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.

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.

Ripping off PTA

I think the brilliant thing about Prime Time Adventures is the fanmail rule. It’s not mechanically amazing; it’s socially superb. It creates a sense of fellowship among the players because that’s what giving someone a gift does. Since it happens over and over again during the course of a game, the sensation’s intensified. Read the early actual play reports: you get a lot of people talking about how the game magically drew them together.

So let’s rip that off for D&D, or any other game that has some sort of fate point or action point or what have you.

Here’s the D&D version of the hack: you can only spend action points to give another player an extra action. Nobody can benefit from more than one AP per encounter, and you can’t ask for an AP. The AP must be used immediately.

We’re Buying a Surface!

Check out the video. There’s a team at CMU working on using Microsoft’s Surface technology for tabletop RPGs. You can see where the ideas need refinement, but it’s pretty hot as a concept.