GenCon 2010

Susan and I have badges and a hotel reservation. Finally… the PANDA… has come BACK to MILWAUKEE!

… what?

It moved?

Crap.

(Who else is going this year?)

Random Blog Links #5: Greyhawk Grognard

I’m on a Greyhawk kick, as is probably obvious. The most interesting blog in this regard has been Joe Bloch’s Greyhawk Grognard. His love of the source material shines through, and his work is deeply informative and useful. Also, his work on a Castle Greyhawk dungeon is awesome and worth downloading.

Breaking Down the Walls

Sometimes it’s just, like, wham, that’s brilliant. Read the post: it’s about Die Hard and Israeli Defense Force urban tactics. The applicability to a modern game is obvious. Spies, sure. Horror: also sure, even if your spies aren’t horrific. Something is crawling its way through your city. Perhaps Cloverfield could have been scarier.

But I’m also thinking of it as another method of turning the fantasy city into a dungeon. Break the corners of the walls, drill holes in the houses. Chase and run in the metropolis, with scary corners as the monster of the day.

4e Greyhawk Treasure Parcels

Using the DMG2 boon/magic item replacement system. This is for party level 1, and of course should be tailored to the party; I’m just going through the thought exercise.

Greyhawk NPCs, Part 1

Robilar, Marshal of the Bright Lands

Just fiddling around for Greyhawk 4e purposes; thought I’d share.

Dark Sun Redux

Cause the old post is a long way away…

Rich Baker did a live chat on the new Dark Sun today. Lots of interesting info, some of which speaks to our questions!

Most importantly: “Preserving is the default. If you just cast a spell and don’t say anything, you’re assumed to preserve. However all arcane characters have a new Defiling at-will power, which you can use when you use daily powers, at the cost of hurting your allies (and killing plants, of course).”

That’s very cool. Bonus damage available at a real price.

Also cool: no divine power. The divine power source doesn’t work there, cause no gods. That is a big change to 4e world design philosophy, and a good one.

[4e] Not Your GM’s Keep on the Shadowfell: SWARM(s)!

Like the particle/wave duality of light, this week’s rules adjustments come from the understanding (or lack thereof) of how 4e swarms can act as both a single creature, and a series of tiny creatures acting in concert. The issue began when the party attempted to explore a web-covered chapel to a dragon god, buried deep in the caverns of the  kobold lair behind the waterfall in H1.  Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought the provided map indicated a more extensive cave system – our DM has set us on his first completely original series of encounters exploring those caverns.  And with webs covering the ceiling, it’s no surprise that we were attacked by spiders and ettercaps and scorpions (oh, my!).

[4e] Not Your GM’s Keep on the Shadowfell: (Mostly) Minor Actions

This week’s change is short and sweet.  Which is appropriate, since it concerns Minor Actions.  Before the start of play this past week, our DM announced that if we wanted to trade all of our actions down to Minor Actions in a round, he would grant us a bonus of an additional Minor Action for our trouble.  In other words, instead of a maximum of 3 Minor Actions per round, we now potentially could use 4.  I expect this was in reaction to having a few of us unable to grab and drink potions fast enough to keep up with the beat down we had taken the week before (once our Second Winds were gone).  The increased threat level born of unbridled rules changes begins to rear its ugly head!  But nothing another rules tweak can’t fix, eh?

Condition Cards

There are many 4e condition cards out there. These are mine. Here’s a picture:

I was trying to get all fancy with color and stuff but then I realized hey, no need for anything elaborate. They fit in business card sized lamination sleeves (which is why they’re glossy in the photo), and there are different versions for effects with a save ends. I will at some point whip up some more with stuff like -2 defenses, +2 to hit, and so on for shaman effects and whatnot.

Random Blog Links #4: Some Space to Think

Some Space to Think is Rob Donoghue’s gaming blog. It is pretty solid stuff. Lots of 4e, lots of other material. I think he’s aiming at one post a day, more or less.

I was reminded that I ought to be linking to this because of this post, on helping players hate villains. It’s excellent. You could also invert it: 10 reasons why your players may hate your benevolent NPCs.