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.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants | Comments (7)
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?
Categories: Philosophy and Rants | Comments (7)
Adapting the 4e Shadowdancer
Back when third edition was first published, one of the things I liked most about it was the shadowdancer prestige class. This roguish class was a sort of sneaky swashbuckler, and at the time my favorite classes were rogue and bard (despite their general underpoweredness). It was a perfect match for my then-current character, in fact.
In fourth edition, paragon paths are more or less the new prestige classes — they’re there to allow further customization of a character, but without the possibility of stacking multiple ones in ways which caused them to become broken, as they could in 3e. So I suppose it’s only natural that I’d end up wanting to convert the shadowdancer.
I’m fairly certain an official conversion is in the works, perhaps even in Martial Power, due out in a couple of weeks. But I think this still serves as a good example of converting a 3e prestige class to a 4e paragon path.
Categories: Paragon Pathfinding | Comments (6)
Superhero Lessons for Fantasy Games
Even if you don’t play a superhero game, this month’s RPG blog carnival on superheroes needn’t be a wasted month for you. There are qualities of a superhero game that can be adapted to enliven your new fantasy campaign — or to revitalize an old one with a change of direction. Consider some of the lessons of a superhero campaign:
Symbols (and Names) Matter
When you think of Superman, you probably think of the big red S on his chest. It’s a distinctive sigil. When you think of Batman, you probably picture his scalloped cloak, which resembles the wings of a bat. When those two get together with a couple more of their friends, it’s not just any gathering — it’s the Justice League.
Categories: Advice, Comics, Manga, and Anime | Comments (6)
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)
