Design Diary: Resolution Mechanic
This is another post about my work in progress, Quintessence of Dust, where I lay out the game’s resolution mechanic and how I’ve gotten there. The first post and starting point on this topic is here.
design ideas
Design Diary: Grappling Rules
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve put 15k words into a playtest document for Quintessence, and today I got to a span of rules I’ve seriously dreaded writing. The 4e brawler build of the fighter class is about the only version of grappling rules I think I’ve ever seen in […]
Design Diary: Quintessence of Dust
Dear Design Diary, While I was away for Thanksgiving, thanks to the unflagging support of Kainenchen, I started working with some ideas for a new fantasy roleplaying system for tabletop. I particularly want something that borrows a bit more from the style and substance of LARPing, without sacrificing usability. When […]
LARP Design: Magic Items
There are a lot of lessons of good game-running that carry over between tabletop and live-action gaming. This post, though, concerns itself with an area in which the two are quite different. As usual, I’m talking about a certain band of LARPing, not all LARPing. (There are almost no statements that […]
The Lore Game: Knowledge Skills in Tabletop Games
With a lot of my posts about game design, I talk separately about how things work in tabletop games and live-action games. When I came to the topic of lore skills, I first discussed how they work in a number of local LARPs, because I feel like LARPs have a […]
D&D Next: Druids
The final-final update to the playtest packet offers a second paladin oath (apparently this is where they’re storing the avenger class now?), some tweaks to paladin spell DCs (not paralleled in the ranger, for whatever reason), and a huge revision to Wild Shape and the Circle of the Moon, over […]
Homebrewed D&D Next: Revised Outlander
Back in March, I was playing a lot of Torchlight II, and I created an Outlander class for D&D Next, because arcane archers and creepy gunslingers are awesome as hell. Now that we have the last D&D Next rules set we’re going to get until actual publication (presumably), I’m updating […]
D&D Next: Class Taxonomy
The new Legends & Lore post from Mearls talks about the concept of Class Groups, as well as some of outbound design ideas behind the Mage class in the last two playtest packets. Kainenchen has already written a post about this topic, so by all means go read her post first. […]
Homebrewed D&D Next: A New Warlock
I’ve been running a campaign throughout the playtests to date, and like any other campaign I’ve ever run, creating my own rules content is just part of how things go. When D&D Next stopped supporting the warlock (quite a long while back), I decided to make my own, based on […]
LARP Design: Fear Mechanics
Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. –“The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot Now that another DtD event has been put to bed, I can get back to writing here – and […]