It took me until the quarantine times to do much about the fact that I got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas and dive into Breath of the Wild. In case you started your quarantine and media blackout three years early, Breath of the Wild is a huge open-world game in […]
This is the conclusion of my series on advancing your background. If you’ve forgotten what the heck is going on here, go back to Part One. Part One | Part Two | Part Three Sage The term “sage” typically carries connotations of advanced status – something more like the endpoint […]
This is a continuation of the last post. I’m working through more of the Player’s HandbookBackgrounds and official variants. Criminal (Spy) By surviving one or more tests of loyalty, you rise to positions of influence in a royal or freelance intelligence service. You become a spymaster. Spymasters sit at the […]
I’m a bigtime fan of 5e’s introduction of Backgrounds, particularly as a source of skill and tool proficiencies and noncombat features. Even more than (most) classes and subclasses, Backgrounds also suggest a trajectory of your personal story, beyond zero-to-hero. But within that arc, your Background features don’t change. Inspired by […]
From the moment I read about the mechanic of light and dark tokens in Chill 3rd Edition, it had a death-grip on my imagination like few other mechanics before or since. I finally got a copy of Chill 3e for my birthday, so I can examine the game’s implementation in more detail. […]
In response to this post, +Matt Lichtenwalner asked: LARPing’s not my bag, but I am curious about the module building and how it relates to ‘traditional’ module building.
In working on Quintessence, I’ve been trying to think of situations, either realistic or cinematic, that other tabletop games don’t model well, if at all. So when Kainenchen and I watched Stardust the other day, I was struck by the many times that a character sets a blade at another character’s […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
