Old Guy Gaming

Day two of the D&D XP Seminar brings a discussion on class design. Again, En World provides a wonderful paraphrased summary of the event.

There are a lot of rules governing what a character can and can’t do. But what about players? Are there any rules that should apply to us?

I have been particularly fortunate where it comes to finding good gaming groups. All of the people in those groups have been considerate and a joy to game with. But I have read a lot of posts, on various forums, from people describing less than ideal experiences.

Earlier today Monte Cook, Mike Mearls, and Jeremy Crawford hosted the first of a series of live chat events discussing various aspects of D&D Next. You can find a paraphrased transcript at En World.

I ran across an article at Porky’s Expanse called “How Much of that IP Could We Own?“. Essentially, Porky is asking if the gamers, who expand upon and further develop an intellectual property, held by another, have any right to the work they have added.

A couple of days ago, my miniatures arrived. Naturally, I’ve been thinking a lot about painting them. But the last time I painted miniatures (20 years ago?) I wasn’t very happy with the way they came out. This time I decided to do a bit of research first.

I bought a set of Game Science precision dice from Game Station. These are amazing dice and Game Station offered a very good price. Unfortunately, one of the dice had a manufacturing flaw (Have I mentioned before how much I hate buying things online?).

For some time I’ve been planning on designing doors, treasure chests, furniture, debris, etc, that could be printed out, possibly laminated, and then used to depict these objects on the battle mat. I still intend to do so (and I will put them in the downloads section when I do), but how cool would it be if these things actually stuck to the map but could also be removed and reused?

Last week I posted an article about Mega Miniatures. What I neglected to mention was that I also placed an order with them that day for over 200 minis. Today my shipment arrived and I am ecstatic!

Wizards of the Coast announced today that they will be releasing a limited edition reprint of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons core rule books. All three books will become available on April 17th, 2012. A portion of the profits from these books will be donated to the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund (a non-profit organization raising money to build a statue of Gary in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin).

There has long been controversy over skills. Frequently, this debate has been referred to as “Role-Playing vs. Roll-Playing”. The gist of the complaint is that by relying on skills to resolve the outcome of an event, we do away with the need to role-play a situation.