Magical Biotech and Monster Making Part II – Monster Making for the GM.

To pick up the biotech for d20 series again, we’ll take a look at “monster design” from the game master’s side with the Spirit of the Times. Some places achieve timelessness. Others have timelessness thrust upon them. A time and place may become a legend, an idealized archetype, a fixed reference point for later civilizations, [...]

Death in Absentia: Characters and the Law

As with so many things, when you’re looking at how you handle malefactors in role-playing games, it’s often wise to look back at the beginning… Once upon a time there were wargamers, and they had little cards for units that might look something like this: Class-A Tank (d6 Generic Wargame): Move 5. No Swamp or [...]

Residents of the Ars Goetia, Part II

The “Demons” of medieval tomes were mostly the creation of fevered would -be demonologists and “scholars”. While they might be loosely based on a few genuine mythological fragments, those tattered threads are pretty thoroughly lost in a sea of wild conjecture. For our purposes this is good; it provides a lot of room for turning [...]

Residents of the Ars Goetia

When it comes to source material, it’s hard to get much more authentic than going medieval – and the list of “demons” in the Ars Goetia offers quite a lot of inspiration. Of course, when you read that list you don’t find a lot of game-style “demons”. You don’t find much in the way of [...]

Old School Renaissance Eclipse Part II – Simplicity and the Roll of Last Resort.

The second rule of of “Old School” role-play is really derived from the first one. It’s Simplicity – at least on the players side. There are several reasons for that. First up, and perhaps most importantly, when you stick with familiar biology and the basic rules that go with it – a human body needs [...]

Classical Archetypes V – The Huntsman and the Gladiator

The hardy man of the wilds is an ancient archetype, going back to the dawn of humanity – and so appears under many, MANY, names. We have military scouts, Tolkien’s rangers, mountain men,  outriders, gamekeepers, jungle lords, barbarians, explorers, research biologists and ecologists, wildlife experts, and even bounty hunters – but the only real difference [...]

Classical Archetypes IV – The Wizard

Classically, the wizard – literally a “wise man”, a philosopher or sage – was a simply a scholar. One who knew things. On the other hand, to some extent, knowledge really is power. If you’re the only one around who has some crude understanding of snake venom and the properties of herbs, it certainly looks [...]

Classical Archetypes – The Thief

Rogues, con-artists, thieves, and scoundrels, have had a certain duality of image for many centuries. On one hand, there’s a certain dashing attraction to the whole idea of living outside the rules, doing what you want – and getting away with it by being smarter, more skillful, and sneakier, then your victims. There’s the undeniable [...]

Classical Archetypes – The Knight

In the beginning, being a “knight” simply meant that you had enough cash for a warhorse, decent equipment, and some combat training. Money, however, tended to run in families.  Human nature being what it is, the fact that you, your father, and your grandfathers, had all had more money then everybody else, was soon taken [...]

Basic Psionic Exercises

Back in the old days of D&D, first edition psionics was an oddly tacked on subsystem that tended to blaze like a meteor; if you rolled well, there was a very small chance that you would abruptly gain mighty psychic powers and utterly dominate the game – up until the point where the game master [...]

The Necromantic Spells of Farvaras

For today, it’s a bit of first-edition nostalgia – a collection of necromantic spells. Sadly, this one doesn’t include the Skeleton Dance (which animated its victims skeletons while they were still using them; causing serious penalties while they remained alive, and turning them into skeletons if they died while the spell was still active), but [...]

Should Paladins Have Counterparts For Other Alignments?

Here we have another contribution from Editorial0, with some minimal editing and an afterword. Paladins have always encountered a lot of hostility. Whether you liked them or hated them, they were just plain weird. As a class, they were Fighters, except they weren’t. They were Clerics, except they weren’t. In 3rd edition, they were really [...]

The Educated Designer

If You Don’t Know Something – Learn! In Thoth’s recent article on Infravision, he stated: Sure, you can say that the physics of your world works some other way – but then you’re going to have to build and explain that physics as soon as someone starts experimenting (if you want to go that route, [...]

Monstrous Characters Through The Years

So you want to play a powerful creature? That’s been handled in several different ways through the various editions of Dungeons and Dragons – and the various methods are worth a look, since you can see variations on all of them in many of the other games that have been designed since. In First Edition [...]

The Immortal Rants of Sean K. Reynolds – “Undead Can See Through All Illusions!”

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 or (in this case) some notable editing to cover the fact that I [...]

Ancient History II – More Demi-Human Level Limits Responses

First up for today, it’s another lengthy article response – again by Migo on demi-human level limits. For those interested in the topic, but who have found this article first, here are some links: Sean K. Reynolds original rant on the topic. Editorial0′s take on the Sean K. Reynolds Rant. My article on what they [...]

Ancient History – Demi-Human Level Limits responses

An article on what the older edition’s DemiHuman Level Limits were all about has brought forth a fairly long response – which has led to an even longer answer. Ergo, first up for today, is we have Migo’s answer… I think what’s worth keeping in mind is that level limits in AD&D were a screwed [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]