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Stealing the Guild
Consider the thieves’ guild. The thieves’ guild is an odd artifact of fantasy games. Once you accept that a hero can be a thief, you begin finding ways for the thief to belong to the world. Wizards have colleges and councils. Fighters become knights, become lords, and even become kings, ruling by this ax. Clerics have their religious hierarchies. The choirs of angels have nothing on the politics of churches. Thieves, though, are inherently outsiders. They prey upon the world. Yes, Hobbits get led astray by dirty road dwarves into being burglars, but that is not quite the same thing. A thief is more than just someone who sneaks around.…
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Actual Books
Sorry for the delay on this. I had a death in the family, and that took a lot of the steam out of me. I hope to get back to writing more regularly. Ironically, I attended the panel which inspired this with the family member who died. He was on my mind a lot while writing it. In my series about spell books, it occurred to me I had not addressed books in general. It is easy to assume everyone is on the same page with regards the subject of books. That said, not everyone really looks into the history of the book as an object and a technology.
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Rules For Spell Books (Or how I learned to relax and hang out in libraries)
I think I have established I love spell books. The spell book is an integral part of the wizardry motif. The book, the object, is a needed part of what wizards do in D&D. The current rules do require you to record your spells, but I do think it could be even more emphasized.
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Spell Books of Infamy
I love spell books. I did a video about them and everything. They are fascinating elements to magic in fantasy. Wizards are supposed to be wise. They got that way because of what they learned. None of that is cutting deals with powers, thank you very much. I am looking at you Warlocks. Books are where you store that knowledge.
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More Scifi fifth edition, with more background
First post of the new year, and it isn’t a resolutions post? What silliness is this? Nope, I am going to post another in my series on doing a scifi game in 5e. The first post can be found here. Where was I? Ah, Backgrounds. Backgrounds are awesome. It is one of the most interesting aspects to 5th editions is the idea of backgrounds. It adds more depth than just class and race. It adds variety to characters, flavor, and themes. Things like it had existed before, of course. In 2nd edition, there were the kits, which sort of tied to a background, and also added some subclass…
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SciFi 5th edition experiment part 3 fun with Aliens
A few things. First, you can find my earlier posts on this Science Fiction 5e thread here, and here. Second, let me know if you like these. I will keep writing them if people are getting anything out of them. Third, sorry it took a day or two longer to get this out. Writing races is not as exciting and writing classes. I also had some other issues going on, but real life is like that some times. I did briefly consider doing my own artwork for these, but remembered I am not a great artist.
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Science Fiction Game in 5th edition part 2 The Problems of Setting
So, I started out with the notion of making a 5th edition Scifi game. This was spurred by the idea of exploring what you can do with the 5th edition system framework. All fun and games, until you realize how much work it can be. Oh well, we continue the madness. The problems with setting The question of game design is one of experience. What stories are the players going to have here? What experiences do you want them to have? The original role-playing games, proto-D&D and its ilk, were extensions of war games. They were changed because the players wanted a different experience from what they were finding in the…
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The Beyond of comic future
I see a lot of people who complain about the state of comics, for various reasons. Some complain they have lost originality. I have heard others complain about how dark they have become. Of course, the classic complain of expense will always come up. One I have heard come up time and again, is that they seem to have lost a lot of that simple fun we all loved when we first started reading them. When I say we, I mean those of us who started reading in the 80s. Well worry not my friends. I have a cure for this complaint, of sorts. DC comics has a line of…
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Defining worlds for the game
Do you ever look at a TV show or a movie, and think to yourself, I could absolutely play in that world? Plenty of gamers do. I suppose it is the same sort of inspiration that fan fiction writers get. There is something about looking at a well-formed world, that makes you want to play there.