Called Shots, the Quick, Easy, and Traditional Way

There’s a critical point that games designers often tend to forget. The people they hear from are their customers. If you keep getting calls for a particular feature – like called shots – and you don’t respond to it, that’s a segment of customers that you’re not pleasing. And it’s not like you hold a [...]

The Immortal Rants of Sean K. Reynolds – “We need rules for called shots!”

Editorial0 has contributed a set of article-replies to some of Sean K. Reynolds rants about third edition design decisions. Those decisions have heavily influenced a lot of game designs since, so I’ll be putting those up – along with some additional comments. To avoid excessive reprinting, you can find the general introduction to this series [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 149b – The Markets of Cyrweld

Marty sighed… It really hadn’t taken long to exhaust the rumor possibilities of the bar for the moment – and it looked like the Otters weren’t silly enough to be recruiting so publicly, even if the place WAS a “notorious gang hideout”. There was other minor gossip, but it was all trivia. They decided to [...]

Demi-Human Level Limits – What Were Those About?

As an old gamer, I’ve seen the topic of “Demi-Human Level Limits” come up a lot, along with the notion that “they don’t work” or “aren’t balanced”. In fact, the post before this was Editorial0′s take on the subject, as inspired by THIS RANT of Sean K. Reynolds. As is so often true about the [...]

The Immortal Rants of Sean K. Reynolds – Demi-Human Level Limits

Editorial0 has contributed a set of article-replies to some of Sean K. Reynolds rants about third edition design decisions. I’ll be putting those up, along with a few comments and responses, since those decisions have heavily influenced a lot of game designs since – whether to copy them or to get as far away from [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 149a – The Red Crest

Kevin had to smile a bit. An assassination attempt against mysterious visitors – who were already known to be powerful and touchy – by members of an unknown species using exotic powers, and they’d already managed to get the city guard diverted into worrying about their pronouncement that the unknown species was loosely related to [...]

Sorcery and Wizardry – Cost Comparisons

Here we have an inquiry from “Greg”, which came in via Email. Personally, I prefer that questions go in the comments here; that way they don’t get lost in the spam and the answers are available to everyone, just as this answer here will be. Answers to questions of “why” do tend to get kind [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 148b – Dispatches from the Core, Part II

One of Kevin’s special research projects had turned up… pretty much a complete blank. There had been plenty of “lost world” expeditions, and attempts to reach wherever-it-was the spirits of the dinosaurs hung out, attempts to find out if evolution was working out in the manifold, searches (both in Core and in the Manifold) for [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 148a – Dispatches from the Core, Part I

Thanks to a player shortage, this session was devoted to inquiries about what else was going on around the Manifold… Back in Core… The House of Roses was working on contingency negotiations with the Ourathan, in hopes of keeping the near-inevitable (at least in their estimation) overwhelming of the federation defense fleet and ground forces [...]

In the Old School – Oh Death, Where Is Thy Victory?

No fair! Why should my character be dead just because the monsters rolled well and hit him for a lot of damage? They missed Joe’s (identical) character! This game is SO unbalanced! Or Wait a minute! Why should my character fall down into the demon pits just because I failed my reflex save to get [...]

Bonus Replies: Editorial0 and Alzrius

Editorial0 has had a bit of free time recently, and decided to provide his own set of answers to some of Alzrius’s recent questions. Since his prospective tends to be quite different from mine, he has some alternative solutions and explanations. In regards to spell research, what modifiers are there for trying to invent an [...]

Living Magic – The Harvest

And here we have a question for The Practical Enchanter, from Derek You mentioned living magical items in The Practical Enchanter, yet there is nothing on the tables for creating those that reproduce. How would you price a tree that casts Create Food and Water as a 10th level cleric daily and produces one viable [...]

Alignment – Mechanics and Magic

Here we have the last of Alzrius’s current questions… Given that alignment is determined by planar forces (as laid out in The Practical Enchanter for the rational discussion and change alignment spells, could there be a spell to stop you from changing alignments when you normally would? I like to call such a spell morality [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 146 – Your Theater or Your Life!

Since they were going to the Theater, Marty did a little checking… It looked like the Fox and Wolf families had a rivalry going over who were the greatest patrons of the theater (much to the delight of the theater groups), although the Chameleons and the Parrots were also involved (which was certainly understandable). The [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 145 – Of Sailing Ships, and Sealing Wax, and Platapi, and Kings

With the Mandas family deciding not to make an issue over the unintentional and arguably self-inflicted death of an incompetent, and the City Guard – with no complaint from the family and a claim of a legal duel – officially uninvolved, Kevin and Marty prepared to wander off into the city. The city guards would [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 51

On Gruenn, Alys was cataloging the current problems. They still didn’t have all the shield generators under control. They still had some Sith forces operating onworld, including a few possessed saboteurs. The Commander of the Sith Flotilla that was currently in orbit seemed to be sane, competent, and quite certain that he could take the [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 50b

At Alderaan, there had been a lot of debate – but the local fleet command had had to admit that – if Kira and company had actually managed to lure Zandramas into coming to them, and there was a decent chance of catching him with only a portion of his fleet, and without a planetary [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 144 – Back to Port

Meanwhile, back on Ciarkian , Kevin and Marty were en route to the Port Authority building. Marty figured it was simple! They’d go to the port authority with him, make sure he wasn’t going to ream them, and either stow him below decks or stab him a few times if he was. It would be [...]

Tonights Game

Tonight’s game will have to be online, rather than the usual physical meeting. Hopefully this will not prove a problem for anyone.

Federation-Apocalypse Session 143b – Stalking the Shadows

The “prayer retreat” started before Ruth’s patience gave out entirely – but it was a near thing. The plan wasn’t too elaborate, but then she was a teenager from Battling Business World – and it ought to suffice unless the religious kooks were holding heavy weapons or a horde of guards in reserve or something. [...]