What Do We Mean By Evil? D&D’s concept of alignment has always been a decisive idea. It allows clear cut game mechanics such as Protection from Evil spells and the Turning Undead ability that mimic the effects found in fantasy
Author: Chris
5 Inspirations for Post Apocalypse Games
Last night, the BBC started showing their remake of “The Survivors”, a post-apocalypse TV series first made in the 1970’s. So I thought it was a good time to look over films & books that have the making of great
Ancients & Moderns: The Starting Age of Characters
In D&D, every character starts at the same age. Not the same chronological ages obviously but the same mental / developmental age. Whether dwarf, elf, half-orc or human, all characters start out as the equivalent of an 18 year old
RPG Character Sheets Suck
Why Character Sheets Suck Almost without exception, RPG character sheets fail to make the player’s life as easy as possible. They are all product of either bad game system design, bad graphical design or bad usability design. It is far
Five Fantasy Films Every Gamer Should Watch
Which Films Should an Fantasy Gamer Watch 5. Lord of the Rings Trilogy I’m just getting this out of the way. All three films are technically excellent and beautifully catch the epic scale of Tolkien’s work but as you have
Of Men and Gods
Why D&D Gods Make No Sense There is a big difference between our real world gods and the gods in a D&D world. The gods in D&D worlds exist and are real (at least to the characters). The gods in
D&D’s Most Valuable Item?
An Easy Way of Making Money Most characters are working class. The children of goat herders who go off in search of fame and fortune. The first few levels are full of daring adventures and close shaves that bring wealth
Removing Magic Items from a D&D Campaign
In Ye Olde Worlde Magic Item Shop I highlighted how magic items had ceased being special in 3.0 onwards. Here is my solution to the problem. Magic Items have a Story If you think of the magic items in literature,
Thrud – British D&D Humour
In my round-up of D&D Humor I managed to forget one classic from the eighties. Thrud the Barbarian. Drawn by Carl Critchlow, Thrud appeared in White Dwarf magazine (Games Workshop’s equivalent of Dragon) and followed the simple life of Thrud.
Cloverfield in D&D
Thursday night’s game session was canceled due to Pete having the flu so I found myself with an unexpectedly spare evening. One quick trip down to the video store later and I was settling down to watch Cloverfield. After a
Ye Olde Worlde Magic Item Shop
Looking back, one of the biggest mistakes in the 3.0/3.5 editions was the magic item creation rules. This seemingly sensible change fundamentally changed the nature of D&D. Back in the “good old days”, magic items were strange things. There was
D&D Humor
D&D Is No Joking Matter I can’t remember a game session where at some point everyone was not laughing. Playing D&D is fun and the wise-cracking and joking that goes with it are as much part of the session as