...about my love for pen & paper role-playing games, and my quest to find the perfect one.
I’ve been thinking about ability scores.
The ability scores are used to determine the modifiers used for combat bonuses, saving throws, and other checks. Beyond that, though, the scores themselves seem pointless. No one cares that your character’s strength is 14; we just want to know that you get a +1 to hit. If that’s the case, why bother with the score? Why not just roll up the modifier and use that as your score?
In a post from August, I said:
I walk at just about three miles an hour. A little faster unencumbered over short distances, and a little slower carrying a pack over a 500-mile trek. If a square counts as 6 miles, simple math tells me that it takes 2 hours.
What I neglected to take into account was that all my walking and hiking has been on well marked trails and roads. How different is it when someone is traveling across unknown and unmarked wilderness?
A second post this week! This one is really just a request for your opinion, so I don’t count it as “content.”
I’m have mixed feeling about secret doors. On the one hand, they’re very much “realistic”, in-genre, and add to the feel of the game. On the other hand, it seems that in a lot of early modules and adventures, a good 50-75% of a dungeon would be hidden behind a secret door and there would be no clue or hint that such a door even existed, never mind where it was. This would lead to players either:
“This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times.”
Quick! What AD&D character class is that about?
Did you say “paladin?” If you did, you’re wrong. That quote is from the AD&D Player’s Handbook section about clerics.
So if the cleric is supposed to be the holy knight, imbued with miraculous powers by his faith in the god(s), then what’s the point of the paladin? The only answer I can come up with is “to let the paladin’s player annoy everyone else around the table by saying ‘I’m just playing my character.’”
As you can tell, I’m not a fan of paladins. That’s okay though, because it’s really impossible to roll one up.
How impossible? Let’s look!
I’m always leery about how much information I should post about an upcoming dungeon. Will a player read this post?
Let’s risk it.
This post is about a trick.
You know, it's been 8 months since I started this series of posts. Maybe it's time to stop yapping and actually start playing.
Crowfield needs a good old fashioned dungeon crawl.
Maybe near the town itself. As a prequel to the "starfall" event. This way the players can adventure in the dungeon while I plan the rest of the world.
I guess that means I need to make a dungeon...
This week I sat down to design a couple ships using the last week’s design process. As I did, a few omissions and needed changes made themselves apparent, so I’m going to need to rework some things.