Before all else in this post: I am not an Economics major. I am, moreover, aware that I am not an economics major. I do know a few things about games, though. (Commentary by actual economics majors is welcome, though.)I’ve been reading the Valve economics blog, and it got me […]
In the great majority of medieval fantasy games, the first or second choice a player makes when creating a character is that character’s race. Depending on the game, this choice may or may not make a large difference on a character’s mechanical outcome, but it is probably the biggest single […]
A discussion in the comments of my previous post brought up the many different forms that multi-classing has taken over the years in D&D, so I thought I might explore that in a post. It’s also something that Kainenchen and I have talked about many times, because there are a […]
A long while back, I posted a comparison of the treatment of religion, divine magic, and worship in seven different settings. This is relevant in that today I want to talk about the problems I have with clerics in fantasy gaming, particularly the various editions of D&D. These problems, I […]
There’s been a good bit of information distributed on spellcasting in D&D Next, most recently this; the broader ENWorld aggregation of information on wizards and spellcasting is found here. These pieces of information might or might not contradict one another, depending on how you want to interpret them. Today I’d […]
It’s interesting to me how conversations about specific topics sometimes crop up in multiple unconnected places at the same time. Just as Ryan Macklin is discussing disadvantages and experience points in his blog, there’s also a lively exchange on experience points going on in Google Plus. The G+ conversation is, […]
Several weeks ago, a Conscientious Reader commented that I have a long history of giving a lot of design consideration to spellcasters of every type, at the apparent expense of fighter and rogue characters. My Swordplay series of posts aside, I’m comfortable calling this an accurate observation of a blind […]
It’s been almost five months since I last commented on crafting systems in any detail in this blog – but no longer! Kainenchen and I were talking about… something or other, I can’t recall what, but we came around to discussing some particular instance of crafting that I felt didn’t […]
This post is in reaction to the most recent Legends & Lore post by Monte Cook. This will be a serious test case for my rule against fulmination in this blog – but never mind that, go read Monte’s post and come back.I’ve run two D&D campaigns up to 13th […]
I made some references in this post to crafting in 2e. Since then, I dug out my 2e Player’s Handbook and Complete Fighter’s Handbook to reread the rules there. What I found there was interesting for what it is and what it isn’t. Let me start by pointing out that these […]