Fangs For More
The Vampire sucks. That’s kind of the point, but it’s also a problem for players who are interested in playing them. I don’t mean Vampires in general, I mean the Vampire in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Before I start presenting changes, I want to explain how I make changes to things in games I […]
The Power of Love
For all that 4e is a lot more even and more balanced than 3e was, the game is full of some absolutely pants choices made for weird reasons that bely a strange thought underneath them.
The Cultures Of Gender
You can find which of your player options in the D&D rulebook don’t have genders by looking for the ones that don’t have gendered names. As it happens, there were more than I thought yet fewer than I could imagine. And here they are!
The Bloody Hamadryad and Satyr
Ehhh this article is due up in a few days. And I’m behind because the blog went down. And it’s marking season. And it’s Pride month. Sure, why not.
The Misbegotten Identity of ‘Ki’
The origin system in 4th edition D&D was one of the subtler bits of design tech they had. The basic idea was that if you made an overarching term to explain how a bunch of mechanics ‘felt’ you could then reference that term. If something worked one way because of how divine spellcasters worked, by […]
Mind Control
Content Warning: I’m going to discuss some mind control stuff in ways that violates consent. Not any specific outcomes from that, but if you find the whole vibe icky, that’s what this is about. Also, other, I guess, content warning: This isn’t about the horny topic of mind control, so if that’s the vibe you’re […]
The Paladin’s Plight
Pacing is important in games. It’s a lesson that can be difficult to learn without trial and error, and when your game is big and playtesting sessions are slow and about lots of varied choices it’s entirely possible that you have a pacing problem that only a small number of people are ever going to […]
Half-Elves (But really Elves)
My earlier treatment of Orcs in Cobrin’Seil was intended, at first, to be a comprehensive examination of the half races. Elves and orcs and humans, the big three that show up in most of the editions of D&D’s player handbooks and most of the settings for them. As I did this though I realised that […]
Half-Orcs (but really Orcs)
I have these in my D&D setting, and I have them because, removed from any ontological questions, they are cool things. An orc is like a human, but bigger and usually more physically brawny, and green, and being able to play a half-orc means you have a bunch of outcaster cred, you get to play […]
4th Edition’s Space Problem
There are flaws with 4th Edition D&D, which shouldn’t be any kind of surprise and yet here we are. Let’s talk about one of them. Heck, let’s talk about a big problem, and it’s a problem that’s structural. It’s so structural it doesn’t even relate to a specific class, as much as it relates to the way that classes get made. Classes take up too much space.
