D&D Next: Off-the-Cuff, Final (?) Round

Wow, crazy – this might be the last of my reviews of a new playtest packet. Or not; there are a number of notes in this packet that suggest that it isn’t quite as final as they’ve claimed, such as the reference to additional paladin paths coming out… eventually. Anyway, the […]


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 […]


The Gamer Effect is Having a Contest!

So, a week or so ago, I asked my pals in G+ to talk up my blog in the Comments section of The Gamer Effect‘s post about their $50 Gamer Giveaway. A Brief and Tragicomic Digression I don’t know enough about the market value of a gamer to guess whether […]


Harbinger’s Advice Column: Grand Opening

Thanks to my success in writing advice for my fellow Eclipse colonists, I’ve decided that I can and should write occasional advice columns for others. In-character advice is probably funnier (even for games I don’t play), but if someone wanted GMing advice, I’d be happy to answer those, too. Right, […]


Forgotten Realms: Odi Et Amo, Excrucior

In the past couple of months, for whatever reasons of nostalgia (and reading about the new expansion of Lords of Waterdeep), I’ve been thinking about the Forgotten Realms setting – likely the single most loved and hated setting in all of D&D. Hence the title of this post quoting Bernard Cornwell, […]


Plotting, Staging, and Control

It’s hard to explore the full background of my motivation for this post, but it is most recently triggered by an assertion in the comments thread of another blog that I read. (Note: I’ve now been working on this post for about two weeks, since well before the recent DtD […]


D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 8

A new playtest packet for D&D Next dropped last Friday, and in accordance with prophecy, I’m writing up my thoughts on same. They’ve hugely overhauled all of the classes – heck, they even changed the name of the wizard class – so let’s just jump right in. A quick glance at […]


Four New Spells: The Atrous Spike

Over the weekend, I learned the word atrous from playing Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. It’s not the main topic of this post, but I strongly recommend this game if you liked the classic Master of Magic. (I’d love to see a Myrror-like addition to Fallen Enchantress, though it has to be […]


Races in Fantasy Gaming: Elves

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caoilte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving our […]


Downtime Actions in Tabletop Gaming

It’s been a month and more since Mearls posted When Adventurers Aren’t Adventuring, in which he explains that D&D Next will offer rules for things that happen while the heroes are at home or otherwise off-duty from heroics and/or treasure-hunting. I think it’s fair to say that this has been […]