Posts Tagged by skills
| March 10, 2013 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
This is the third article in my final five series for Gnome Stew, and I have chosen this comment from reader LordTentacle as the inspiration for today’s article: “Skill expansion” — when players’ lack certain skills, I tend to let them use skills in a generalist way. “Sure, you can roll survival to track.” When there are specialists, I like to let them do it. “Sure, ranger, you can roll tracking.” It helps everyone have the spotlight. But, the characters that played in the group…
| December 6, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Gnome Rodeo! It’s time to don tall boots and prepare to ride the range on our battle sheep. What have our keen eyed scouts found? Skills: I’m a big fan of thinking about skills, but we’ve got a patrol to keep on keepin’ on. Fortunately, there are some mighty thoughtful cowpokes (sheep-pokes?) who’ve begun talkin’. Kate Elliot leads off with a discussion of skills from a writer’s point of view. She points out how unusual (or less expected) skills can set a character apart, create…
| May 8, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article was written by Adam Meyers, president of Drop Dead Studios. DDS will shortly be coming out with a Pathfinder supplement called Rogue Glory. Adam’s previous guest article here was D&D, Social Skills, and the Zen of Roleplaying Games. Thanks, Adam! For the most part, players love options. As RPGs have advanced, there are some that do their best to give players every possible option for creating their characters. So many, in fact, that some options are hardly ever used. I’m a D&D…
| August 17, 2009 | Posted by Scott Martin |
There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one. — Jack Yelton Gambling works for just about every game world. In our world, gambling was so popular in the renaissance that kings and popes banned playing cards. There’s something iconic about Han and Lando playing sabbac for the Millenium Falcon, Croaker’s admonishing the Black Company watchmen for gambling, Mat Cauthon’s constant dicing and fickle fortune as he leads the Band of the Red…
| January 9, 2009 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
Do you include Spotlight encounters — those designed to challenge individual characters — in your adventures? Giving your cleric or thief a chance to shine sounds easy enough, right? You throw undead at the cleric and traps with pointy things that spring out at your thieves. Likewise, wizards need magic to dispel and fighters require opportunities to perform feats of strength. But, c’mon, that gets a little old after a while, right? Deeper, more involved spotlight encounters require the GM to know the party members…
| September 18, 2008 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
What’s the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don’t be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack. Tinker, tinker, soldier Why? As a DM, I don’t tinker with the rules much. Oh, as a writer, I’ve dabbled plenty — articles in Dragon magazine and in a couple of pdf supplements. But for my home game, I’m actually fairly conservative in rules experimentation. Deciding whether the players…
| June 30, 2008 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
PCs are adventurers. I get it. They’re not slaving away at some lousy 9-to-5 job hoping the boss won’t drop a ton of work on their desk before the weekend or pining for that promotion that will never come. It’s not in their makeup. They’re adventurers! They’re goblin-killers and tomb raiders and dragon-slayers, for goodness sakes. They don’t punch-in at a timeclock and they aren’t worried about the 401K. If they want something, they go for it. When they see injustice, they take action. And…
