Posts Tagged by Hot Button
| October 6, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Every gaming system handles magic a little differently, but one thing holds true in any gaming system that has a magical component. At some point it is going to be used to move the narrative along. When magic becomes a McGuffin, it’s going to break the rules. “I’m sorry Vansha. While you can clearly see the princess is in this castle, she is protected by a magic force field that can only be breached with the sword of Armun.” “This poison is very strong, and…
| August 23, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Imagine this fairly common scenario: The character sheet talks about a backwoods, uneducated fighter with a low intelligence score. The player knows that the word puzzle on the wall can be solved by removing every third letter and putting the min order. The fighter might not know this, but the player does. Should the player be able to bring in their knowledge and find some way for the fighter to have brought it up, or should the Game Master enforce the character backstory or let…
| August 4, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
There’s a lot of subjects that we as gamers and GMs have giant raving debates over that at their core revolve around “Will I lose a friend if I do this?” Everything from fudge to player kills to dealing with problem players at least partially hinges on the reaction of the rest of your gaming crew and how well you can trust them to act in a mature manner to an unfavorable situation. We can talk about the necessity of mature discussion of expectations, social…
| July 12, 2010 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Reading a fascinating Guild Wars 2 design diary about character death penalties (via Penny Arcade) got me thinking about PC deaths in RPGs — and specifically, about why PCs should ever be killed at all. For your consideration: Dying? Yawn In the vast majority of traditional-style campaigns, regardless of the game, PCs almost never die for good. D&D is the main example, and also the source of why this stereotype tends to be true: Most gamers have played D&D, and from that experience have taken…
| June 30, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
Recently, Jared von Hindman wrote an article for the Wizards website on why playing evil races is perfectly legitimate, and how to properly integrate yourself into a party if you are playing one. I’m a long-time fan of Mr. Hindman’s work at his website Head Injury Theater. In fact, one of my first major “Wooo! Someone on teh Intarwebz noticed me!” moments was getting my name in his article on the movie The Manitou for sending him an article on foetus in foeto. O.K. Fan…
| May 18, 2010 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Fudging is and always has been a hot topic — here on the Stew, in most gaming groups, on message boards, you name it. That’s because it gets at the core of what gaming is all about, and once you figure out where you fall on the “NEVER FUDGE EVER EVER EVER!!!! — I heart fudge, I love it, it’s the bestest!!!!” spectrum, it reveals a pretty fundamental divide among GMs. Roughly speaking, that divide is about what’s most important to you at the table:…
| September 17, 2009 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
Today’s Hot Button is related to a previous article, but I think it is worth debating on its own. Psionics (or psi powers, or psychic powers, etc) have traditionally had a troubled relationship in fantasy games, especially in Dungeons & Dragons and its various permutations and dirivatives. The first time I’d encountered psionics in RPGs was in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (1e), which relegated psionics to an appendix. Unlike divine or arcane magic, psionics wasn’t attached to a character class and played…
