Write Fifteen Minutes a Day (WFMAD) Challenge So Far

So far this month, I have been participating in the Write Fifteen Minutes a Day Challenge. This is supposed to be done in August, but a friend of mine organized a September version online and invited me to join in.

I have been planning on running a Gamma World RPG campaign, or maybe a Dark Sun campaign, or some kind of campaign, for ages now, but I had never really bothered to think it through. I took this opportunity to start fleshing out some details for my setting, starting with the name.

I have also been asking people for feedback (thanks for the feedback I've gotten so far!), but when I ask people about what else I should write about, but people don't know enough about the setting and what's percolating in my brain to ask for it. So here are the posts I've written so far, and some others I'm thinking about writing. Let me know which of these you'd like to see!

Thinking Way Too Hard About: PC Weapon rewards for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game

Okay, so here's a weirdly specific blog post about something that's been on my mind lately. The only RPG campaign I've ever been in that played consistently and reached a conclusion was a Star Wars game that my brother ran. The Star Wars campaign has been on my mind lately because my current campaign is on sort of an unintentional hiatus and I've heard that some of my coworkers are in a Star Wars game.

Looking back, the Star Wars campaign was a lot of fun. I can still remember fighting droids on a hovering platform over lakes of acid, and the forest race whose tribal meetings were held entirely in poetry. That said, I feel like the two areas that could have used the most improvement would have been an overarching villain and some loot to reward the heroes.

This led me to thinking about how best to give weapons to characters in a Star Wars campaign. I've played a lot of Knights of the Old Republic, which in many ways sticks a little too closely to its roots as Dungeons and Dragons in Space. As the characters progress, perhaps their starting "Blaster Pistol" might be traded out for something like a "Republic Blaster Pistol" (a little better) which would later be traded out for a "Mandalorian Blaster Pistol" (even better). The game then had some extra special items that you pick up along the way. Take down a bounty hunter, for instance, and you can pick up his specially customized pistol and use it as your own. This works, but I think GMs can be more creative.

I think that giving weapons backgrounds is a great way to draw the players into the game setting. If anything unites all players in all RPGs ever, it's the desire for better gear for their characters. Players are going to be expecting to get better gear, so if the GM can use the gear to tell a story, everyone wins.

So, mostly to amuse myself, I cooked up a couple of special Star Wars weapons that could be used to reward medium-or high-level PCs in a Star Wars campaign. 

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Adventurers

As you may have noticed, my friends and I are experiencing something of a Dungeons & Dragons Renaissance. All this gaming has got me thinking about the characters we play. I have been going on dungeon crawls since grade school, thanks to board games like Hero Quest, arcade games like Gauntlet II and Shadow Over Mystara, and computer games like Might and Magic II. I take for granted that a Warrior, a Thief, a Magician, and a Priest (and/or Dwarf and Elf) will tromp over to the dungeon outside of town to kill some goblins and skeletons. When I stop to think about it, there is a lot more going on here. Adventuring is not just something you do; an adventurer is something you are, and some common threads unite all such men and women.

There are many reasons to go adventuring: a lust for gold ranks highly among these, but there are also many who are trying to protect their people, to serve their lord or god, or to seek out hidden knowledge. These motivations are not enough to make a person an adventurer, however. A strong man can earn gold as a soldier or a thug, a priest can serve his god safe in a temple, and a scholar can learn much in libraries and laboratories. There are some whose blood calls out for more, men and women who are not content with an average, safe life. They know of the danger waiting for them outside civilization's walls, but they are willing to face the challenge. More risk, more reward.

Adventurers are brave.

Adventurers feel a draw to the uncivilized world where danger and reward wait, but there is a corresponding force pushing them away from the commonplace world of cities and civilization. Adventurers are a restless crowd, unable to sit still and accept a normal life. They have trouble relating to the blacksmith, the street sweeper, the carpenter or the farmer. Some adventurers were born to normal lives but could not accept the daily grind. Others never had the option of living a normal life. A large number of adventurers are exotic travelers from foreign kingdoms, elves and dwarves and more exotic races. Many are half-breeds who have trouble fitting in with either of their parents' races.

Adventurers are misfits.

Whether they started adventuring as the exiled vampire half-drow prince or as a gnome with a tambourine, all adventurers must fight constantly with the forces of evil. It's unavoidable: even if an adventurer is a paragon of good, that adventurer will see terrible things in the course of her adventures. No matter how strong her faith is, she must at some point grapple with that age-old question of why such evil can be allowed to exist.

Adventurers are troubled.

The victories an adventurer experiences are temporary. There is always a larger menace; when the orc raiding party has been dispatched, the main orc force must be dealt with. When one villian lies slain, there are many others hidden, scheming. Adventurers move on to the next fight because the righteous battle is never won, or because the adventurer wants to test himself against a stronger adversary, or because the next dragon has an even larger hoard. Inevitably, the battles that follow will be increasingly harder. The party that emerged battered and victorious from their fight with a giant will move on to face a larger, stronger giant the next day. This means that most adventurers eventually reach their limit, and therefore their doom. The ones who survive have to be able to rise to the challenge. As the monsters get stronger, the adventurers have to become stronger still.

Adventurers thrive on danger.

Above all, adventurers defy description. Every rule I can come up with has exceptions: there are adventurers who are cowards, or rooted in the community, or innocent, or who fear challenges. Perhaps the one thing that all adventurers must share in common is that they have answered the call to adventure, time and again.

Because they cannot hear about the grimoir hidden in the lost tomb without wanting to be the first mortal in a thousand years to learn its secrets.

Because they cannot allow the evil cult to spread without bringing upon them the judgment of the true gods.

Because no matter how much wealth they have acquired, the gem in someone else's stash gleams brighter.

Because somebody must slay the dragon. Where is my sword?

Fetch me my sword.

I don't like sand

What's up with all these D&D posts lately? Well, I've been playing a lot of D&D, and I know that my audience (all four of you) is probably interested in hearing about D&D. So here you go, another D&D post.



I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
--Anakin Skywalker

I agree, Anakin. But you left out one important detail about sand: it explodes, and it kills you! Shikirr and his clutch found this out the hard way on Wednesday, when we found ourselves fighting monsters that were living dust devils.

Before the monsters showed up, we met a dwarf who spoke with Jarvix and Castri while Yuka and Shikirr kept careful watch. The dwarf warned us that we were fighting someone called the Wastewalker, who apparently has a vendetta against the Veiled Alliance. Thanks for nothing, Jarvix and Barcan! I was happy being a bug-slave and now here I am, running from my life from people who aren't even out to get me. Well, they're my clutch-mates now, so I'll defend them with my life. The jerks.

The fact that we were fighting the Wastewalker didn't come as a surprise to the players, since the module is called Fury of the Wastewalker. It didn't mean much to the characters, either, as we had already gathered that the storm wasn't natural. We also learned that the Wastewalker's lieutenant, a siltrunner lizard, had a personal grudge against the dwarf, and was coming for him.

After the dwarf showed off his gnarly obsidian wounds, we got attacked by dust devils. One of them promptly exploded, dealing massive damage, including a critical hit on yours truly. I went from 33 HP to 11, then used my Speed of Thought ability to climb onto a rock to avoid the creatures, incurring an opportunity attack that dropped me to 6. Then the sand creature attacked, dealing 11 more damage and knocking me out before I even had a turn. GG, uninstall.

Two of our players were out for the day, so our DM let the first two people to go down play as their characters. I say the first two because, as you may have guessed, our party was soon literally biting the dust. The sand creatures made a mockery of our piecemeal armor and meager defenses. As Jarvix's player, who took over Phye, pointed out at one attack, the attack roll was over twice Phye's defense value. The DM was consistently rolling in the mid to high twenties on his attack rolls, which makes me wonder why he didn't just go straight to rolling damage. Oh that's right; in case he landed critical hits, which he got at least two of on Wednesday.

Shikirr was down, so I got to play Barcan, the human star-sorceror who has the survivability of a damp marshmallow. Because Barcan was late to the battle, he was the last one standing as the lizard-person lieutenant showed up. I couldn't do much about it as one of the dust devils picked up the dwarf, who was already having a seizure from the lieutenant's magical attacks. The lieutenant then cold-bloodedly stabbed him in the heart. Dag.

The dust devils turned to Barcan, and I knew they'd make short work of me. So I figured, heck, this isn't my regular character, we're all about to go down, and I'm not going to get a TPK with a daily power still remaining. So I flung out Barcan's daily power: Cosmos Call.

I focused the power of the unknowable void in my fragile human mind, just long enough to direct it into the skull of my enemy. The lizard man squealed as the power of the universe overwhelmed his brain and flat out killed him.

I like to think that Barcan had a little smirk on his face as the dust devils swung over and beat the tar out of him.

Then our DM dropped the bombshell: with the lizard person lieutenant dead, the dust devils would dissipate after a round. So basically, once they were done with me, they gently fell back into the desert, leaving a suddenly peaceful scene of a bunch of bodies and unconscious people.

I like to think that, when we wake up, we'll be spitting out sand and complaining sand getting into places we didn't even know we had, like Iago in Disney's Aladdin.

Anyone? Anyone?

*cricket, cricket*

Oh, well. See you in Athas!

If I were to sum up my impression of Eberron in one word, that word would be "juicy"

In this post, I will talk about our "regular" D&D game, the one that we play at a friend's house with people we know rather than the pick-up Encounters games we play at the game store.

We started the campaign in Fallcrest, which is set in the default D&D setting (which may or may not still be called Greyhawk, I'm not totally clear on this). We fought some kobolds, slew a dragon, and got a magical sword as loot. It was all very straightforward D&D stuff. The next adventure we ran was set in Eberron, where things turned out to be somewhat more... juicy.

First, I should take a moment to talk about our campaign, and how we went from Greyhawk to Fallcrest. Our Dungeon Master (who plays Jarvix in my other campaign) has set up his world as a mix of every Dungeons and Dragons setting. People in various parts of the world believe in various pantheons, and depending on how people see the world, the world itself manifests in different ways. At least, that's the way I interpret it.

This feels a lot more real to me than the normal D&D approach, where a campaign setting has a strictly delineated pantheon of gods, who each have their distinct areas of influence. This feels too neat and tidy for my tastes. I like the idea that the gods are sort of trying to scratch out an area of influence while competing with similar gods from neighboring countries.

In any case, we got to Eberron and things seemed pretty normal. We had a bit of a laugh at the place names, as we were in the Darkswamp at the edge of the Blacktree Forest or something like that. The town we were investigating was populated mostly by humans, orcs, and half-orcs. That was a bit weird, but not totally unknown in a setting like Forgotten Realms.

But things got really weird when we entered the inevitable nearby monster-filled cave. We started things off by fighting cultists with eyes growing all over their bodies, who were led by an eyeless, psychic, tentacular horror. Meanwhile, an eye growing out of the wall tried to take over our minds.

Things got even weirder as we descended into Khyber, which is apparently Eberron's version of the underworld. Here we met monsters without heads but with two mouths, formed by evil wizards who had magically fused two goblins. At one point, the DM mentioned that the monsters' eyes were looking for us, and someone asked a question that you should probably avoid asking in Eberron: "But without a head, where are its eyes?" In this case, the DM deadpanned, "Oh, all over." (For those wondering about the mouths, they're on the shoulders.)

The deeper we get into the Khyber, the softer the walls get, and in our current room the walls are distinctly fleshy. I joked that, if we poked them, they'd probably bleed, but I'm in no hurry to test that. Let's just say that the floor has mouths.

I'm not one to get all squeamish, and part of me thinks that this stuff is pretty cool. I'm just glad that, when I run my Dark Sun, things are going to be decidedly drier.

We Killed It and Took Its Stuff

I have not one, but TWO D&D sessions to recount, as these seem to be fairly popular (meaning one person has commented asking for more). I'll discuss our D&D Encounter from last Wednesday in this post, then post later about the game I played on Sunday.

Our intrepid party found their way into a canyon, where we found a rare fruit tree, covered in ripe, juicy fruit. The non-kreen in the group assured me that the fruit was delicious and succulent. I naturally had little interest in something so repulsive, though I pointed out that, as my companions ate the fruit, their own nutritional value was increasing. I was just trying to make conversation, but apparently my comment made them nervous. I will never understand non-kreen.

Suddenly, we found ourselves under attack from some nearby boulders. Goblin-types bristled at the top of some twenty-foot rocks, peeking out from among the brambles. It soon became obvious that the creatures could happily dodge among the brambles, but when we climbed the rocks, we found ourselves getting slashed and entangled.

One of our party members, Phye, found a rope dangling from the cliff, attached to some provisions. She climbed the rope, only to find a drake tied to the other end. She was soon fighting for her life against the goblins, though the drake itself was too busy trying to break free of its bonds to fight Phye. Yuka climbed up the rock face to help her, but they both suffered a huge blow when, upon defeating one of the goblins, a curse-bleeder (or whatever they were called) made its dying body explode so that it badly damaged both Phye and Yuka.

The most dangerous creatures were spellcasters who threw their own blood at us to curse us, which hurt us and made us more vulnerable to attack. Meanwhile, two snipers with magical rocket boots flew from rock to rock, peppering us with arrows along the way. I half-jumped, half-climbed up after them, then used my natural Thri-Kreen jumping to try to keep up with them. Phye had succeeded in loosing the drake, but its wingbeats did not dislodge the goblins as she had hoped. She needed my help, so I jumped over to her rock as she was dropped by some goblins.

Jarvix, meanwhile, was so engrossed in his fruit that he was nearly taken down before he could put up a fight. Soon he, too, was down for the count, leaving me, the stalwart Yuka and a cowardly Barcan the only ones still fighting, as Castri was MIA. While Yuka held them off, I fed Phye the magical healing fruit I had picked up from the caravan in the first encounter, and she helped us fight off the goblins while the drake lazily flapped away.

Yuka flung several goblins from the rock, where Barcan cleaned them up with chicken-hearted efficiency. We then got Jarvix back on his feet as we took out the last goblin, expecting it to explode again. We were all rather disappointed when it just fell.

This was the second fight so far where closing to melee range meant taking ongoing damage. In the first fight, it was the sandstorm that dealt 5 points of damage to any player outside the tents. In the third fight, it was the brambles. This feels like lazy scenario design to me. The designers figured that the Defenders fight in close range and can soak up a lot of damage, so they design the fights so that close range fighters always have to take ongoing damage.

Another gripe I have is that the enemies keep coming from all sides, making it impossible to set up a unified battle line. I have several abilities that depend on getting several party members "stuck in" to fight the enemy in close combat, and so far I haven't been able to make good use of them.

I'm not trying to say that every fight has to be tailored to allow the player characters to shine, and I'm definitely still having a great time.

One thing I should make note of is that last Wednesday's session was the first D&D Encounter in which we got genuine loot. We had picked up some healing fruit in the first encounter, but in the third we got a magic weapon (which went to Yuka, who had recklessly broken his beloved rope-axe weapon in an earlier fight) and a shrunken head made of wood (made, we were told, from a slightly larger wooden head!)

It felt a bit weird so far to go through two encounters without seeing a single gold coin for our trouble, so it's nice to get some loot, finally... even if I didn't get any of it myself, and thri-kreen don't understand the way money works.

See you in Athas!

O, to be a psychic, four-armed bug-man!

Our D&D Encounters group had our second game last week, and tomorrow's the next game. The second game was even more fun than the first, which is really saying something. The players seemed more relaxed, and the DM was really getting into it. He would take simple rolls and actions and describe them in epic terms.

In one particularly memorable moment, one of the characters, a Mul (half-dwarf) ex-gladiator was wrestling with a giant beetle that held him in its pincers. The beetle opened a secondary mouth and jabbed a needle-sharp proboscis into the Mul's chest, poisoning him. Not one to be taken down lightly, the Mul broke free of the beetle's grasp and used an ability that let him end the "poisoned" condition. The DM enthusiastically described how the character out-wrestled the beetle, then used his diaphragm to pump out the venom from his chest. If you can, try to picture someone holding an imaginary beetle's pincers in his hands while pantomiming pumping poison from your chest with your diaphragm. He had us in stitches, and the moment will probably live forever in my memories of D&D.

My character so far has been reliable and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of tanking (though I probably could be using my offensive abilities better). Still, I feel like I'm getting the hang on this character, and hopefully I'll be more on top of things in tomorrow's session. We'll see if maybe I can even get such a legendary moment of greatness!

If any of you are still wondering why I'm so stoked about playing a thri-kreen, check out this picture. Some thri-kreen art looks pretty terrible, as they can look like lumpy beetle-people, but this is the way I picture my guy:



Though my current character has a stone, three-bladed halberd, orangish markings, and a mangled arm.

See you in Athas!

Let's Geek Out on Athas

Every week, Wizards of the Coast sponsors a night of Dungeons and Dragons at your local gaming store. They provide the the campaign and the characters, the store supplies the DM, and you bring your dice, some snacks, and all the enthusiasm you can cram into your exoskeleton. What's not to love?

I didn't play in the previous D&D Encounters "season," because the setting didn't feel sun-bleached and barbaric enough for me. Well, no worries there, because this current season is set in Dark Sun, D&D's barbaric sand world, with the look designed by none other than BROM:



I'd always been intrigued by the Dark Sun setting, but somehow the fact that my favorite fantasy artist was the principal designer of the look of the setting had escaped my notice until I started looking into it in preparation for D&D Encounters.

So my friend Kage and I headed over to Eudemonia, one of our local gaming stores, and sat down. I was almost late since I had to get dinner after work, so I ended up devouring my ramen at an alarming speed and leaving my wife at the ramen place to dash over to the game store.



I made it just in time, as in a few more minutes they would have given my spot to someone else. As it was, they had to turn away almost as many players as got to play. I heard that they were hoping to find a second DM for the next week so that more people could play.

I got to play my character of choice, Shikirr, a Thri-Kreen. Now I'm not going to say that I've wanted to play a Thri-Kreen since I saw a Thri-Kreen card in our collection of AD&D 2nd Edition trading cards, but if I did say that, it wouldn't be inaccurate.

I don't know how you spent your past Wednesday, but I spent it as a psionic, four-armed mantis-person. Kyle played as a Tiefling psionicist, while I was technically a Battlemind. This worked out very well, as I tanked the heavy hitters while Kyle brought the damage. Speaking of damage, our DM shone when it came time to describe the grisly deaths our enemies suffered. You'd think that psionic death would be pretty boring, as essentially you kill the other person's mind, but our DM described with relish how blood flowed from our surprised enemies' noses, mouths, and ears. Disgusting. I love it.

My dice rolling left something to be desired, as only one attack hit, but Kage seemingly could do no wrong. When the encounter started, none of our enemies had had their heads popped by psionics before. Kage made sure that, by the time the encounter ended, this was no longer the case. Though I only landed one attack, it was an amplified attack that both did a lot of damage and blinded my opponent. The DM described how I swung my weapon in front of my enemy's eyes, and the enemy just started laughing when the wind of my attack popped his eyeballs. Yuss.

I thought that Wizards did a great job of coming up with a scenario that threw together players who had never gamed before and got them to join up. Just like the players, some of the characters did not know each other and some did. The whole party got thrown together when we were the only survivors of a mysterious shower of obsidian boulders. The players all had name cards with their character's portrait and name, which made it easy to remember who was playing who and broke the ice. We had no choice but to rely on each other, and we found ourselves grabbing supplies as we came under attack from opportunistic lizard people.

The lizard people had the drop on us and were about to be reinforced, so we had to grab supplies as the fight soon went from "kill the lizard people" to "escape with our lives." To complicate things, we were in the middle of a vicious sandstorm that did not bother the lizard people but slowly chipped away at our health whenever we were out in the open, giving us another reason to escape as soon as possible.

The players were almost all completely chill and easy to play with, and the DM brought us all together with enthusiasm. He plowed right into things, minimizing the amount of social interaction we nerds had to do before we got down to doing what we do best: throwing dice and geeking out.

My only complaint was that Wizards of the Coast really dropped the ball on the character sheets. They were plagued with typos, the character art did not match the character descriptions, and from what I've read, the stats were also calculated wrong. But to be honest, these were small gripes and did not take away from my enjoyment of the evening.

In case you're not already insanely jealous, I got some cool loot.



It's a foam drink koozie, and reads as follows:

Athasian Sleeve of Refreshment Level 1
This obsidian-black sheath fits snugly around your favorite drink, shielding it from the warming effects common to the Sea of Silt, the Ivory Triangle, and your gaming table.

---

Wondrous ItemD&D Encounters
Property: When fitted around a standard can or bottle, this insulating koozie protects your hand from suffering any ill effects that may be caused by holding a frosty beverage, while keeping your drink refreshingly cold.
Special: You can probably get away with not using a coaster.
TM & © 2010 Wizards of the Coast, LLC.


Totally awesome. See you in Athas!

RPG Item: Toss-Dog

The assassin paused beneath the low window, crouching in the shadows and listening to the guards talking within.

"He's only one man. Stay sharp. He won't get past us."

The black-garbed man knew that there was truth in the guards' words. The visiting duke was asleep in his room, but to get there, the assassin had to cross the guards' room. Not without a diversion.

He unslung the bundle he wore over his back. It was a complicated series of bars and gears on a wooden framework. He pulled a cord free and the thing began ticking. Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he hurled the bundle through the window into the room. A series of loud snaps and clangs came from the room, accompanied by the surprised shouts of the guards.

The assassin leaped over the windowsill as a shape unfolded in the room and began to bound around, snapping at the guards and causing enough confusion for the assassin to dart through the room and into the duke's chamber.


Image by nancynismo

A toss-dog is a device built to be easily transported in its deactivated state that turns into a vicious attack hound when activated. The device itself is built of metal and wood by the most skilled artificers. The toss-dog is about the size of a backpack when folded up, and the size of a medium-sized dog when active.

In its folded up state, the toss-dog is very resilient and can be hurled long distances onto hard surfaces. There have been occasions where toss-dogs were fired into enemy fortifications using catapults. When unfolded, the toss-dog is somewhat more fragile, as its delicate internal components are more exposed. Nevertheless, its high speed and agility ensure that a toss-dog often causes maximum mayhem before being disabled or running down.

A toss-dog can fight for about five minutes (one encounter) before its internal mechanisms wind down. At this point, the toss-dog must be folded up and re-wound, a process that takes about five minutes for a technically savvy user, or fifteen minutes for the average person. Someone who has no experience with machines is incapable of winding and folding a toss-dog at all.

The parts of a toss-dog are readily available, but they must be very carefully constructed. Some magic is required as well, and a jewel costing at least 3,000 gp must be imprinted with a living dog's mind in order to give the toss-dog life. This imprinting can be performed by any reasonably skilled ritualist, and it causes no harm to the living dog. Rich nobles often commission one or more toss-dogs to be imprinted with the mind of their favorite hunting hound, and a powerful monarch can have an entire hunting pack of toss-dogs modeled on their prize pooch. A necromancer can imprint a dead canine's mind onto a toss-dog.

Though they started out as pets to nobles, toss-dogs came into their own when they were picked up by underworld figures. They were first developed by Iovar Varagundsun, who envisioned them as caravan escorts that could be packed along with the goods and activated if the caravans came under attack. The toss-dogs never really caught on as caravan escorts, but they went through a period when they were extremely fashionable among the wealthy. On Iovar's death, the ownership of the toss-dog workshop was contested between Iovar's protege and his main financier. Both men hired shady characters to help them take over the company, but the cut-throats and thieves preferred to keep the toss-dogs for themselves, finding them incredibly useful for assassinations, burglaries, and jailbreaks.

Most modern toss-dogs are either patched-up originals created by Iovar Varagundsun or cheaper knockoffs commissioned by underworld bosses. A well-repaired Varagundsun original is worth a small fortune, while the cheaper ones are much more reasonable. You'll get what you pay for, though. Many cut-rate toss-dogs will fall apart or run down after activating, or fail to activate at all. Also be sure that the person selling you the toss-dog doesn't have any reason to harm you, or you may find your new "best friend" going for your throat instead of your enemy's.

RPG Ability: Beard Armor

Have a seat, boy, and listen. Now, you're not in trouble, but you gave your ma and I quite a scare when we found that razor in your toolbelt. We're not mad, we're just worried that you might make a terrible mistake.

Don't shave your beard, son. No dwarf should ever shave his beard. I know you think you're stickin' it to your old man and all that, but maybe I can change your mind. I'd like to tell you the story of your great-great-great-great granddad, old Othar Beardhaverson.

Othar was stationed to an outpost on the frontier of our clan's territory, right at the edge of goblin territory. It was little more than a small guardhouse cut from the rock, with a storeroom and a watch tower, but it was crucial in watching for goblin incursions. Othar and three other dwarves kept watch day and night. It was boring work, sure, but crucial, lad, crucial.

You see, one day they spotted a mass goblins approaching across the valley. They tried to go for help, but the goblins had sent advanced scouts that engaged the dwarves and penned them up. The main force would arrive in a matter of hours, and the dwarves knew they had to get a message out to ready the defenses.

They made several attempts to push past the goblins, but the greenskin scouts had the dwarves outnumbered ten to one and kept pushing them back into the gatehouse. The dwarves were tough though, and they kept fighting despite their wounds.

After several hours of constant fighting, all of the dwarves were too wounded to run except your great-great-great-great granddad. After so much abuse, his proud armor was in sad shape, battered and broken, and he didn't have the time or tools necessary to mend it properly. Without his armor's protection, he wouldn't last ten seconds against the cunning gobbos.

Othar was a clever one, though, and he came up with a plan. He took his big, glorious beard, and he braided it over his body, using it to shore up the weak points in his armor and keep the plates in position. With his armor prepared like this, he downed the last of the ale and charged from the guardhouse. The goblins attacked as always, but their weapons couldn't get through Othar's beard armor. He fought his way through and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, bringing warning to his king and mobilizing the army.

The next day, the army came and relieved the guard house. They met the goblin army head-on and turned it back, with Othar Beardhaverson, still clad in his beard armor, personally leading the final charge that routed the goblins.

There, there. Don't cry, son. We forgive you. Just promise me you'll throw away that horrible razor, and not another word about shaving your beard. For your ma's sake.



Beard Armor is an ability that allows a bearded character to bolster his armor with his mighty beard. It was developed by the dwarves, and dwarves get bonuses as the race with the best beards, but it is available to any race capable of growing beards. Sorry, elves.

A character cannot simply tie his beard about his body and expect to receive the Beard Armor bonus. One must learn the secret of the Beardsmith's Art, which includes special techniques for knotting and braiding beards to give the best durability and protection.

Beard Armor gives its bonus in addition to any other armor that the character is wearing. It can be worn by any class, and does not impart any armor-related penalties to skills or spellcasting.

Only the character who grew the beard can wear the beard armor. You cannot cut off another character's beard armor and wear it as your own. Beard armor must consist entirely of your own beard, though you may include your mustache if you like. No weaves, wigs, or beard extensions can grant beard armor.

Legends say that some Beardsmiths grow their beard armor to the level of beardery where they become Beardmasters. Beardmasters weave weapons and tools into their beards so that they can both attack and defend with their formidable facial hair. If there is any interest in the Beardmaster paragon path, please let me know in the comments. If I get enough commenters clamoring for Beardmaster rules, I'll give it a shot to develop full rules for the paragon path.

EDIT: Kudos to my lovely (and beardless) wife for the idea.

RPG Creature: Bat-Dragon

The gnome bard danced about, playing a jingly, staccato rhythm on the tambourine he held in one hand while dealing quick blows with the rapier he held in the other. The hobgoblins milled about in confusion, trying to catch the nimble gnome as they were further infuriated by his mocking song.

The Fighter swung his battle axe as he strode into the melee, sending great gouts of red fluid into the air. He turned to the Wizard, whose robes and beard flowed out behind him as he commanded the powers of the cosmos to burn his foes. The Fighter asked, "How can we live with ourselves, fighting beside a gnome with a tambourine?"

"Man, I don't care," said the Wizard. "I have a bat-dragon!" At this, his pet bat-dragon flew from the sky like a black-winged comet, biting the heads off a dozen hobgoblins before landing on the Wizard's shoulder to the sound of a thousand demons wailing on guitars.



Bat-dragons are large flying creatures native to craggy environments. They covered in smooth, soft scales, with bristly hair growing over their head, arms, chest, and back. They have bat-like faces, wings like bats or dragons, and long, flexible tails. Baby bat-dragons are about the size of a hamster, with little nubs of wings, but a fully grown bat-dragon's wingspan could be greater than four feet, with males growing slightly larger than females. Their diet consists of small rodents and lizards. They live in small groups that tend to share a cave or crevasse.

Bat-dragons usually make small chirping noises. Though they do not have a breath attack like dragons do, they can emit a surprising roar once a day that is as loud as the roar of a small dragon. This roar stuns, deafens, and disorients would-be attackers. They can also beat their wings to create gusts of wind that buffet and knock down creatures, even ones that are larger than the bat-dragon.

By disposition, they are usually described as rat-like. In the wild, they are shy, furtive creatures. They are highly intelligent and can be both curious and cautious. They can be tamed, and do best when raised from hatchlings. As pets, they are loyal, sweet, and docile. As they grow, they become protective of their owners and fight beside them in combat.

A bat-dragon is a voracious eater, and owners should take care to keep their pets well fed. In environments where game is plentiful, it is usually best to allow bat-dragons to hunt for themselves. When traveling through areas where the bat-dragons cannot hunt for themselves, bat-dragon owners should bring provisions, especially salted fish or cured meat.

Natives of crags and crevasses, bat-dragons can be agoraphobic when in wide-open spaces like deserts and plains. In such cases, they will often huddle on their owners until they become more comfortable.

Bat-dragons are right at home in dungeons. Though they have a bat-like appearance, they do not have true echolocation. They do, however, have excellent low-light vision, and they can maneuver quite well in confined spaces.

Their eggs are rare and hard to purchase. The best way to acquire a pet bat-dragon is to receive an egg as a gift from a bat-dragon breeder. Bat-dragons usually live about a dozen years in the wild, but a tame bat-dragon with an exciting, active lifestyle can live to twice that.

EDIT: Kudos to my lovely wife for the idea. If we ever find a baby bat-dragon, she gets to keep it.

RPG Ability: Faceblock

The Ogre Half-Zombie gave a phlegmy chuckle and strode forward, swinging his coffin-shaped club easily over one shoulder. "Who will face me?" he asked, his voice like the slam of a crypt door echoing through empty corridors.

While the rest of the party cowered, the Halfling Cleric strode forward, hands on hips. "You will not triumph here, villain!"

The Ogre stooped down to look the halfling in the eye. "You think you can stand up to my strength, little man?" he asked.

"Bring it," the Halfling responded in a brave voice.

Shaking his head in amused surprised, the Ogre stood and swung his weapon. To his amazement, the Halfling took the blow straight in the face.

The Ogre's jaw dropped as he stared at the halfling-shaped smear on the flagstones. "No-one has ever blocked my attack before!" he said in shock. "Truly you are mighty warriors! Allow me to serve you instead of my dark master, and we will soon rule the world!"


Image by Kai Lim, showing a Gungan Faceblock master demonstrating the ability

Faceblock gives the player character the ability to receive blows to the face. It allows the character to voluntarily transform an attack that would have missed the character into a blow that connects and deals damage as normal.

The ability starts out by allowing the player character to voluntarily lower his/her AC, making it easy for opponents to hit him/her. Each time the player takes damage from an attack that would have missed him/her if he/she hadn't chosen the lower AC value, the character's Faceblock ability advances.

At higher levels, the character can transform regular hits into called shots to the head. A master of Faceblock has the devastating ability to cause an attack that would have otherwise missed to become a critical hit instead.

Note that DMs should be careful about allowing players to choose this ability for their characters, as a tricky player could easily use it to stack a number of effects on his or her character. A player who can pick and choose which blows to take will soon be able to be stunned, dazed, and even knocked unconscious at will.

If players start abusing this power too much, it can be countered by having monsters voluntarily miss. If this proves insufficient - Faceblock masters can throw themselves in the way of a surprising amount of attacks - the DM shouldn't be afraid to have the monsters' spells backfire and damage the monsters instead of the party.

RPG Ability/Item: Swap-Doll

The Thief crept silently along the dusty corridor. The sounds of pursuit had died away; the mummies must have lost his trail. He got to an otherwise unremarkable part of the corridor that, thanks to his direction sense, he knew was just next to the huge chamber he had glimpsed earlier. He got down on his hands and knees and went carefully along the wall until he found what he was looking for: a crack in the wall just large enough for him to fit his arm through.

He rummaged about in his pack and produced a small, ragged doll. It was poorly patched together to the point that it seemed to consist entirely of patches and string. Its form was barely humanoid. The Thief shoved the thing deep into the wall until he felt it go through the other side.

A moment later he was on the other side of the wall, and the doll was where he had been. The Thief rubbed his hands together gleefully, looking over the treasures in the room. This was going to be a good day.


Image by Ron Spencer

Swap-doll is a doll that allows the owner to swap places with it at any time. I know that it is really an item, not an ability, but I think it's cool so I'm going to share it with you all anyway.

This ability allows you to instantly swap places with a small doll. The doll appears where you were, and you appear where the doll was. There is no limit to the amount of space between you when you swap, though there may be some other consequences.

The doll itself can be as nice or as ragged as necessary. So long as it is still mostly in one piece and vaguely human-shaped, it can be mangled, chewed, burned, and smashed and still be ready for swapping when you need it. The doll itself has low AC and not many hit points, but any character with the manual dexterity and intelligence required to operate a needle and thread should be able to get it back in working order, provided he or she finds most of the pieces and enough stuffing and patches.

To become the owner of a swap-doll, the owner must place a small piece of his or her body into the doll. This doesn't have to be anything ghastly, and can be hair, fingernail clippings, etc. It is possible to make someone an unwilling (and unknowing) owner of a swap-doll by swiping some of that person's hair and stuffing it into the swap-doll, but somehow getting that person to trigger the swap-doll's ability would be more difficult. Trying to include more than one person's hair/nails/etc in a swap-doll causes its ability to fail when those people try to swap with it*.

The owner of a swap doll can swap places at any time with the swap doll simply by thinking about it. The change is instantaneous, though it can be disorienting and the character who just swapped should take appropriate penalties. If the character could see exactly where the doll was before swapping, the penalty should be minor, but swapping to find oneself in a very unexpected location may impose a penalty of missing your next few turns as you try to figure out where you are (and maybe which way is up!). The owner can only swap places with the swap-doll every five minutes, or roughly once per encounter.

If the owner loses track of the doll, the doll does not give much indication about where it is. The owner should therefore be careful about attempting to swap places with the doll when he or she does not know its location. If the doll is currently in a space where there is not enough room for the owner, the results of trying to swap places with it may be... squishy. Worse yet, the doll may have been found by a hulking ogre, who is currently snuggled up with it in bed, sleeping pleasant ogre dreams that it would not like to be woken from!

It the swap-doll is ever destroyed, or if the owner's hair, fingernail clippings, etc are removed from the doll, the owner might not know about it until trying to swap places with it. Nothing will happen in this case, which may not seem like much of a problem, unless the unfortunate owner was counting on the swap-doll to escape from a difficult situation.

Swap-dolls can be purchased from your run-of-the-mill mysterious magic shop that was never there before and will not be there the next time you try to find it. They may also be found in the possession of tricky rogues or paranoid wizards, in which case the player characters can either swap out the previous owner's hair/nails/etc for one of theirs, or they may sneak off with the doll without the owner realizing it and then plan an ambush for the next time the owner tries to swap places with it.

*Tricky DMs may want to tweak this ability to allow for more than one owner. Perhaps one of the PCs thinks he or she is the only owner, but the swap-doll is actually being used by an NPC simultaneously. At first, neither one knows of the other, and they only know that sometimes the swap-doll wasn't where it should have been when they swap for it. This probably works best when both of the owners and the swap-doll itself are in completely different locations, and the player character never knows which of the two other possible locations he or she will appear...

RPG Ability: Musical Attunement

The wind howled through the skeletal trees as the party picked their way through the moonlit forest. The Thief, Fighter, Wizard, and Cleric clutched their weapons and peered into the gloom. The tavern rumors they had heard had been vague, but it was clear that the forest was a bad place to be after dark.

The Fighter stopped in his tracks and the others took a few more steps before noticing. They turned and saw him standing with his head tilted, as if he were listening for something. The Thief stretched out his highly attuned senses, but he could not make anything out. He was about to ask the Fighter what he was listening to when the latter spun, his great blade flashing silver in the moonlight as he struck something behind him.

The rest of the party hurried over to him, gasping to see the decapitated body of a twisted, dog-like creature. The Thief looked at the Fighter with undisguised admiration and a touch of jealousy. "How did you...?"

The Fighter shrugged. "Just had a feeling," he said.

He did not mention that he had known that the creature was coming because the string section he had been listening to for the past few minutes had risen to a shrieking crescendo before suddenly going silent a few tense seconds before the monster had struck...


Image by hiddenmoves. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Musical Attunement is a sixth sense that manifests itself as music heard only by the player with the ability. The music the character hears corresponds to the situation he is in, and can let that character know when he is in danger, when he is talking to someone who is not to be trusted, or when the final confrontation with the main enemy is beginning...

If the campaign were a movie, the character with musical attunement would be able to hear the soundtrack. This can be helpful, but also somewhat distracting, and can lead to the character receiving some strange looks from people who wonder what he is grooving to. It can even be frustrating, as nobody wants to hear a goofy "wa wa waaaaa" when he flubs an important Diplomacy roll.

In game terms, the character is never caught flat-footed and he gets a bonus to skills relating to sensing motives and making arguments. The character may receive a bonus to the rousing speech he is giving when he hears the heroic music give a great crescendo. When searching for a hidden door, the music may give a playful trill when he comes to the false wall, increasing his Search check. Other benefits are not related to rolls but come in the form of additional context to certain situations. Most of the travelers entering the tavern may not change the lively, rustic music, until an otherwise ordinary-looking traveler comes through the doors and the music suddenly switches to something tense and mysterious.

Ideally, the DM would have a CD or playlist of songs on tap that he or she could use as the situation demanded. The CD player, mp3 player, or computer may even be hooked up to the player's headphones so that only the character with musical attunement benefits from it. More realistically, the DM should describe what the character is hearing at important moments, and allow the player to ask about the music at any time.

RPG Ability: Scuttle-Eye

The party crept along the cold stone passage and paused outside the warped oak door. They listened for a few moments and could hear the sound of something moving about behind the door.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," whispered the Paladin, and the group automatically got in a huddle around him. "Everyone else, back up a bit, but be ready to move." He nodded at the Thief. "Take a look inside and see what's in there."

The Thief crept padded silently up to the door and crouched down. Eight black nubs poked themselves out around the perimeter of her right eye. The nubs poked further outward until they became thin, hairy legs, which braced themselves against her face. Then her eye lifted itself off her face and scuttled down her neck, leaving a blank flesh-colored spot where it had been. It disappeared in her collar and reappeared at her jacket's cuff. She moved her hand down to the floor by the crack under the door and the eye scampered off her hand and crawled under the door.

"There's a group of hobgoblins lounging about," the Thief said, closing her left eye. "They've got their weapons piled up against the right-hand wall." She smiled. "They don't know we're coming!"



Scuttle-eye allows one of the character's eyes to literally walk off her face on eight spindly spider legs. When it does so, it leaves either a smooth spot on the character's face or a gaping eye socket, according to DM preference. The character controls where the eye walks and can see through the eye as though it were still attached to her face. The eye moves like a spider, able to crawl up walls and even move across ceilings.

It's small (naturally), so it takes a difficult Perception check to spot it. It makes a very soft skittering sound as it moves, so creatures with extra-sharp hearing may be able to detect it.

The eye functions normally out to about a hundred feet from its owner. When it starts to move beyond that, though, the image starts to fade, and the eye starts to take on more and more of a life of its own. Left to its own devices, the eye is cowardly but inquisitive, preferring to hide in shadows and under furniture and peep up at things. When the eye is 1,000 feet from its owner, the owner loses control entirely and can only watch what the eye is showing, though the image is hazy and dreamlike. At a mile (5,280 feet), the user loses contact with the eye entirely.

If contact is lost, moving back within range of the eye will not re-establish the contact. Instead, the eye must be found and somehow coaxed to once again resume its place on the owner's face. Gentle voices and no sudden movements are critical. Note that the eye is also prone to being lonely, and can feel rejected if the owner breaks the contact (whether it was voluntary or not). Making the eye feel wanted again will make it more likely to resume its role. Offering it a gentlemanly monocle is almost guaranteed to win back the eye's favor.

The eye is about as intelligent as a mouse, but it may never communicate and any attempts to read its thoughts will result in a confusing impression of shifting color and space, like looking into a kaleidoscope while dizzy.

The eye only has 1 hp, and though it has a high AC for its high Dex and small size, if it is hit, it is immediately destroyed. If the player receives a healing spell that would allow the re-growth of damaged body parts, or if the player has a natural regenerative ability, the eye may be re-grown and it once again has the ability to scuttle forth.

Mischievous DMs may want to experiment with the eye starting to gain more of a personality over time. Maybe it gets tired of always being sent into dangerous situations, so its owner has to coax it, threaten it, or fool it into spying on monsters. Another possibility would be that the eye starts to enjoy the adrenaline rush, and the owner has to constantly keep it from rushing off into danger!

Depending on how gruesome the DM wants to be, the eye could either be granted through a spell or potion (Vecna and Gruumsh make good candidates for patrons), or it may require the catching of the rare and elusive eye-spider, then scooping out the recipient's original eye and replacing it with the eye-spider in a ritual. Yeesh!

RPG Ability: Wuxia Hero

The ogre chief stood over the beaten and bloody Wizard. "Is that all?" he laughed. "I expected more from one so promising." He hefted the idol. "After I stole this from your village and killed your teacher, I was afraid I had gone too far." He turned to his ogre goons. "Bring out the cages! We feast in triumph tonight!"

The Wizard rolled onto his hands and knees, then slowly, painfully lifted himself to his feet. "You killed my teacher," he said, and the ogres' laughter died when they heard the edge in his voice. "I will not let you defeat me! Instead it is I who will defeat you with my righteous fireball of burning power!"

Their eyes met and time seemed to freeze between them. Then the Wizard tore off his shirt and flexed, giving a high-pitched yell of challenge. A nearby goon stared, slack-jawed, and dropped the cage of doves he had been carrying. The cage door burst open as the Wizard held his arms to his side, his muscles standing out like steel cables as a fireball formed between his hands....



Wuxia hero gives a player character the abilities of a protagonist in a kung fu movie or Hong Kong action flick. Perhaps an honorable, martial god has taken the character as a champion. Perhaps the character is the host to the spirit of a master monk. Maybe he's simple learned to channel the power of pure awesome. Whatever the case may be, he finds himself able to turn cinematic courage, grit, and skill into combat bonuses.

• Tearing off the character's shirt, flexing, and yelling immediately grants a healing surge.


• Every time the character receives a badass wound (becomes bloodied), all opponents with line of sight to him must immediately save versus fear or take a penalty to their next attack.


• Enemies are inclined to come at the hero one at a time. Each consecutive opponent to attack the character in a single turn earns a cumulative penalty.


• If the character makes a badass declaration before attacking, he receives a bonus to his attack.


• The character never takes penalties for improvised weaponry.


• A character with Wuxia Hero who has a weapon feat also has that weapon feat with that weapon's "-chuck" version. So a character with Weapon Proficiency: Greatsword also has Weapon Proficiency: Greatsword-chucks, or someone with Weapon Focus: Battle-axe also has Weapon Focus: Battle-axe-chucks.


• The character never takes penalties for leaping or falling when shooting, and may actually receive a bonus. Extra bonus points for leaping while shooting more than one weapon at a time.


• Finally, every time the character scores a critical hit, something awesome happens. Doves fly by in the background, something explodes, glass shatters, etc. All nearby opponents must make a save or be stunned for a round.

While some people might try to make this into a prestige class (or paragon path etc), I really love the idea of giving these powers to a character that would not otherwise be eligible for this sort of thing. If a DM and the player can discuss the power outside of their gaming session without the other players knowing, imagine the looks on their faces when the halfling rogue suddenly steps forward to confront the lich king in his necro-volcano lair, declaring that the necromancer will pay for his evil, before leaping through the air and firing two hand-crossbows as gouts of green fire rise up around him.

(I'll try to make the next ability a bit more serious. No promises, though.)

RPG Ability: Wuffle

"I don't trust the duke," the Fighter growled. "He's clearly in league with the vampires."

The Wizard pushed his spectacles up his nose. "I find it hard to believe that a man with as distinguished a lineage as our benefactor the Duke would be in league with common cadavers."

"There's only one way to know for sure," pointed out the Thief. They all looked expectantly at the Cleric. The Cleric sagged. "I'll just go sniff his butt, then, shall I?"



Image from Mark Watson's Flickr page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalimistuk/ / CC BY 2.0

Wuffle is the ability to get information from scents the same way dogs do. Adventurers with this ability who come across a spot "marked" by a monster can tell the monster's age, gender, and health. Further inspection may reveal how long ago the monster passed or even what mood it was in at the time. The adventurer can't just sniff the spot from a distance, though. They have to get right in there and get a good noseful.

Even better, when confronting a monster or NPC, the character can smell that creature's bottom to learn even more about it. This could reveal special abilities or weaknesses to the player. Depending on how cheeky the GM wants the campaign to be, the character could also become uncomfortably aware of whether NPCs in the area are 'in heat.'

This ability fits in well with wilderness types like druids and rangers, but I like the idea of an impish satyr or puca giving it to the most straight-laced, dramatic character in the party. If a player insists on playing a brooding exiled prince or a misunderstood dark wizard, give that character an ability that only becomes really useful when smelling an NPC's bottom.

The ability should be tied to a Perception-type skill, and can give bonuses to skills like Diplomacy and Persuade. A high enough roll can reveal information about a monster in a similar way to the Lore skill.

RPG Ability: Disposition of Skulls

As you follow the skeleton through the cemetery, he gambols over the headstones and says conversationally, "I don't see how you living can have conversations without seeing each others' skulls. How can you tell what someone's thinking with all that flesh in the way?" You tell the skeleton that, for the living, facial expressions depend on the flesh of the face. He shakes his head and replies, "No no no, that's all wrong! The flesh can deceive you, but the expression on someone's skull is always true. Here, I'll show you..."



Disposition of Skulls allows characters to see through a person's face and glimpse the expression on that person's skull. When viewed with this ability, skulls are not always grinning, and are in fact better indicators of what a person is truly feeling than the face is.

This ability will always show a single expression to represent the target's overall mood and attitude. In order for a character to use this ability, the character must be able to see through the target's face to its skull. Therefore, it only works on creatures that have skulls, but not on creatures that only have skulls and not faces. Thus, it would not work on a thri-kreen (which has an exoskeleton, not a skull) or a lich whose face is only a skull.

Players have to announce that their character is going to attempt to read the Disposition of an NPC's skull. The DM then reveals the look on the NPC's skull and grants the PC a relevant bonus on the next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Interesting RPG Abilities

Everyone who plays fantasy RPGs, whether on the computer, console, or as pen-and-paper games, knows the standard RPG abilities: fighter stabs, crushes, and takes damage; wizard blows things up; thief sneaks, backstabs, and disarms traps; and cleric heals, buffs, and drives off unholy things.

Playing the PC game Planescape: Torment made me realize that there's more to RPG abilities than that. In Planescape, the player character always rises from the dead, regardless of what killed him, so long as he can be more or less put back together in the same shape (one of the items you get in the game is your own intestines). The player character can pick up other abilities, too. One of them is to resurrect your party members. My favorite is the ability to have conversations with bodies you come across.

The party members all have interesting abilities, too. Morte is a foul-mouthed flying skull who can use profanity to incite enemies to concentrate their attacks on him. Whenever you get an NPC to swear at you in interesting new ways, Morte adds the new profanities to his repertoire and improves his ability. Dak'kon has a sword that is tied to his mental state. When Dak'kon is focused, his sword is razor-sharp, but when he's distracted or emotional, his sword becomes blunt. Fall-from-Grace is a succubus who, in addition to her clerical spells, can kiss enemies to drain health from enemies and give them to Grace.

When I first got into Dungeons and Dragons, I didn't care a bit about game balance. I wanted characters who could shoot fire from their hands and stab dragons with big, pointy swords. In some ways, the original D&D rules supported this approach: there was a character class (Paladin) with requirements so high that the chances of a player rolling well enough to even get to play as one were laughably small, whose abilities were correspondingly overpowered. Even in later editions, fighters were much more powerful than other classes at low levels, and wizards became unstoppable at high levels.

Now, thanks in part to video games and their focus on balanced classes, character classes are painstakingly mapped out in the rulebooks. Players can--and do--plot out exactly how they want their characters to advance, choosing which powers they will have at later levels right from the start. In some ways, the rules require it. If I want to have a character with a certain ability at Level 8, I don't want to get there only to find that I can't take the ability because it requires another ability I was supposed to take at Level 4, or worse, I don't have enough points in a certain stat.

In some ways, I understand where the need for this comes from. RPG designers want every player to feel like he or she is contributing to the party, so the characters each have their roles to fill, with abilities that allow them to do so. These roles are designed to complement each other and be equally useful, so a party cannot get far without at least one person who can take damage, disarm traps, deal damage, and heal damage.

Though I understand what makes game designers balance their games and limit the characters' roles like this, I think it's an unfortunate trend. Having characters with unique, unusual abilities is one of the best things about roleplaying games. The abilities are often best when they're not solely tied to combat bonuses, or when they say something about the character.

One of the things a pen-and-paper game can do that a video game can't is have things that are entirely unique. Game Masters can come up with monsters, locations, items, and characters that appear only in their campaign. They can also come up with unique abilities that are suited to the characters their players have designed.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. If you give one player's character a unique ability, the other players are going to want one for their characters, too. The abilities should then be as balanced as possible. Finally, the abilities shouldn't give the characters so much power that it breaks the game and makes every challenge a cakewalk. I think these three considerations are enough to deter most Game Masters from trying to come up with their own abilities, and that's a terrible shame.

I've been working on some ideas for abilities like this. If that sounds interesting to you, let me know and I might post a couple on this blog. Also, if you've ever been in a campaign where the GM gave the players unusual abilities, I'd love to hear what they were and how well they ended up working in the story!

Binwin Bronzebottom and the Quest for More Money

So it looks like PVP's new Sunday feature will be Binwin Bronzebottom stories. Coincidence, or a ploy to sell more shirts?

Let's see how Kurtz puts it:

The overwhelming feedback and unabashed fandom Binwin has received from the D&D podcasts I do with Los Bros Pennies-Arcades and Wil Wheaton inspired me to retool Ding! to tell the exciting stories that take place when Binwin isn’t on the clock with Acquisitions Incorporated.

Overwhelming feedback and unabashed fandom... there must be a lot more people out there who like incessant whiners than I realized. Or, there must be more people living in Kurtz's head than I realized. Well, I can't say I'm surprised either way.

As Kurtz points out, Jim Darkmagic recently appeared in his own comic over at Penny-Arcade. According to the current numbers, it looks like Jim is pretty far behind in the competition for which story Gabe and Tycho will do next. Normally I'd be pretty disappointed, given my love for all things Jim, but both of the other stories look so amazing that I'm finding it hard to root for any one. Whichever one ends up winning, the true winners will be the Penny Arcade fans.

And I take comfort in knowing that, even if it comes out last, sooner or later we'll see Jim return to spread magic (and signed photos of himself) to the people of the world.