Table Tips: The Loot List

In our game, we have a very simple and reliable treasure tracking system. When we obtain some loot, either somebody claims it immediately (usually if it is an item best suited for one person) or one guy writes it on a log. After each session, our treasure tracker fellow emails out the list so we [...]

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Managing Up: Failing Scenes

I just want to say at the start that this scene is inspired by the conversation of Fear the Boot #168, and not from a personal experience with my current GM. This particular epsiode was a wonderful mine of topics for me, and this one is about the comments the hosts made about staying in [...]

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Abiding by the mule (optimizing characters)

WordPress is a funny thing. I’ve noticed a spike in traffic to an old post before I restarted my blog. WordPress automatically suggested it as a related article to this one about optimizing characters and character choices in 4e. It’s an interesting article; I didn’t fully understand what they meant by “heirarchy” but I did [...]

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Skill Challenge: World Series

I know it’s a little late, but in honor of my team winning the World Series, I’ve crafted a skill challenge.  In the midst of crafting this challenge I finally got around to to reading the skill challenge of the DMG2. It’s really well written and I a must for any DM writing or customizing [...]

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The Psion, one month review

Now that I’ve played the Psion class for one month, I thought I’d give a retrospective review.
The Psion is a controller class unlike previous ones. It has only two area-effects, and its the attacks generally have a damage + debuff (increase enemies’ vulnerabilities) effect.  There’s also not a lot of movement like there are for [...]

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Engaging your GM

The following post is presupposed on the fact that you enjoy gaming with your GM and would like to improve everyone’s enjoyment at the table. If you and your GM have fundamental and irreconcilable gaming philosophy differences, find a new game! But if sometimes there’s a bit of misalignment and you want to fix things, [...]

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Play by email

I’ve been interested for a while now in exploring ways to game away from the table. There’s been a lot of activity recently about using Google Wave as a RPG medium. I also tried getting a play by email campaign going a few months ago, and that fizzled before it even began. There’s a certain [...]

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Player focus

In the recent Fear the Boot #168, the guys on that podcast focused on how to keep a player’s attention during a game. The arguments for wanting players to stay focused are good ones, and I can pretty much summarize them with the following statement: “people have limited time to game, and everyone has agreed [...]

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Reaction powers

Many powers in 4e are reactions triggered by “you are hit.” This means you can immediately perform an action outside of your turn and outside of the standard/move/minor action paradigm. Some of these powers include buffs to defenses, transference of damage, or special move such as shifting out of the way. Many of these [...]

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What to do in an off-week

One problem with adulthood is that there are a lot of competing interests for one’s time. No matter what we might try, life happens and we don’t get to game every week. When we can, we still get together for some non-gaming hanging out. For those occasions I keep the D&D cartoon dvd [...]

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