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Jotted down a few more thoughts regarding the ongoing playtest.  Thus far the game is going verynicely.  I'm most pleased that this iteration of the mechanics are not fighting me as I design and run the playtest campaign.

Check it out at my Cubicle of Solitude

I had 10 eager playtesters for my weekly D&D Next playtest over at Mage's Realm in Sacramento.  After a productive session of character generation (where everyone ended up very happy with and excited about their new adventurer), I posted my thoughts over at my Cubicle of Solitude.

Almost a month into the playtest at my Friendly Local Game Store.  I've posted some observations from last night at the Cubicle of Solitude.

After the Playtesters ran into a small horde of Undead in our recent playtest, we started taking a long hard look at the clerics.  My impressions can be found over at my Cubicle of Solitude.

I've posted ome of my observations in light of running the playtest this past week.  You can find all the Playtesty-goodness over at the Cubicle of Solitude.

I've had the playtest docs since Thursday, and I've read them enough now to start forming my initial opinions.  I've jotted them all down in a post to my blog over at the Cubicle of Solitude.

When I was a younger gamer, still green behind the ears and starry-eyed with the wonder and magic found in dungeons printed in blue ink on a faded blue grid, my favorite class was the Paladin.  They fired all of my early tales and stories about Knights in Shining Armor, Virtue overcoming Villainy, and realms of High Chivalry.  

Of course any old Fighter could armor herself in shining Plate Mail, and ride a Heavy Warhorse into battle streaming pinions bearing the crest of her Liege.  I owned several old supplements with "alternative classes" most of which included some variation of the Knight (Indeed, most simply called the class "Knight").  But Paladins.  They were special, rare, and difficult to play.  The stat requirements alone were almost prohibitive, and...

Our little home had a small informal D&D Summit meeting yesterday.  It made me think that a more formal such meeting would be fun in the future.  But I'm talking about Saturday.  In among the war stories and the nostalgia of games gone by we really discussed a lot of potential house rules.  And now a mere 24 hours later, the ideas seeded there have grown into the blog post here.

Interesting Idea #1 - Has the die roll for ability scores become obsolete?

This came to me during a long discussion on how to refine the generation of ability scores.  As of third and later editions, the ability score modifier has become much more central and fundamental to the competance of player characters.  The vast majority of dice-based challenges have an ability score modifier ...

I'm speculating about D&D magic today.  As 3rd edition (3.5 and Pathfinder) stands, spellcasters are required to rest for 8 hours then prepare spells for another hour or so before becoming ready to cast spells.  This has led to the phenomenon popularly termed the "15 Minute Workday".  Where, especially among low-level adventuring parties, the entire expedition comes to a halt for 8 hours after each significant encounter.

Originally, the "spells per day" mechanic was a means by which to balance the potential overwhelming power of the spellcasting classes to the non-spellcasters.  In early editions, non-spellcasting classes were in the action spotlight at low levels, and were slowly eclipsed by the spellcasters at high levels.  As the game has evolved, so has the assumption...