Thoughtful Thursdy #3

         GP for XP - This is another rule that I have nvever played with. To be honest, the first year or so I didn't play with it, because I didn't notice it. Later when it was pointed out to me by a new player I had met, it just didn't seem right to me. I didn't want to play a game that encouraged stealing and I  wasn't really equipped to handle, "I give Player B 1,000 GPs, they get 1,000 XPs right?" No other game I played had this rule, so it became an issue less and less often as I branched out to other games. I am running an AD&D 1e revival game and am using it for the first time. It does make the game less of a grind.

Thoughtful Thursday #2

  Neither me or any of my friends could afford miniatures, much less could get any kind of terrain. So, we played without it (and had lots of fun). Consequently, 1" equals 10 feet or 10 yards made no sense, really. I could justify it, but it was just that for me, a rationalization. Encumbrance just magified that issue. In one case, it made sense, dungeoneers coudn't just bring everything with them. But, the amount of stuff the game allowed you to carry was absurd. Not only that, but it took a lot of play time to mange. If you were to skip encumberence, character creation usually took less than 15 minutes in Basic D&D. With Encumberance rules, I have spent 45 minutes making a 1st level character with 4 hit points and proer adventure equipment.

  The first several games I designed still had encumberance rules. Only recently have I abandoned the idea of regulating how much people can carry. And since then I have noticed that when less emphasis is put on how much you can carry, players spend less time trying to push that limit. It is still a fun rule to play with when that sort of loot-based adventuring is called for.

Thoughtful Thursday #1

My first experience with RPGs was hearing about a D&D group in my middle school (I was in sixth grade). John Smedley (@j_smedley) was running a D&D game. I tried to get in,  but it was full. I tried to play a freeform RPG but it broke down when the player decided they had an invulnerable umbrella.

My mom got me Basic D&D. She is so cool, she got it for me twice. The first time she got the version that didn't have dice (it had chits you could punch out). The second version had cheap plastic dice that needed crayons! I did some solo play and then went to work designing my own Sci fi RPG. My game wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.

Parts of D&D was amazing (I could play a wizard!). But vast swaths of the game made no sense to me. In fact, if you didn't play D&D in a very specific way, game balance had no meaning. All of my designs since have been shaped by these and other memorable gaming experiences. I strive to capture what was fun and avoid what was not fun.

A little explanation

I am changing how I do this blog.
Up until know I haved been intermittenlty updating it as an unoffical design journal. Unfortunatley, I had not been getting a lot of feedback, so I had been letting it fall to the wayside.
Since it is changing, I thought a little explanation is in order. I am going to be releasing it weekly on Thursdays and it will be a combination of stories from my past gaming experiences as well as observations I have made playing other games.
The goal is threefold, to open conversations about games, explain my attitudes towards gaming and maybe convince people that my designs might be worth playing.
If you have visited this blog before, I want to thank you for patience and hope that this w direction will prove more entertaining. If you are new, welcome and enjoy the ride!

I am on DTRPG!

Steampunk Crescendo is available as a digital download at DriveThru RPG:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/119778/Steampunk-Crescendo
I am so excited!