Archive for the ‘Site-Meta’ Category

If you’re reading this off of my site rather than Google reader or something, you might notice a little something different today. I finally have a proper look to my site, rather than one of the cookie-cutter WordPress themes out there.

Check it out and feel free to leave comments. If you like the design, the credit goes to the talented and patient Mick Bradley. If you hate it, blame me for saying “hey, I like this.” (And if you want to hire him, he tells you how to do so on his blog.) Either way, I’m sure we’ll (or at least I’ll) be tinkering with the site further, since I can’t not — I’m an editor and engineer, two pursuits that cause one to Not Leave Well Enough Alone.

Soon, I’ll edit my About page to actually have something meaningful there. But I wanted this done and up first, since one question I get (that I want to answer on my About) is “What’s up with the pig hat?”

Also, a huge thank-you to my friends who helped me critique various stages of the design. Albert & Nancy, Chris, Matthew, Amanda, Jess, those I’m totally spacing on and thus being an asshole to right now, I owe y’all a drink.

- Ryan

In my D&D 4/e game, two of my three (yes, I only have three!) players are leaving in September. When I heard this, I told them that I’d like to see what paragon is like, as I’ve only seen lower-level Heroic. They were level 2, so we were going to level 11. We were also about to go on a three week hiatus thanks to mismatched schedules, so session before that was built as a chapter close — they were the City Watch, but the city was overrun by the undead, and they had to flee and fire-bomb it from airship.

For those familiar with my dragon-halfling war idea, the PCs were on a Halfling Flagship called Bahamat’s Doom — but they didn’t know the airship they were getting on was a Halfling ship, or the name of it. All they knew was “Man, we need to get to the Dragon Empire, where our new friends are!”  Two of there were (willingly and happily) psychicly bonded to a gold dragon traveling in a water ship below them, the Emir of Light. And they were on the ship that has killed dragonkind. They had a nice “oh, shit!” moment at the end of the session.

Now, we all knew the action would take place back in the city they came from, as they went to go kick a god’s ass and deal with the evil Eladrin mayor. But, I didn’t just want to say “and now you’re back!” or anything like that. I wanted to model a bit of a feel like “hey, you really just spent 9 levels being badasses in the Eastern Continent — what happened?”

So I came up with this Montage system. It’s simple:

• I have an index card for every level with a situation on it.
• Each player has 6 six-sided dice.
• I describe the situation that happened.
• They each describe something they do.
• All of them roll their dice, totallying them up.
• The highest gets to endcap the narration, and in the case of PvP (two people saying they’re doing opposing things), they decide which one actually succeeded.
• The winner hands me one of their dice, so they have fewer going into the next one.

The result was better than I had hoped for. They had a rich story of what happened, with new plot threads and hooks that wouldn’t have happened if I just simply asked “hey, what did you guys do there?”

I’ll describe all nine situations, for those interested in how I used this specifically. After that, I have a question, one prompted by a discussion I had with Leonard Balsera regarding what it means to “play” Fourth Edition.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’ve had this domain name for nearly a year, and have been thinking about doing this WordPress blog thing for my thoughts in a more professional nature — that is, on the topics of gaming and new media.  Inspired by Paul Tevis doing the same, I figured I should get a move on.

I’ll keep the LiveJournal thing going for a more quick, personal posts, and it’s a convenient way to follow some people.  But from here on out, you can catch me on RyanMacklin.com.