Conan Wore Armor, Dammit

The Recursion King: Continuous initiative Recently, in our D&D sessions, I decided to resurrect the idea of a continuous initiative system. Continuous initiative means just that – it is continuous – and does not have a one person acting per combat round order.The order is determined by how high the initiative values are (like normal) […]

Supporting the Old School

My copy of Labyrinth Lord arrived today from Amazon, and it looks nice. Labyrinth Lord, you’ll recall, is one of the retro-clone projects that attempts to recreate D&D free of copyright impediments by using only new text plus what’s been released as part of the OGL, and itself is an OGL Product. I have to […]

Welcome to the Jungle! We Got Fun and Games

RPG Diehard talks about a sandbox session that Ripper X tried to run that went poorly: RPG Diehard: Cautionary Tales from the Sandbox On paper, a complete wilderness adventure sounds great! Wandering around blind, not knowing where in the hell you are going, or really what you are looking for. In actual play, this was […]

Shields As Ablative Armor

Trollsmyth: Shields Shall be Splintered! I’m considering allowing the shield to act as ablative armour. One thing historical shields frequently did was shatter. A strong blow with an axe or a sword could cleave a shield, splintering the boards. Viking duels often had a three-shield rule, allowing each combatant to enter the contest with a […]

Spell Books and Spell Variety in Savage Worlds

In the real world magicians (or people who thought they were magicians) had spell-books full of spells and bits of magical lore that served as textbooks for learning and performing magic. If you wanted to cast a spell, say to cause someone to fall in love, or to protect against curses, you’d look it up […]

Savage Worlds: Tips for Speeding Combat

Nothing Earth-shattering, just some handy hints to keep things moving along: Use two decks for initiative. Have someone other than the GM shuffle the second deck while the first is in use, and at the end of a round when a Joker’s been played just swap decks. (If possible, use decks with different color backs, […]

Now That’s A Dungeon Setting!

Real life cavern, in Mexico’s Cave of Crystals .

The Necessity of Random Encounters in D&D

Random Dungeons and Dragons Encounters, Pros and Cons I think that a solid understanding of what a random encounter does will help you decide how to include them into your game, if at all. The author goes on to list what he sees as the advantages and disadvantages of random encounters, but quite remarkably to […]

Getting in the Mood

I’ve been away for a week on business, so I haven’t been posting…but I have been reading: http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=webamused-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1565048946&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr I’d forgotten how good Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser stories are, and how fired up they get me to play RPGs. On a more modern note, I really enjoyed: http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=webamused-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0765318350&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr Also a potential source of inspiration, at […]