Three related things recently: First, Colville using guns as an example of his rule design process (an interesting topic for another time). He talks about how you want to create mechanics that encourage the fiction to happen. For example—if you don’t want to watch the video right now—if you’re creating a sub/class around a Western-styleContinue reading “Mechanics that Create the Fiction”
Author Archives: James Socol
Battle Maps: Savior or Scourge
While I used the most inflammatory framing I could for the title, the answer is, of course: neither. They’re a tool and the trick is how and when to use them effectively? Spoilers for Critical Role, vague for most of it but I don’t want to figure out which episodes so say all of C1Continue reading “Battle Maps: Savior or Scourge”
Talking Behind the DM Screen
I haven’t gotten to play much in person this year, obviously, and so my physical DM screen has gone largely unused. Which is too bad, because it’s actually super helpful. I have one of the normal WotC ones, and for the most part I find the info they’ve picked useful. I use the price tablesContinue reading “Talking Behind the DM Screen”
House rules I’d like to try
Previously I wrote about some of the house rules I’ve implemented. Here’s a handful of things I would like to try! All of this is, of course, stolen, so I’ve tried to provide some kind of credit where I could. Sometimes it’s a citation of credit. Alternative initiative systems So, I don’t feel like initiativeContinue reading “House rules I’d like to try”
What “Alignment” means to me
Character “alignment” is an strange concept with an interesting history. But I want to skip the history this time and just talk about how I think about it my table. Specifically I want to talk about PC alignment. For NPCs, I don’t tend to think about it very much—except for celestials and fiends. I didn’tContinue reading “What “Alignment” means to me”
Narrative Causality and Heroism
A friend asked a question the other day that I’ve been thinking about: why is it that my character rises up as a hero and not, say, the blacksmith whose smithy was burned down by a dragon? There’s a lot to unpack here, and I think it’s really interesting, but I don’t want to keepContinue reading “Narrative Causality and Heroism”
DCs between PCs
One more house rule that I have adopted and so far like—and one more where credit to Noam is necessary—covers interactions between PCs. Specifically those social interactions where there’s no evident opposed check. To provide some context, one of my goals is to enable players to play high-Charisma characters even if they aren’t such greatContinue reading “DCs between PCs”
System Mastery and System Completeness
One subset of the folks I play with regularly is excited about trying new things, and this started when we decided to try Pathfinder 2nd edition. I never played D&D 3.5e, or PF1e, so it was new to me—it’s also a different fork of history, since Pathfinder branched from D&D after 3.5e. Now it’s evolvedContinue reading “System Mastery and System Completeness”
My Version of 5e
My friend Saterade said something interesting the other day: that every DM running 5e really needs to take the game as a template and turn it into their own system. Just like every Forgotten Realms or Eberron out there is its own distinct version of a universe, our house or table rules, our homebrews, theContinue reading “My Version of 5e”
Bounded XP?
As a general rule, I don’t like XP, and have moved to using milestones in 5e games. There are a bunch of reasons: It strongly encourages combat solutions to encounters. Managing missing players is harder. It’s a pain to keep track of, especially for non-combat encounters, where it feels especially arbitrary. Being 7 XP fromContinue reading “Bounded XP?”
James DM 