How many goblins/encounters/sessions does a character have to defeat/overcome/endure to reach 2nd-level? This week’s Wandering Monsters does a pretty good job of breaking it down across the editions, including 4th Edition (which it praises alongside 3rd Edition for having clear encounter-building guidelines). 5th Edition continues the tradition of having you carving the majority of your XP […]
This week we get several rules updates, or more accurately the summary of what those rules updates will probably entail. It looks like they are going to bring back Passive Perception (no mention of how it works with advantage though). I was not even aware that it was gone, but both this and an actual credit to […]
“How many magic items should characters wield as they make their way through their adventuring careers?” Ignoring quality over quantity, that answer to that depends entirely on the campaign, which is at least likely informed by the campaign setting. For example, in Eberron I would not only expect characters to have more, but to also be able […]
In last week’s Legends & Lore Mearls tried to justify inflexible class features with two key points: it speeds up character creation and ultimately does not really matter, because the first two levels go by really quickly—being tutorial levels, I guess—and you can always start at 3rd level if you want to get to that one […]
Ayash, the Glorious Life-Giver, the Shining Healer, the Radiant Shield. First, she gave birth to the world; then, to everything that lives. She crafted the first race to be guardians over her creation. Finally, exhausted from her labors, she slept. As she slumbered, ancient and malicious creatures happened upon her works, and in their envy […]
Aside from the reminder about the whole “all the worlds in a single multiverse” bit, Wyatt starts things out on a pretty positive note. He opens with 3rd Edition’s Manual of the Planes. Yeah, it mapped out the Great Wheel, but also had entire chapters dedicated to helping you design your own cosmology and explaining each plane […]
I know Mearls has played other games (or has at least heard of them), so why is he still insisting that one of his reasons for eliminating most meaningful decisions is for the sake of making character generation quick? First, what about all the other levels? In most cases you get to make one choice […]
Three years late to the scene, I finally picked up Mansions of Madness over the weekend, played it five times (as of this blog post, anyway), and went back to Rainy Day Games to get all of the delicious, terrible expansions. Partially it is because of the minis (I do love me some minis), but mostly it is that, […]
Dungeon World was originally intended to evoke the feel of earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, which is why when you pick a class you choose a move from one of a few races (and by default paladins can only be human). While I like the simplicity I dislike that by default you only get […]
Back in early December of last year I mentioned taking an old 4th Edition campaign I ran, and turning it into a hefty set of locations and fronts for a very Lovecraftian Dungeon World. Currently it is at 40 pages, and nowhere near completion. What started out as essentially an adventure conversion has gone way off the […]
Points of Light 