Savage Bookkeeping

Patrick over at RPG Diehard just had a post on Rations and record-keeping (basically asking whether it was a good idea or not to make the players track things like food), which set me to thinking. One of the neat insights in Savage Worlds, which I’ve mentioned before, is that you can sometimes replace frequent […]

One Thing I Miss About Classic D&D Magic

Is that magic spells and items are so clearly unsystematic and ad hoc that a GM really felt licensed to add anything he could possibly think of. The only unifying principle was that more powerful spells should be higher level and the more powerful items rarer; other than that anything goes. So our early D&D […]

Savage Worlds: Three Do’s

Some positive advice for Savage Worlds GMs: Do Encourage Tricks Do Be Generous with Bennies Do Be Descriptive With Combat Mechanics Do Encourage Tricks Tricks (and Tests of Will) are a great way to get role-playing into combat, so you want to be pretty lenient on what counts. In particular, since the exact mechanical effect […]

Savage Worlds: Three Don’ts

Per Patrick’s request, here are three things that I think a Savage Worlds GM should avoid. (There’s also a good thread on the Savage Worlds Forum: What Every New Savage GM Should Know.) The key to SW is the mantra Fast! Furious! Fun! There’s lots and lots of places where you could add more detail […]

Savage Worlds: Three Bad Things

Since I posted about three of my favorite specific rules in the Savage Worlds system, it’s only fair that I post about three things that I’m less enamored with. I wouldn’t call them mistakes, but they’re things that I find don’t fit my gaming style very well. Order-Dependent Chargen Bennies Lack of Transparency in Probabilities […]

Savage Worlds: Three Good Things

Since Savage Worlds is my current favorite system, I thought I’d post about things that I like about the specifics of the SW rules. After all, there are lots of generic systems, lots of relatively simple systems (not actually “rules light”, but still on the simple end of things), lots of systems with good support […]

Challenge-Based Gaming: Kicking The Dungeon Door Old School

Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by “Challenge-Based Gaming.” After all, nearly anybody who plays an RPG can legitimately claim to be after some sort of challenge, whether it’s to cooperate with the other narrators to construct a satisfying story, to most accurately portray or experience the inner thoughts of their character, or just […]

The Dire Rust Monster

In the comments on my Rust Monsters: Not For the Wuss of Heart post, several people claimed that they disliked Rust Monsters because they didn’t represent any real challenge: once you knew the trick of dealing with them, it was just a tedious process of beating them to death with non-metal weapons. I think that […]

Rust Monsters: Not for the Wuss of Heart

Save the Rust Monster Some people are really pissed that Wizards of the Coast cut the Rust Monster from the new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. This creature was one of the original, classic creepy creatures from the old school pre-AD&D days. While we’re on the subject of Fear in RPGs, the Rust […]

Fear in RPGs

As I see it, there are three kinds of fear in RPGs. I’ll call them Visceral Fear, Challenge Fear, and Character Fear. Visceral Fear is fear that the players actually feel; Challenge Fear is fear that players experience for the character’s safety and well-being; and Character Fear is fear that the characters experience but the […]