Dr. Strangegame (or How I Learned to Stop GMing and Abuse my Players with Dice)

Rolling dice is fun, there is no doubt about that. At our gaming table, I’m “that guy” with a dice-bag made of the bottom half of a pair of cutoff jeans from when I was in 5th grade.  It contains over 1 pound of dice, including a thirty- and hundred-sider. I remember with glee both…

Intwischa’s Vitruvian RPG Character Sheet

I love coming up with an elaborate character backstory. I suck at remembering it in play. Thus, my character sheets end up a study in marginalia: scrawled near the top of the sheet is the reminder that this character is characterized by a wise laziness and always seeks the most effective path of least resistance….

Get Off My Foot: A Fix for Overlapping Skills in D&D 4E

I didn’t realize this until reading a review of Tomb of Horrors, but a problem I’ve had with D&D 4E (and, to a lesser extent, 3.5E) is “overlapping skills.” In other words–the phenomenon of two or more characters both trained in the same skill who get in each others’ way during skill checks. This was…

Thinking About Systems

Reading Charlie’s commentary from last week got me thinking about how mechanics affect role playing.  Most RPGs are fairly complex games.  As such, they can be enjoyed on many levels.  This is where the old Gamist/Narrativeist/Simulationist discussion would come in, but that’s really not the point of this post.  What is the point, however, is that…