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+10 +1
Grid Worldbuilding: An experiment in building a world like a game
You can learn a lot from video games. Especially the way some RPG games build their open sandbox worlds. This experiment I'm calling grid worldbuilding.
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+5 +1
D&D Tips: How to Prepare a Game in 30 Minutes
Tips and ideas on how to panic and get ready for a game with only 30 minutes to prepare.
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+3 +1
New weekly D&D series starring Chris Hardwick, Ashley Johnson, and MST3K's latest host, Jonah Ray
Force Grey: Giant Hunters brings together an unlikely all-star cast of actors and comedians as they preview the new Storm King’s Thunder adventure, releasing fall 2016. The Force Grey cast will dive into a preview of the new D&D storyline and entertain fans by taking on the mantle of a team of do-gooders from the Forgotten Realms!
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+5 +2
Sly Flourish's Vampires: Six New Vampires for Your 5E D&D Game
Vampires make outstanding villains. These creatures of the night walk among us and yet are not us. Their intellect, moralities, wisdom, and villainy are beyond mortal comprehension. Vampires make fantastic 5e villains, yet we're limited with the vampires presented to us so far. Thus, we give you Sly Flourish's Vampires. This document presents six new vampires for your own 5e game.
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+15 +6
How the end of "lonely fun" lead to today’s trickle of D&D books
Gaming used to be what D&D boss Mike Mearls called “a hobby of not playing the game you wanted to play.” Fate designer Fred Hicks calls time spent creating characters or reading game books “lonely fun.” Electronic games took away the appeal of lonely fun. Now wherever you have a laptop or phone, you can game.
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+2 +1
F’Chelrak’s Tomb: The earliest D&D adventure that remains playable
F’Chelrak’s Tomb offers the chaotic whimsy of a Deck of Many Things.
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+3 +1
Stranger Things' Demogorgon: Playable Monster Stats for D&D 5e
The real Demogorgon already exists for D&D 5e, having appeared in the Out of the Abyss adventure, so I created a version based on what we see from the creature in the show, and at a CR 6, so it’s playable in lower level D&D campaigns.
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+4 +1
Acquisitions Incorporated - PAX West 2016 D&D Game [2:57:29]
Picking up where 'Acquisitions Incorporated: The Series' left off, our heroes are recovering from a disastrous encounter with a dragon and their segment of the Rod of Seven Parts has been taken. They must board their airship, ascend into the stratosphere, and fight to recover the Rod before it can be used to summon a terrible demon lord. Join us as Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade, Scott Kurtz from PvP, and renowned author Patrick Rothfuss team up with Dungeon Master Chris Perkins to once again battle in the skies over Faerûn.
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+4 +1
[D&D 5E] Unearthed Arcana: The Ranger, Revised
Over the past year, you’ve seen us try a number of new approaches to the ranger, all aimed at addressing the class’s high levels of player dissatisfaction and its ranking as D&D’s weakest class by a significant margin. Those two factors combined to put us on the path to this revision. Though the revised ranger retains many of the elements of the existing class, a lot has changed, so it’s best to simply dig into the new material to get a sense of how it feels. But at the same time, the release of this revision gives us a chance to talk about how a revised class can best be implemented as part of the D&D game—and how the game will evolve in
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+23 +5
When Choice Doesn’t Matter: An essay on game storytelling and choice in favor of player immersion over gameplay
Walking into The Banner Saga 2, I had a rough idea of what to expect; hard choices, beautiful music and lovely hand-drawn art to frame a sad story. I'd played the first game in the series and was certain that I'd remembered it well enough to know what to expect from its sequel. The trouble is, I'd forgotten something important about the first game: my choices didn't always matter- and that made the experience more meaningful.
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+11 +2
The End of a D&D Campaign Was the Beginning of Doom
Doom, widely-regarded as one of the first successful first-person shooter video game, has its roots in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that went disastrously wrong when one of the player characters made a literal deal with the devil...and lost.
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+6 +3
The Four Best JRPGs at Tokyo Game Show 2016
It’s a special time of year for the fans of Japanese role-playing games, when the time comes for the annual Tokyo Game Show. There was an abundance of news on upcoming games being released by their publishers, we got to see merchandise of our most beloved franchises and new game demos.
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+7 +2
id Software's "Quake" Was Inspired by a High Level D&D Character
In the previous installment we discussed the influence of the disastrous end to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and how it helped shape the beginning of the first-person shooter, Doom. But there was another character who influenced id Software's follow-up to Doom. His name was Quake, and although he never appeared in his original form in the titular game, his magic arsenal was typical of a a high-level D&D character.
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+2 +1
The RPG Origins of Fallout - Part I: Tunnels & Trolls
Fallout, the beloved video game franchise that mixes 50s retro-futurism with the apocalypse, has its roots in a role-playing game...and then attempted two different licensing deals with role-playing game companies before they were tripped up by legal challenges. From Tunnels & Trolls to GURPS to D20 Modern, Fallout's evolution was intertwined with both video game and tabletop gaming history.
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+36 +10
I Am Fully Capable of Entertaining Myself in Prison for Decades If Need Be
After my first FBI raid I started reading those little guides on life in prison that one finds online and noticed several references to role-playing games. By Barrett Brown.
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+5 +3
[5e] Unearthed Arcana: Encounter Building Breakdown
This document is the kind of thing you should keep in your back pocket as a DM. When the DMG’s encounter-building tools aren’t answering the questions that you really need, or when your encounters are getting a little stale, pull this out and see if it can help you.
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+8 +5
Halloween D&D Adventure
So for Halloween we are hosting a D&D 5th edition game. 1st step is to create a theme. Halloween! Done! Nope, that’s not enough. So I’d like to make it scary, and also this really is initiatory, so it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. How about find and defeat the evil in the Haunted House. What is the Evil, well I will need to figure all of this out as I build this up.
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+6 +1
D&D Unearthed Arcana: New Fighter Archetypes Released [PDF]
The fighter faces four new Martial Archetype options this week: Arcane Archer, Knight, Samurai, and Sharpshooter. We invite you to read the options' descriptions, make characters with them, and see whether you like them.
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+25 +6
The Power Of Print On Demand
A couple of weeks ago, word started spreading that Wizards of the Coast was putting old TSR material into their print on demand program. I decided to look into some of the offerings and see what was up, From there, this expanded into a general "State of the Print on Demand" piece for the OneBookShelf sites.
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+5 +2
What’s Your "Real Life" Strength Rating in Dungeons & Dragons?
So there I was, browsing the PHB and marveling at what the late 1970s considered optimal tabletop game design, when I discovered that, uniquely among all the character attributes, the STR (strength) score has a numerical “in real life” quantification attached.
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