Game Mastery

Last post about 4e PDFs.  For realsies.

I wrote a script that adds margins to the PDFs produced by Character Builder.  It’s available as a website.  Just upload your PDF and download a new one with margins.  At some point I’ll add an option to control the margin size.

http://files.sagotsky.com/pymargins/index.py

A couple unrelated thoughts on fudging preferences and long term plot.

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I have trouble running NPCs.  It takes me a while to get into character and even longer to switch between characters.  This isn’t news.  I’d be surprised if less than 1/3 of the posts here mentioned  this fact.  It’s something I’m aware of and I’ve been trying to work on.
I was talking to one of my PCs today, expressing this problem, and we came up with a possible solution.  I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but it’s definitely worth trying.

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For some odd reason the 4e character builder fails at making PDFs.  The margins aren’t right so when you print you lose a bit of data.   Here’s a workaround:

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I made a couple tools to help with my 4e game.  They’re of limited appeal and they’re still works in progress, but someone out there might find them interesting.

If you haven’t heard of vim or LaTeX (the typesetting system, not the material) this post doesn’t concern you and should be ignored unless you’re having a really boring day.

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Holy crap, I’ve had this blog for more than a year. Weirder still is that I still enjoy posting in it.

Anyway, today I wanted to discuss an idea I’ve had for a while but never actually played with. I’m very fond of this idea because it does something that a lot of 3rd ed D&D players request, but it hardly touches the game rules. Spellcasters, especially wizards, are criticized for being too powerful. Some fixes alter or remove spells. Others change the levels or numbers of spells casters recieve. I propose using a mechanic already present, but often ignored – spell components.

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I’ve always defended D&D as a platform for roleplaying.  Sure it focuses on combat by providing an abundance of interesting combat rules, but that doesn’t prevent you from roleplaying in it.  I’ve run entire d20 sessions without even looking at dice.  A character is a character and as long as a system supports a setting appropriate for your character, you can roleplay in that system, right?

Well, I’m not going to talk about that right now.  I’ve been playing 4th edition lately and will be running a pre-written 4th ed module this weekend.  I wasn’t able to get through a full reading of the mod without finally understanding why people take exception to using D&D for role play.  This post is an airing of grievances (in full Festivus spirit) I had while reading through a single D&D adventure.  I’ll bitch and moan and maybe, if we’re lucky, figure out a thing or two about writing good RP by examining the bad.

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Sign my game is going well: added a new player last night and then had another player deal with backstory colliding with in game events for 90+ minutes.  New player was content watching backstory emerge.  I think this means I’ve done my job when it comes to making the story engaging.  Best of all, backstory came to light and nothing has been resolved.

Today I stumbled upon something I made about a year ago.  It’s a DnD 3.5 character sheet.  I made it because I wasn’t satisfied with the default one when playing Grimble, my overleveled gnome wizard.  Wish I published it earlier, as 3.5 is kinda obsolete these days.

Anyway, here’s the character sheet.  Description below the cut.

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A couple months back I read about a new way to play D&D that was intriguing and simple.  It’s called 6e or level 6 epic.  The idea is that once you reach level 6 your character is considered epic level.  None of that level 7-20 business (obviously a game could be run with a different epic value, the idea remains the same).  Instead of leveling, characters gain feats.  They grow in power, but remain pretty much mortal.

But I get bored of feats.  You get too many of them this way.  Instead, what I suggest doing is repeating levels.

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