I kinda want to kill a Player Character. But I'm finding it difficult to justify doing so...

I wrote about this once before in a very, very early blog but that piece is significantly rougher, and it's a different from the position I now find myself in. My forthcoming campaign is a horror game. I'm doing a Ravenloft campaign and my players are going to be everymen. They're little more than 0-level NPCs and definitely not heroes. I want them to be afraid of death, which means death has to be a real possibility. Therein lies the problem.

The Paradox

I want death to string and be more real: no resurrection magic and no punches pulled. I want to be fair yet mean, so if the Player Character makes a mistake it might very well cost them their life, just like making a bad call in a horror

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Interlude: Extending the Five Minute Workday

Legends & Lore discussed the Five Minute Workday, the concept that after a very short period of time (such as one battle), the players decide to rest again so as to regain all of their resources. I was pretty dissatisfied with the column, in part because I didn't understand what it was advocating. After reading it several times, it seems to say the following:

• WotC is working on the math of the game to ensure a solid foundation.
• The focus to achieve balance is shifting from the encounter (4E's innovation) to the adventuring day (of previous editions).
• The adventuring day is defined by a number of rounds of combat with a certain number of enemies.
• Hit Points are the tracking mechanism.
• DMs will be crystal clear on target rounds/day expected.

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It's time again for the contract-mandated Doom 'n' Gloom entry for "Jester" David's blog.

5e is coming closer and closer with the first playtest done and the second due "sometime". Last I heard the second round was the end of summer, so late August or early September, meaning it might be the last playtest before the books have to get finished and out to the printers. So there's still time for WotC to royally F-up D&D Next, producing instead what more cynical people have called "D&D Last".

But just how could WotC turn such a hyped and positive experience built around a framework of crowd sourcing and open playtesting into a poor edition and commercial failure?

I'll tell you.

Not Enough Testing

Despite the mass public playtest, this might happen. While WotC is being silent regarding

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The Eberron campaign setting is almost ten years old.

It was released as the culmination of a search for a new campaign setting, and chosen from amongst 10 thousand submissions. The contest began in 2002 and ended in 2003, when 3.5e was released and we saw the first teasing hints of the world, although the actual campaign guide was not released until 2004.

Let's quickly put that into perspective. I'm a librarian at an Elementary school, which is K-6, or ages 5-11. So the majority of the kids in my school are younger than Eberron. They have never lived in a world without the Last War and Warforged and magitech. They have never breathed the air of a world where there was no such thing as dragonmarks or dragon shards. Eberron is becoming less and less "the new kid" and more and more

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I've not been on here in a really long time, and that's not by accident. I work offshore so my connection was always spotty, but with lots of free time I could pump out blogs and plan what questions I wanted to ask on word and post them when I got shore side. Well I'm one of those throw backs who really likes 3.x. I may have asked for it, but one of my first few posts was all my complaints against 4.0 (fueled mostly by the fact I never got to play it). The barrage of anger and hate really took me by surprise, and sadly it wasn't an isolated incedent.

I thought I would just stick to the non 4e parts of the site and despense my wealth of knowledge and definately unique view of the game. The problem was people were shockingly closed minded about, well, almost everything I  took for granted...

D&D Next and Classic Adventures:

Using Classics and the History Behind the (Caves of) Chaos

Today I want to start a series on how classic adventures can be used with D&D Next. With recent announcements suggesting that we won't get some additional playtest content for a while, this is hopefully useful. How deeply I delve into the subject will in part depend on your feedback. If this is useful, I'll keep the series going longer.

D&D Next: Gateway to the Past

One of the joys of D&D Next is that it translates really easily to previous editions. I have a vast collection of old adventures (and classics can be often had for $10 or less through your local gaming store or on E-Bay. Update: pdf versions of D&D material can now be found on D&D Classics.com!). Starting with 3E it became really...

"The cleric dragged the wounded fighter back by the armpits. The swordsman was bitten hard by a row of slashing teeth. It was the cleric's duty to prevent him from paying the ultimate price for treasure.

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The Lurker Fallacy

Playtesting D&D Next has been a lot of fun and has created many interesting discussions within our group related to game design, play styles, and editions. Sometimes, however, our group finds something where we are all unanimous. Such a thing is the design of lurkers in 4E and the design of the rogue in D&D Next.

It was no surprise to us to see the rogue be designed as it is. It continues a long trend from the very beginning of 4E, and it goes like this: A lurker is often a creature that disappears from site, landing a devastating blow the next turn. And, here's the added kicker that really seals the deal: 'devastating' is usually defined as double damage (and sometimes less).

Example: The 4E Twig Blight

1. It has a rechargeable melee power that deals 2d6+8 damage

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There was a lot of responses to my piece of sexism in D&D art, published last week.  People responded in the comments, my inbox, and on twitter.

One of the more frequent counterpoints was that cheesecake art was a part of the history of the game and a convention of the genre, that D&D has always had the cheesecake art and underlying tone of sex. Which implies the two are one and the same, that you cannot have D&D without the thin piecrust of sexism and objectification lurking underneath. Or that by making D&D sexless you’d be removing some subtle or ineffable part of the game.

I disagree. Completely.

Condemn Not Condone

The American South had a long history of oppression and racism. Plantations and humans as property were such a large part of the culture and it was difficult

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