Samantha Patri's Blog

The topic of how D&Done  ( yes, we know it's called 'one D&D' but it is supposed to be the final edition ) is handling "race" has come up a few times lately, and there is a lot of mixed reactions about how it's being done. We compare this to the new Advanced 5th Edition , which we feel is not a bad way of doing things. To wit - your race is not your culture, or nation, or anything of the sort. It's a heritage and should deal only with your genetic traits, and nothing else.  In A5e you choose your heritage, and then you choose your origin - your background, what you've done and where you've done it. Essentially, your homeland. This is what give you skills and ability score modifiers. And honestly, we feel this is a much better way to do it. Consider.  You're playing a dwarf. You were raised among, say, halflings. Let's look at dwarves in basic 5e. Dwarven Combat Training : You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hamm...

 "Just increase the difficulty" This is what we hear from time to time when it comes to competent characters. The big idea is that, well, you want to challenge the character, so you put in things with a higher difficulty for that character to overcome. Let's throw in a theoretical. Let's say you have a 5th level character in 5e who can't roll below 14 on sleight of hand checks and to pick locks and disarm traps , and once per short rest also gets to roll with advantage on such checks. More often than not, the character's going to be fortunate and succeed at such checks.  Note that, in 5e, picking locks is DC 15.  No less, and very, very rarely more. This means the character will only ever fail to pick most locks with a roll of 1, and can usually get through most traps as well. Alright.  So, the game master wants the lock picker to be challenged, and raises most of the DCs for picking locks and removing traps to 25, meaning our rogue is going to need a 11+ to...

World Building The short of it is simple: we love world building. We are fascinated by culture, religion, magic, and how this all intersects. What's the point of having a campaign if the characters aren't given the chance to immerse themselves in some aspect of the society they're in or reflect where they're from? We're really not that interested in lots of combat, or delving into dungeons, or world-shaking plots. We're really interested in looking at the cultures of the people around us, what the local faiths are and how they're reflected in the culture, and how these reflect the style of magic used by the local cultures. We're not interested in generic magic or generic faiths or in a culture which matches every other culture in every other fantasy game out there. If it's vanilla, something's missing. For an example? Well. We've a campaign world, Inspiritus . We've not had a chance to run things in that world in over 30 years, but we...

In which we discuss the history of AD&D through to Pathfinder and its impact on what one could play over time. In the early days of D&D, there was no rhyme or reason about how strong one thing might be against another. In the early days you could play a 'young' balor (demon) as part of the PC party. Later, with D&D, you could play were dragons, faeries, or other creatures of all sorts (BECM), and by the time AD&D came around there were half-ogres, drow, and a variety of other creatures of varying power. With 2nd edition AD&D, things became a bit more formalized. Level Adjustment was added to the mix, increasing the effective level of a character by their race. If you were strong enough, you were treated as one or two levels higher to determine how much XP you needed to level. This carried on into 3rd edition AD&D, which allowed players to play stronger characters at the cost of slower level growth. Then we get into Pathfinder. Here, level adjustment was ...

  "It's Magic / It's Fantasy" Maybe it's the autism speaking, but when someone gives that kind of answer as an argument, it gets under our skin and pisses us right off. It's a conversation stopper, and gives absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand. It's also a lie. Because, such discussions are usually about RAW (rules-as-written), and unless that answer is listed in RAW, it is not the default answer. If anything, it would be a house rule, maybe. And if it's a house rule, say so.  "At my table..." rather than simply, "it's magic." You know what game setting exists where it is magic?  Exalted.  Because in Exalted, the world's physics and natural laws are governed by gods and spirits.  And if a god or spirit is not paying attention, the physics break down. You can literally have someone who's both alive, and dead, at the same time.  Or, gravity may suddenly, inexplicably, stop working, and someone might get flung into...

Sorry, had to slip an Exalted reference in the title. 😉 How much is too much when it comes to sourcebooks? Our simple answer is this: It takes as many books as is needed to cover the major groups within the game and the choices provided in the core rulebook. The rulebook is expected to give broad strokes of the setting and what's available, as well as the rules for playing the game. If it covered everything , it'd be thousands of pages long. For example: Legend of the Five Rings      - Clan          - How do the different Clans stand apart from each other? What are their beliefs and traditions? What makes them unique, culturally?      - Family          - How does one Family stand apart from the others? What are the duties of the families, what's expected of them?      - Dojo          - What is each dojo, what do they teach, what special techniques do each have? In L5R...

 What is Says on the Tin. Amazingly, people will disagree, but the Palladium game engine is a hot mess. They make excellent settings - credit where it's due, but the game engine itself is the second worst rip I've ever seen of a D&D engine - the worst reserved for the one that's a rip of D&D and Palladium. A big part of it though, is how it waffles between being a d% system and a d20 system.  So, let's break this down. 1. Skills Skills need to stop being a d% system. First and foremost, make it an additive system that provides a strict + to a d20 skill check (why? Because combat runs on a d20 skill check, that's why. Keep it uniform). The fact all skills go up as you level is fine  - we liked Star Wars Saga, and had pushed for that when Pathfinder was discussing 1e. So, here's how we'd do it. Your OCC / RCC / MOC gives a list of skills. You pick which ones are tagged. All skills from your OCC/RCC/MOC go up +1/2 every level, and your tagged skills go ...