Pair O’ Dice Games

After my first attempt at making a solo monster I was left frustrated and disappointed but after starting a post on the official forums and reading what others had to say about solos I decided not to give up. Instead I refocused and began working on a couple new ideas for solo monsters. Below you will find the stats for the first of these solos.

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Ever since Magic’s debut, there has been a built-in inefficiency to deck building and play caused by the requirement of including basic land.

This always irked me, and here I’ll look at why basic lands exist, then explore some house rules variants which remove them and evaluate the merit of each. Find out how Magic: the Gathering can be more fun with no lands!

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I’ve been working on a number of different projects lately and they have taken up the time I would normally be using for ranting about some random D&D thing… er… I mean “writing for the blog”.

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This weekend’s pre-release of Eventide was a lot of fun. I’ll take a quick run through the highlights of the Magic pre-release tournament experience and the new set.

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Wizards posted new errata for the 4th edition core books today. Most interestingly are the changes that have been made to skill challenges.

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I have a lot of annoying habits and tendencies. Among these is the habit of criticizing everything. It is seems to be in my nature to be critical at all times. I have never personally considered this a bad thing, I actually think many people are not as critical as they should be and find their lack of criticism disturbing, but I can see why in some situations it could be considered bothersome.

One thing that has bothered several of my friends over the years is my critical interpretation of nearly every movie I see. This has lead people to joke (or perhaps not “joke”) that I hate all movies. The truth is more that I find fault with most movies. For example I loved Batman Begins but I think Christian Bale’s “Batman Voice” was awful and I have no problem making fun of it. I simply feel that I can like or even love something and still notice and criticize its flaws.

Most people know that I like the new Dungeons and Dragons quite a bit but I don’t feel that this prevents me from seeing things in it which I consider to be flaws. One flaw I see in the game at this point is the concept of Solo Monsters.

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Since the release of Dungeons and Dragons 4^th Edition there has been a lot of talk about Skill Challenges. A lot of players find the idea to be quite intriguing, allowing more dramatic rules for situations that were once resolved by a single roll of a single die, but others have pointed out that the math for the Skill Challenges seems a bit broken and in some ways, they are unfortunately correct.

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One of the biggest complaints I see these days in regards to D&D 4th Edition is the limitations put on a character because of Class and Role. While some people seem to understand what the creators were trying to do, others either don’t get the idea or deliberately avoid understanding it. Because this is a bit of a hot topic and one that interests me I thought I would spend a moment talking about how I perceive it and how I feel it should be perceived.

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Saying Goodbye

My gaming group made their final decision about our Saturday morning RPG last night. We had already come to a unanimous decision that Scion had major issues, and while there was some divergence as to what to do about it most fell closer to the “abandon it and don’t look back” side than the “muscle on, the idea is so cool!” side.

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Eventide is coming soon, and the latest Magic pre-release is almost upon us. See the conclusion of Shadowmoor and the -1/-1 counter craze (too quickly for some, and long overdue for others).

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I’ve told this story a couple times over the past week and thought maybe I should just write it up for the blog as other gamers may find it amusing.

Last Tuesday we finished our first 4th Edition Dungeon with the players confronting the Gribb Witchdoctor Rikshock and his minions. Upon entering his rather nasty looking quarters they discovered that both he and his minions were in fact on the other side of a ten foot wide crevice in the floor. Across the crevice was a thin wooden plank. The only thing on their side of the room was a desk.

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Recently I had the opportunity to play a newer version of Kill Doctor Lucky (thanks Dan, for having one of those birthday things) and find out how it compares against the original. There are a few important differences, which I’ll run through before describing their ultimate impact on gameplay.

Kill Doctor Lucky - Game Overview

Imagine Clue (the game, though the movie was great). Now imagine that instead of each player trying to uncover the identity of the killer, each player is out to be the killer but only when nobody is looking. Oh, and change Mr. Body’s name to Dr. Lucky, because he’s, well, extremely lucky and uncannily avoids numerous attempts on his life.

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Here are two Elite Gribb I made up for my player’s first D&D 4th adventure. I was trying to figure out how to template them before posting but computers and I really don’t get along. These guys are based on my Gribb statistics.

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