Tabletop Gaming

 
Hunkered down behind a handful of dice or stack of manuals? Itching to tap, flip, crank, roll, save, or measure? Discuss paper, board, card, and war gaming here.

Zipdrive requested a discussion on skill systems in roleplaying games in the thread for Rangers are the Symptom. I’m a nice guy, so I’ll indulge him and get this started.

Ahem…

Some games, like DnD provide a list of skills to choose from based on a class or character type. These skills can be taken in any order as long as they correspond with the type. Skills from other classes can be purchased, but at higher cost.

This is my least favorite way of buying skills. The skill lists are small, and the cost to do anything different is too high to be useful.

My girlfriend Jai has been trying to understand this whole “roleplaying thing” that I’m into. She wanted to watch me play it, but I don’t currently have a group, and we all know that watching a game being played is boring as hell.

So I sat her down, made a character with her, and threw her on a modern day sci fi/horror adventure based off of the novel Stinger by Robert R. McCammon (great one shot adventure).

I have always been a fan of historic roleplaying and gritty down to earth campaigns with low magic, so I decided to run one again. This was the background of that campaign, set in George R.R. Martin's world of Westeros.

So I was bored at work yesterday, and I sit in a room full of supplies and tools. So I made a custom GMs screen out of wood. I painted the inside white, the outside a nice flat black, and secured it all with huge brass hinges.

It even plugs in because it has built in hidden mood lighting.

I'm the coolest nerd (at least for today).

As most of you know, WotC has declared it will release products for a different campaign setting each year for D&D 4th edition. Since 2008 is the year of Forgotten Realms and 2009 will be Eberron's year, speculation is rife regarding 2010.
Since existing campaign worlds have established following and a good base, I think 2010 will also see a return of a previously existing world. So far my money's been on Dragonlance because:
A) It's a very well known setting with massively popular novels
B) WotC pulled the license back from Margaret Wise Productions when declaring 4th Edition.

Just for you, Zip. :)

Hey, I received a gift certificate to a book store and I'm thinking about picking up some dungeon tiles.

Normally, I wouldn't bother with this stuff since I generally think game accessories are a waste of money, but I'm taking a new approach to gaming, and I think the tiles may be useful. Besides, they're practically free to me.

What I'm looking for are some honest opinions on the various sets. I have enough to buy 3, maybe 4 sets, and I want to choose the right ones. It's impossible to get a read of whats inside the set based on the publisher's info.

The trend in GMing since the early 90's has been to plan complex storylines and prepare for anything your players can throw at you at the table. This has also been my modus operandi.

But I'm interested in bring the game back to it's more "primitive", "game-y" roots. As GM/DM/Referee, I'm looking for more ways to randomize my game and increase my own improvization, so that even I will not have any idea where the game is going when we gather at the game table.

Yet, at the same time, I don't want the game to be so random that it collapses into farce.

After all these years of using and defending the d20 system, I've finally realized it's major shortcoming. After all the campaigns I've run, it's finally started to stifle my creativity.

I think that the multitude of discussions surrounding the D&D Ranger class act as an indication of an underlying problem or dissatisfaction with Class systems. Just like how a blister on your foot tells you there's something wrong with your footwear or gait.

Syndicate content