Bruce Brown had a great idea on the FATE list for initiative.
The theory goes that GM calls out the adjectives on the ladder in descending order. Players can then use any skill that matches or exceeds that at any point during the round.
Game Resources
Chatty’s Tool Roundup, and Dragon Avenue’s Resource Page.
A 4e Form fillable auto-calculating character sheet (.zip)
Supplement tables, Reference screen (flash)
Setting and Adventure Ideas
Chris Chinn’s Five blades of Bahamut, Quest seeds, Airships
P3’s short series (a quick post each for 1-10, 11-20, and 21-30) extensible with lots of options.
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’m currently writing articles for Gnome Stew. There are a lot of great authors, most of whom came from the Treasure Tables blog and forum communities. If you’re foolish, you can read only my posts this way.
If you have a comment that’d be a good part of the conversation, head on over and join in. If you’d rather chew me out, here’s a good place to do it. 😉
A great quote from Hilzoy:
And besides, this all plays into a pretty ludicrous conception of masculinity, according to which George Bush’s swaggering and bluster are supposed to show that he’s manly, while — well, something, though what exactly is never clear, is supposed to show that Obama is not. If I truly thought that masculinity was anything like the sneering, bullying caricature that people try to foist off on us every four years at about this time, I’d either take a vow of celibacy right now or spend some serious effort trying to discover whether it’s possible to become gay by sheer force of will.
The whole post is good, but I was tickled by her concluding paragraph (above).
Afterward, I found a great post from Kameron Hurley about finding happiness and fearing it. Here’s one (of many) good paragraphs:
I worry that happiness is a dangerous thing. I worry that it’s not something we should strive for, but just something you get periodically, a lull between the long stretches of darkness, like the short, sharp Alaskan Summer. Those three months of intense, gorgeous, beautiful life and sunshine that make the 8 months of winter worth it.
4e related:
4e random encounter maker
4e pointbuy calculator
4e character sheet (pdf, for printing)
4e Form fillable auto-calculating character sheet (.zip)
Bankuei’s 4e playaids: Requests and some solutions.
Keep on the Shadowfell review, very positive. (No spoilers.)
The Chatty DM plays 4e: initial thoughts, Into the Shadowhaunt (spoilers!)
Martin reviews 4e books in detail. An excellent review.
From Doyce: Watching the 4.0 DnD release, and The DnD 4.0 game with the seven-year old got even more awesome.
4e FAQ (from Reading Dragon mailing list):
My response from Customer Service is that if a monster has two or more basic attacks, you can select which one you want to use in and opportuity attack situation.
Standing from prone does not generate opportunity attacks (OA). gleemax thread
Here is Customer Services ruling on slowed shifting. It exposes a new way to deal with rules precedence: “can’t trumps can.” As suggested in the basic mechanics of the game on page 11, specific trumps general, though when specific and specific conflict (as in this situation), we rule that can’t trumps can. Thus if you’re slowed, you’re limited to two squares of movement, regardless of the type of movement, unless the power/ability specifically says otherwise.
Now more than ever– is it time to buy Firey dragon counters print them on cardstock?
Dragon Avenue crusades against 4e naysayers.
Life got in the way of playing on the 13th– or the fear of Friday the 13th was just too strong. Kev and Dad aren’t available on Saturday night, so let’s play on Friday! As ever, let us know if you’ll have any problem making it Friday.
Session canceled for Friday the 13th. (Old info below)
Spooky! I suspect beads will be in heavy use given that we’ll be playing on Friday the 13th.
It doesn’t look like people need the posts up here on the blog– does anyone really want these reminder posts? Do you hop over to the calendar, or are we just used to Fridays. If we do more Saturday games, will that make a difference?
Pens and Swords; fantasy fiction writing. The most recent posts are about World Building and how it varies as a Fantasy author vs DM.
The DMs Blog: The d20 Stops Here.
The Cull: A best of RPG theory discussion blog
House of Leaves is by Mark Z. Danielewski. It’s clearly a dark book; very sophisticated in its presentation, with layers on layers of meaning and narrative. I’m reading this now because it was recommended by Old Hat on CVGamers. I first remember reading about this in Poe’s liner notes for Haunted. [Side note: the relationship between the two is mentioned on the Haunted wikipedia page.
I’m not far into it yet, but it looks very promising.
I recently reread Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows Trilogy: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow’s Flight, and Arrow’s Fall. Evidently was the first trilogy written in the series, despite my reading the Magic’s Promise/Pride/Price trilogy previously.
I enjoyed the series. Some small elements felt repetitious– but given that this was the first series written I guess it’s the other books that repeat the elements introduced here.
Talia is inspiring and refreshing– from the very beginning, she seems like someone whose struggles are worthwhile. The petty humiliations and struggle to adapt to strange environments in the first book are very well written– I sympathized with Talia and hoped she’d find a way to endure.
We’re looking at playing Friday night, May 30th, unless you let us know otherwise. Be there or be square!