As Bear and Loki pointed out in response to my last entry on the subject of D&D combat: the regular system may in some ways be strange or unrealistic, but it’s simple. There’s one die roll for attack and one set of dice rolled for damage.

There’s plenty of validity to this view. But D&D actually tries to cram alot of detail into the system with spells, combat maneuvers (at least in the 3.0 and 3.5 editions), and class abilities. My feeling is that the standard D&D/d20 system has come a long way but is stuck at a crossroads. On one hand it’s straddling a fence between the old amalgam of “sub-systems” (one set of rules for damage, one for spellcasting, one for skills, many for
other abilities) and a unified system (saving throws, skills, and attacks all work similarly). On the other hand it’s straddling a fence between a sort of simulationist attention to detail and a quicker, simpler system.

Continue reading d20 Alternate Mechanics – Armor & Damage Reduction →

So generally I spend most of my free time messing around with pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Although I don’t know if “messing around” is exactly the right phrase to describe what I do. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “wallowing in them and obsessing over them like a junkie with his drug of choice”. There are a lot of people who suffer from this particular habit apparently and I usually get encouragement in my addiction from the good people over at rpg.net.

Some of these people do actually seem to be decent, well balanced folks. But when I say “good people” here I am of course using this phrase ironically or at least as flattery. I mean “good people” in the same sense that western Europeans of centuries past referred to the fairies as “the good people”. Basically in that many are wise or impressive, but also strange or unkenable and likely as not alien to the narrator’s cosmology and morality. The sort of creatures that should be referred to as “good” out of politeness lest they take a malign interest in the you and curdle your milk or worse.

These good people keep me engaged with their threads on roleplaying matters. But after awhile the really compelling threads stop coming so I’m forced to turn to my own devices and get back to the actual RPG design that I claim to be some kind of minor expert in.

Continue reading Roleplayer Blues →