Author Archives: Brent

There’s a great post over at RPG Musings about buying third-party products. I have a similar problem: I rarely buythird-partyRPG products. In my experience, those products aretoo-specificslices of other peoples’ campaign worlds, which don’t fit into my own. I’ve only bought generic tools, like Gygax’s Extraordinary Book of Names, or completelyself-containedadventures that don’t connect with my world, like a jungle temple adventure I bought. Which begs the question: what would … Continue reading »

Check in on my Google Wave RPG game, The Legacy of the Lines, a D&D 4E game: [wave id=”googlewave.com! w+Ov21ogmKA”]

I’ve been thinking lately about the best way to give feedback to players in my role-playing games. By “feedback,” I mean pointing out particularly effective and particularly ineffective behavior, like creative problem-solving, forgetting to update a marker, effective teamwork, or aggressive interpersonal behavior. I used to essentially ignore this. I’d occasionally reward a creative solution with a quick “Great thinking!” I essentially ignored bad behavior. This, of course, is ineffective. I then picked … Continue reading »

Last week, I finally finished and published a D&D 4E adventure, The Goblins of Summerkeep, to DriveThruRPG.com. It took a while.  There are all sorts of little finishing steps, such as checking for errors, verifying that the generated PDF looks good, uploading to DriveThruRPG, etc. I’m also working to make it available in multiple formats, and that’s a classic time suck. DriveThruRPG provides a print-on-demand service, but that requires its own PDFs. … Continue reading »

In the previous posts in this series, I laid some groundwork for adapting D&D 4E to a mecha universe, establishing some basic stats and skills. Let’s create some sample mecha units, using the stats we’ve defined so far. The Stats We Need If you recall, each mecha has the following stats: Manufacturer, which corresponds to race Class Size Speed Initiative AC Fortitude Reflex Strength Constitution Dexterity HP … Continue reading »

This month\’s RPG Blog Carnival over at Mad Brew Labs is on Growing the Hobby. I quote: While I don\’t think the hobby is disappearing, by any means, I don\’t see it expanding by leaps & bounds either. I\’d personally like to see it grow, and I would like to hear what the RPG Blogosphere has to say. \”Blogosphere.\” :shudder: I so hate that word. Ah well;  not their fault. Can … Continue reading »

This is part 4 in a series of posts about an RPG system that uses D&D 4E mechanics for a giant robot system. D&D 4E simplified the skill list dramatically. Let’s look at each one, and figure out which ones can be transferred to a giant robot combat universe directly, which will need to be tweaked, which must be dropped, and what we must add. Acrobatics – OK … Continue reading »

In the first post in this series, I laid out some basic ideas for a role-playing system for playing in giant robot universes, using a straight port of the D&D 4E system. In the second post, I defined basic stats and attributes for PCs and their mecha. Today, I’m going to lay out the stats needed for a mecha, and the stats needed for a PC: Mecha Character Sheet Name Manufacturer — Corresponds to race Class Size Speed Initiative Defenses AC Fortitude … Continue reading »

In my previous post on this topic, I suggested a few basic rules for a giant robot RPG system using the basic D&D 4E rules. Let’s review the rules so far: Mecha operate on a scale 10x that of the human scale. So, mecha weapons do 10x the damage of a human weapon, mecha are about 10x bigger than humans, etc. Mecha combat occurs on its own grid, which does not represent … Continue reading »

Last weekend, Saalon and I discussed a straight conversion of D&D 4th Edition for a universe of anime-style “real robot” giant robot combat. So, more like the serious war stories of Gundam than the goofy fistfights of Gigantor. Scales of War The first problem is one of scale. Giant robots operate weapons that can pulverize many individual soldiers in one hit. So, let’s identify a rule: Mecha operate on a scale 10x that … Continue reading »