizo, as of Monday, their Pathfinder game’s core rulebook has sold out its first printing. Now, this is mostly distributor orders — not actual sales — and there’s no indication of how large the first print run is. Still, it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. I suspected that the initial sales would be very [...]

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Pathfinder Sells Out

What are the Best 4e Ability Score Arrays?

Scott — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:20:35 +0000

I’ve been following an interesting thread about 4e ability score arrays at ENWorld. Poster 77IM calculated all of the possible arrays on a 22-point buy, and posted the list. Turns out there are 121 unique arrays, in case you were wondering. Then the analysis began. Poster Jurph isolated the arrays that give the best overall [...]

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What are the Best 4e Ability Score Arrays?

“No, Wait…”

Scott — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:34:37 +0000

There’s an interesting thread at the Giant in the Playground forums that deals, in part, with retracting an in-character action. (As a side note, if you’re not reading the Order of the Stick comic at GitP, you really should. There’s a lot of terrific gaming humor there.) Among the questions the original post poses is [...]

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“No, Wait…”

Deep Psi

Scott — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:27:56 +0000

Side note first: I fixed a problem that might have been keeping comments from working correctly, so if you’ve tried to leave one lately and failed, you should be able to now. On to the main post. Recently, I decided I’d try a subscription to Insider. Although I didn’t see a lot of purpose to [...]

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Deep Psi

4E from One Year In

Scott — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:55:39 +0000

Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is a little over a year old now, and I’ve been playing or running it for almost exactly a year today. On the whole, I’m finding it a pretty robust system. It’s not my favorite system, or even my favorite D&D (that would be Cyclopedia D&D), but it’s become my [...]

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4E from One Year In

Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger

Scott — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:00:40 +0000

Sacred cows make the best hamburger, or so the saying goes. When it comes to RPGs, they tend to provide grist for the mill. There are sacred cows aplenty in rules systems, of course. That’s one of the reasons why we have edition wars: change anything, no matter how inconsequential you think it might be, [...]

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Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger