10 by 10 room

“Magic-user/thieves, fighter/clerics, and even the rare but potentially awe-inspiring fighter/magic-user/thief walked the land, like chimeras wrought by strange rites involving Player’s Handbooks, an overactive imagination, and a DNA splicer.

— Mike Mearls on Multiclassing in D&D. via chris. (This refers to the status quo, but read the article to see the approach ahead for D&D4. I’m optimistic.)

“I think the most important lesson I (re-) learned in the entire 4e process is that playing D&D or any other RPG is an intensely personal activity. There’s a reason why we game with our friends, usually at the home of a friend, over food and drink. This is intensely personal stuff, where we say and do things that we wouldn’t let loose in public. [...]

— Mike Mearls on his D&D

My former workplace, BzzAgent, has a public blog, which I think is cool. They’ve been working on a new system for rating users, and…

The new system, if it goes in to place, is not a hastily assembled token, but a full-fledged, D&D level of intricacy, system filled with goodies and generally neat stuff. I don’t think anyone will be disappointed, lest they be foul orcs of the pest realms!

Yes, they’ve compared they’re new user-rating to Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know whether to throw the horns or bow my head in shame.
For now, it’ll be the horns. Yay former-workplace!

gobi honors the recent Enron convictions:

Enron D&D House Rules
1. Assume critical hits based on projected future dice rolls.
2. Never actually roll any dice.

Add your own!!

In a brainstorming RPGnet thread on mixing D&D and, um, communism, brianm came up with an interesting scenario…

First, you make firearms as dangerous in the game as they are in real life. Bullets penetrate any mundane armours, so your AC is based only on dodge and magical bonuses. Second, give muskets exploding damage dice, meaning any roll of the maximum on damage gets you another roll, added to the first, until you stop rolling the max number. Finally, give a volley bonus, so that groups of musketeers are more dangerous than the same number of individuals.

Now you have a recipe for replacing those uppity heroes with common folk. You also have the makings of the birth of the modern nation-state.

To play epic-level heroes at this historical moments sound to me like a very awesome idea.