The Pink Dice Chronicles

I'm distraught, trying to whittle down what my next investment of gaming time should be.  I tried to put together a GM's Pathfinder game with rotating GMs, but that fell through due to lack of interest.  I am still considering playing in a Pathfinder game or perhaps GMing a Pathfinder game.  I've considered putting together a Ponyfinder game.  I've even looked at a Dark Sun campaign in 5e. I am distraught that Pathfinder has blown apart with so much bloat and so many classes that it is almost unplayable in some sense.  Maybe I will host a Pathfinder game with just a couple of core books and custom races. I've been thinking of resurrecting an old project for a new world for Pathfinder.  This world would have all custom races from the start.  It could be interesting, as it engages elements of both Dark Sun and a small world type campaign.  The custom races is becoming a challenge, because I really need visuals of the races.  Maybe I should ...

Pathfinder has turned into a mess.  What is worse is that it is becoming harder and harder to sort through this mess and define a character creation ruleset that is reasonable.  Currently I am working through this very problem with a group of GMs and I thought it would be worth a post to address. First let's address the history of Pathfinder and what makes up Pathfinder.  The first thing to note is that Paizo makes Pathfinder so they are the primary publisher.  Third party publishers fall into two categories -- Psionics and non-psionics.  Dreamscarred published books on the psionics extension and they are quite good and relatively balanced.  All of the other 3rd party context not dealing with psionics is of questionable balance and must be judged one piece at a time.  This includes options like Dreamscarred's Path of War that drastically re-balances martial classes. Not even looking at Paizo stuff, there is a lot to cover.  They basically publ...

A lot of folks have commented on the difficulty of building suspense and even dread and terror in their TTRPG games.  Whether you are in the horror genre, the political saga, or even the cyberpunk realm, there is a lot that can be learned from a simple jenga tower, like that used in Dread to build suspense. Starting a game of Jenga means building a stable tower, pushing the blocks together, clearing the gaps, making things straight.  Similarly, in a game with suspense, things usually start out OK for the PCs.  Everyone is pretty much happy with them and they are pretty happy with everyone.  The more important part of this stage is building the layers that will make up the basis of the jenga tower.  Someone is going to pull the first block out of that tower, usually the bad buys, and this is going to set the party in motion.  Once in motion, for vengeance, good will, fame, or fortune, the party needs to start pulling more blocks out, sometimes on accident ...

Professor R. B. Magick stands nearly 6 feet tall with his high heeled black boots, and seems taller with the brightly colored silken garbs that hang loose from him.  He makes a point to twirl often to allow the bright colors to dance on the air about him, as if he himself were magical.  His voice dances similarly as he speak, using all of his bardic knowledge to inflect and sing the words for maximum effect.  He is mostly a salesman and he sells amazing magic items and surprisingly reasonable prices (half book prices) before moving on to the next town with his brightly colored mechanic contraption of a sales wagon. Every now and then, though, he takes a detour through an unknown alley in a city he'd rather not mention.  This alley is where the rejected magical items from the local mage school get dumped for disposal.  Unfortunately the fence is not so high that it can't be climbed and the incinerator furnace is not run so often by the groundskeeper.  The ...

So far as I can tell, I am the first person to hike over the iron mountains since the event that created them some 800 years ago.  The whole region is considered cursed by every civilization I have found bordering it, so much so that they will not even drink water that flows from within.  Still, my curious nature, empty pockets, and stalking debtors drove me to make the journey with my 3 companions. The region is essentially one mountain, towering over valleys sharply cut off by the recent appearance of the iron mountains.  Elves from the nearest village old enough to remember claim the iron mountains appeared all at once, with a cover of magic, so whatever lay behind them must surely be valuable.  With a doughnut-shaped set of valleys and one large mountain, it has taken weeks already and will take several weeks more to fully survey the area.  It may take a lifetime, however, to understand what has been seen thus far. There is a people here, or perhaps ...

Happy Holidays to friends and readers!  Today I thought I would share a Christmas tree inspired method for building a dungeon. When decorating a Christmas tree, one starts with a natural structure -- the tree.  The tree is grown (or made to resemble) a natural form.  Over top of the tree, we add lights as a structure to pull our view from the bottom to the top of the tree, highlighting all the character we will add in between.  Next we add garland to spread the lighting more diffusely and to add color.  Then we add ornaments that give us points of interest on the trees.  Some may be generically the same, while others are unique.  We add tinsel over the ornaments to increase the twinkle.  Finally the tree is topped with a special angel or star to finish the look. In our dungeon, we also need to start with something natural.  What was this area originally?  Was it an underground mine?  Was it a prison?  Was it a series o...

I don't know about other GMs, but I like to end epic campaigns with epic battles.  Sure there might be a big bad that the the PCs need to take out, or a dragon, or both, but have armies fighting in the background just makes for a cool final battle. It also is a good plot point to have throughout the campaign -- building up allies for the final showdown.  However, how does one GM a large final battle? The problem is simple to understand.  If you use the same mechanics that you use for normal battles, you will never reach the end.  The mechanics just weren't built for this many characters in play.  Instead of running the battle with a character vs character level of detail, you need to run it with a group vs group level of detail. To do this, you group allies and enemies except for special NPCs and PCs.  A typical group can be from 5 to 12, though more or less may work depending on the overall size of the encounter.  Each group takes and does damage ...

I always see new GMs asking for advice, so I wanted to put some discussions out there specifically targeted for new GMs.  This one I thought should be first because it is a mistake that a lot of GMs make and never outgrow.  Some folks will tell you that the GM is always right, and perhaps even that this old adage is rule 0.  We can talk about rule zero in a different post, but here I want to address the problem with the GM being always right. If a player engages in a game, there is a social contract between the GM and the player.  A big portion of this social contract is the rules.  As a player, I want to know the rules up front and not have them change during the game.  I want to engage in the game both outside the gaming session where I am growing my character on my own, and in the gaming session where I am growing my character with others.  If the GM either does not clarify the rules or simply overrides the rules at any whim in game, the rules con...

Sometimes the melee fighterss become too much of a certainty and the rogue just starts losing his cautiousness.  The solution I use for balancing things and giving the party a challenge is a ranged / reach gauntlet.  The setup is pretty straightforward -- give the party someplace they really need to go.  They could be escaping a dungeon, saving a princess, running from a dragon -- it doesn't matter. They come to a hallway / section of tunnel / section of castle walkway that has an area they can't get to on each side.  I prefer using iron bars, but a steep change in elevation or other terrain, physical, or magical barrier will work.  To make it through the obstacle they have to run past the area that they can't get to it.  In this "safe" area is a group of enemies with ranged weapons or reach weapons.  The enemies can hit them, but they can't hit the enemies unless they have a ranged attack (or reach weapon).  The longer the area they have...

Ask a player to show you their character and they will hand you a character sheet.  Ask your player to describe their character, and they will tell you the same thing the character sheet says, perhaps in interpreted words, maybe with a picture or a small but of disjointed history.  This static view of the character is really contradictory in every sense of playing a character, since so much of the story in an RPG is the growth of a character. I've tried to do something like this before with Pathfinder.  The problem with Pathfinder is that there is a lot going on in the rules and it is hard to capture everything in a short form.  It could be done in software, but I've never found any software that did it.  Even working through a progression to meet the simple requirements for a prestige class can take a lot of work in Pathfinder.  Planning over levels is hard  Trying to capture the full progression of a character in both stats and personal growth is u...

Hoard of the Dragon Queen is a solid adventure outline, but has some possible shortcomings ( ref1 , ref2 , ref3  ).  The adventure is a bit of a railroad as outlined, the maps are difficult to use for groups used to battlemaps, and it just really doesn't have the unique details that other adventures have had.  However, as a GM, reading the adventure was a real treat because it has enormous potential.  In many places the characters have an enormous abundance of choices that can influence their success or demise.  It just needs to be rebuilt a bit for my style of GMing. I am planning on GMing this as my first D&D 5e adventure.  It's going to be a roll20 game.  My hope is to drag this adventure into a form that represents the tactical complexity that is available while adding opportunities for new plot paths through the adventure.  I also want to clarify the motivations available to the PCs a bit, so the adventure feels like a bit less of a rai...

So we had the first meeting of my Port Wayne game today.  of the 7  players I originally had lined up, we ended up with the 3 original players and one new guy.  It irks me when folks sign up and then drop with no warning.  Grrrr. So the party looks like it is going to be the following: Human rogue "Indiana Jones"-like character Zed Gunslinger Overkill Gunner that talks little and likes to shoot things and blow things up Human hacker with rogue flair Technik (new class coming) that creates and uses technology I am excited.  I am looking forward to getting the game going.  If anyone else wants to join, drop me an email or a comment here.

So, things are coming together for my Pathfinder cyberpunk campaign.  I've gotten 2 documents out so far to my players, and the third goes out to players this week.  Here's what my players are getting for the campaign: Setting Guide for Port Wayne (51 pages) History Culture Geography Locations Groups People of Interest Cyberpunk Path Rules (171 pages) 5 New Races 2 New Classes 18 New Archetypes 3+ New Skills plus New Interpretations of Old Skills 41 New Feats and Traits Rules extensions for Cyberpunk Almost 20 pages of new Equipment Rules for building, equipping, and upgrading robots, vehicles, and android bodies New Computer building rules 29 New Spells Sheets for building Cyborgs, Vehicles, Robots, and Androids Cyberpunk Prebuilds (59 pages) 35 prebuilt vehicles with full stats 18 prebuilt NPC contacts with stat blocks Since the rules are an extension to Pathfinder, they can also use everything in the PRD except the Technology Guide and ...

September has been a long month, but I have gotten a few things done.  Here's my status update. Port Wayne Cyberpunk Setting  -- I successfully completed a release of the Port Wayne Cyberpunk setting and have already started adding a few new pieces of content that will appear in the next version.   STATUS:  Complete Dead Channel Sky  -- I've done a lot of work on this here and there.  The NPC and Premade Vehicle sections have been split out as a separate book.  I also recently found a quote from William Gibson, indicating he really didn't like Shadowrun and its mixing of Elves and cyberpunk, so I'll probably change the name and direction a bit.  I've also looked into appropriate licenses for release.  For now, I am just trying to get it to a playable state for a single game.   STATUS: 90 %  Complete The Pink Dice Chronicles Blog   -- My stats are down in September, mostly because I haven't been posting as much. ...

These days I am getting maybe 2 segments of 3 hours a day where I am in relatively little pain, assuming I keep my activity limited.  Driving my wife to the store or going to the doctor pretty much knocks out the entire day for me, so I lose quite a few days a week.  Hopefully soon I will get this issue all resolved. In the meantime, with no weekly game set up yet, I have turned my attention to using some of these little segments of times to work on gaming projects when I am not spending time with my family or handling other household things to do.  A little time scattered here in there can make at least some progress on getting things done. So here is my list of gaming projects currently underway: Port Wayne Cyberpunk Setting -- Originally this was a Shadowrun setting made up of a series of handouts and built off of the Shadowrun world and history.  I am revamping it into a single book that is all setting and no rules.  The world I am building it on is p...

I am thinking about starting a Ponyfinder game very soon.  In preparation for this, I have been watching the cartoon  MLP: FiM.  So far, having watched the first two episodes, I am surprised, impressed, and slightly intimidated.  Unlike cartoons from my younger years, like Animaniacs, which had two sides to them, this cartoon has no "jokes for adults" written in.  It is pure, wholesome.  It is a level of cartoon purity I have not seen in years. And by pure wholesome, I mean no violence, not even a real enemy.  They defeated the foe using honesty, laughter, loyalty, kindness, generosity, and friendship.  Friendship, of course, generated magic, but the magic didn't kill the foe, it turned it into a friend. So, as an apprentice of Candlekeep, Baldur's Gate, and Neverwinter, and with the GM's heart of a dwarf, how am I supposed to GM a Ponyfinder game?  Will player's expect a wholesome "saving everyone" motif?  Is this the end of... dar...

One of the most cliche of all GM problems is dealing with a thief PC that steals from the party.  It ranks right up there with "the Thief and the Paladin" problem.  Most GMs will come across this problem sooner or later.  In this article I give some tips for dealing with the problem from an experienced (30+ years) GM.  Our goal in finding a solution to this problem is to find a way to both make the game more interesting and to deal with the problem in game without generating a player vs player conflict that can disrupt your gaming group. The first stage in setting up to deal with this problem is to establish your position early to your group of how you will deal with it.  My preferred position is that it will be discouraged, but always dealt with in game.  I usually also add that I will not allow player versus player combat, excepting perhaps nonlethal actions.  This gives the players some options without leading to the gaming group-killing scenario ...

Mike Mearls released another tidbit on D&D 5e , this time supposedly answering some questions on D&D 5e.  Let me summarize some major points: Basic D&D 5e won't be suitable for a basis for sharing material (adventures, etc). DMG will be the book that explains the rules and how to generate your own stuff. The licensing looks like it won't be addressed until 2015. The comments on this announcement are worth a read, but basically can be summed up in a few short categories:  big fans saying hi, I hate/love GSL/OGL, I trust/don't trust WotC to get it right.  Clearly Pathfinder has been screwing with WotC's business model and the fans now have different expectations that before. It is good to know that the expectation that Basic D&D 5e won't be suitable for creating stuff and distributing it.  It eliminates any false sense of hope that basic D&D 5e would be a basis for an SRD.  It is hopefully good news that the DMG will address how to ...

Even though I invest heavily in my gaming hobby, I still fundamentally think free is good in gaming.  I've written multiple times before about the advantages that free systems, like Pathfinder, have over pay-only systems like Shadowrun.  Free brings in players.  Free enriches the community.  Free expands my options.  Unfortunately what Mike Mearls announced with free basic D&D is only half free, so far.  This is an announcement of free "as in beer", not free as in artistic freedom.  We still don't know what licensing will be put out for D&D, either free basic on non-free D&D.  Since 3rd party publishers are really the heart and soul of the community, this is a big missing piece.  That being said, let's take a look as the free "as in beer" side of things. Basic appears to be a subset of the rules required to run the main races (dwarf, elf, halfling, human) through the main classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric) to level 20. ...

I keep an eye on subreddits for pathfinder and rpg and this question always comes up:  how do I punish the player who has an overpowered or min-maxed character? The first problem with this question is that it indicates a lack of communication.  A GM needs to set the expectation for their players.  If a player thinks they can min-max and the GM doesn't want them too, the GM hasn't set the expectation properly. The second problem is that the rules are an implied contract between the GM and the player for what is allowed and not allowed.  You can't agree on a rule set and then say don't min-max, because you just changed the rules. I opt for the following strategies when I run into balance issues between characters: 1.  Use plot points to restore balance.  It is very easy to make sure an overpowered character has bad luck.  Mistaken identity, being captured, being targeted are all places where luck plays a part and the GM can control that.  This d...