No big topic for me this week. Just a few things I wanted to duscuss.

The week is over and all you want to do is get some good gaming in with a bunch of friends. Here’s some opinions and suggestions on providing something for everyone and making sure the experience is enjoyable for all.

More of MetalJim’s musings on Fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons …

MetalJim’s brain has been melting in all those 100+ degree Nashville days, and he’s been covering d21 posts like a madman. I’m back from vacation now to pick up my regular slot, so MJ can get on to more pressing tasks, such as removing the Sony rootkit that came with his PC version of BioShock…

While [...]

In this article, I give my take on the tools WotC is poised to provide as part of the 4th Edition’s D&D Insider product.

Will all that black plastic sitting on your bookshelf become obsolete once 4th edition D D becomes the law of the land? Read on to find out…

So, it’s finally been announced. It figures they would wait until GenCon to announce the release. 4th edition will be sprung upon the masses as soon as May of 2008. Since you’ve all probably heard all about it before reading this, I’ll limit this entry to my reactions.

In a nutshell, I’m not impressed. It’s not [...]

At this week’s GenCon, the WotC folks went and let the cat out of the bag regarding the arrival of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Today I celebrate the long overdue upgrading of my computer, as well as lament the necessity of it.

We’ve all played the game in one form or another - and the biggest thrill in D&D is combat, of course! Yet, the real-world time involved in combat has been increasing over the years, to the point that it now takes about 3 hours to do less than a minute of actual melee!

Players used to [...]

The dungeon awaits. You get to hand-pick your own team of four crack adventurers. Who ya got?

OK, OK: review might be a bit too much of a claim. Let’s try assorted reactions. That’s fine, there’s plenty of good movie reviews you can read for “Stardust” – here, here, here, well, you get the point. This is unpaid journalism at its finest.

“Stardust” kind of snuck into the theaters, and it’s near the [...]

Almost every single one of us grew up watching episodic TV or reading comic books. Week after week, Month after month we had a lesson drilled into our brains: If you let the bad guys live …

We all like options in our games. No one likes to be given a single person’s idea of what they expect the player will like to play. There are preconceived notions about fantasy characters and how they behave, react, or interact with others. Feats are like the icing of character creation. They sugar coat the [...]

In which MetalJim wonders about kinder, gentler, role-playing games…

Last week MetalJim highlighted some freeware digital cardboard that’s out there in his post. Since this is near and dear to me both as a hobby and now as a profession, I checked some of these games out. Well, I checked one game out: Ra, a game I know fairly well.

It turns out that in [...]

I always thought Shields were a great way to not get hit. Apparently the makers of D&D disagree with me. Here is how I tried to fix that and why I an reconsidering my solution.

KarasDjun explains what he’s been up to the past two weeks and how returning to a beloved game can respark old addictions and bad habits.

In which MetalJim tells you to stop reading and go play some cool games already…