Man, I love Dragon Quest.

I love nitty gritty like this Shadowdark review.

Everyone getting a full individual exploration turn, while encounter checks are per cycle, makes exploration go much more quickly and also makes individual players feel more empowered to act. However, this was sort of a reinterpretation on Alex’s part that the whole party can move on each player’s turn, rather than just the individual character. Alex’s take is better.

From the history of dice notation.

Someone would yell out a number range (“7-34”), and the winner was the first person who could come up with a way to generate that range with dice (3d10+4). They could get convoluted (e.g., 1-26 = 2d8 + 1d12 -2).

Yeah, I can’t stand those “number ranges”. I’m not very good at them. My method is “it’s probably Nd4”, like if it says 3–12, I check if it fits a bunch of d4 and in that case it does. Just wish it’d use dice notation honestly.

Sometimes I use a spread sheet mode because it’s the grid format I’m after. Othertimes, I want the opposite: a text file that calculates math automatically. For that latter case, this old spread.el has a pretty clean interface. I write a text file (or even org or markdown) but use a lightweight markup to declare some values to be derived from Lisp which in turn can reference other values.

I ported it to modern Emacs.

I’ve said this before but I really wish WotC woulda used the name “witch” not “warlock” for the class in both D&D and MtG, with a note saying that “some witches call themselves warlocks instead”.

This goes back to sexism of the 3.5e era (warlocks were introduced in Complete Arcane). Here’s a heartbreaking example of what this has led to:

Someone’s compendium of homebrew subclasses that has separate witch and warlock classes.

A resource on hex grid math that I could’ve used the other day.

But right away I have notes.

Via A Reyes on dice.camp.

This map generator method is so good.

Looks great.

I had a hard time finding Carr’s Critical Recaps but here they are.

I’ve been watching SupergeekMike’s Demystifying Critical Role commentary series and I just got to episode 33 out of 58 (and counting—the show is ongoing) and this episode hit super hard especially after watching the show from the start.

Spoiler for his commentary episode.

He uses a gimmick very well: when he’s criticizing another YouTube show’s problem player, he’s instead showing clips of his own past bad behavior when that behavior hits similar notes. That’s intellectually honest.

Here is another thread slagging PWL.

To me, the only alternative to PWL is to have the DM serve up a string of encounters that’s one-by-one “balanced” against the party at that level. Meaning that it’s in some way the DM’s fault if the party loses (overly easily wins). It’s a playstyle with some pros and cons.

The fun with PWL is that you can have a more exploratory type of game world where the world is what it is and the monsters in that world are what they are and you run into them or you run from them. It can be set up such that more distant = more dangerous, but monsters are only balanced relative each other, not the party“. That kind of game is my jam. It also has some pros and cons.

Main point is that PWL, or the gist behind PWL, isn’t just all bad, always bad, misguided, 5e-wannabee stuff. There is an actual point to it.

A frustrating thread about PF’s “Proficiency Without Level” variant because the upvoted commenters (who are slagging the variant) don’t address the reason for the variant, which is to enable more exploratory, less linear/​“curated”/​pathy play.

I’m grateful Paizo made the variant and put it in their book. I hear people say the math is a li’l off(…?) but this variant is almost necessary for play that stretches across larger locations. The traditional towns/overworlds/dungeons setups.

They explain it in a blog post:

In time, the Pathfinder Player Core, Pathfinder GM Core, Pathfinder Monster Core, and Pathfinder Player Core 2 will replace the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, Gamemastery Guide, Bestiary, and Advanced Player’s Guide, which Paizo will not reprint once their current print runs expire. Existing Pathfinder players should be assured that the core rules system remains the same, and the overwhelming majority of the rules themselves will not change. Your existing books are still valid. The newly formatted books consolidate key information in a unified place—for example, Pathfinder Player Core will collect all the important rules for each of its featured classes in one volume rather than spreading out key information between the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player’s Guide.

So it’s less drastic than Essentials line was for 4E, for example.

Pathfinder made a second edition to their second edition?

Adam writes:

The system is as much a tool for building the world and as any hex description.