- Blood Bowl: First images!
19 December 2007 5:27 pm (0)
Focus Home Interactive has the pleasure to introduce the first images from Blood Bowl, the video game adaptation of Games Workshop’s famous board game.
A brutal team sport unfolding in a parallel fantasy world based on Warhammer and American football, Blood Bowl invites gamers to form a team of players from races including: Orcs, Elves, Humans, [...] - Giving Personality to Your Character
10 December 2007 9:51 pm (0)
Ok, you’ve rolled the dice, written down the attributes, picked a race, class and skills. Now you are ready to throw down for some serious dungeon crawling…or are you? Not every night of a gaming session is going to be a hack and slash fest. In fact, quite a bit of time is going to [...]
- Video Review: Assassin’s Creed
5 December 2007 4:20 pm (0)From our neighboring site, Sector360.net, enjoy the newest video review for Faffing About Creed…I mean Assassin’s Creed. Also enjoy the new layout of the Sector, which will be coming soon to the Basement here!
I got this game about a day or so after it’s release and was extremely excited to play it. [...]
- Video PreView: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Monsters
19 November 2007 11:15 pm (0)So you’ve been wondering what is gonna be the big bad monster for 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons (beyond the obvious DRAGONS). Well the answer is short and sweet, well technically it is round and large with a bunch of eyestalks…yup the Beholder! Here’s the video that showcases it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72LQ6W2W_TU
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- Video Review: Clive Barker’s Jericho
14 November 2007 6:26 pm (0)I have to say it always warms the heart to find out that other’s share your views. This week Yahtzee Croshaw reviews Clive Barker’s Jericho and does such in his stylish way that shows my own review to be that of a wanna be video game reviewer. Perhaps one day I will be [...]
- Rock Band Gets TIMMY!
11 November 2007 2:13 pm (0)Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld comes to rock band as a bonus track. (If you don’t know who Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld are, then your just too out of touch to be reading this in the first place…) Proof is in the pudding. The unfortunate part is that it [...]
- New Video Review at Sector360
7 November 2007 10:05 pm (0)It’s Wednesday which means it’s time for a new Yahtzee Croshaw video review. Be sure to check it out over at Sector 360. You can watch it HERE.
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- DM Ride-Along: The Final Touches of Kh’bai cont.
6 November 2007 10:16 pm (0)
In Tonight’s Exciting Episode—
I also wanted to take an episodic approach to the adventures. Generally, a gaming session is a Sunday afternoon stretching into evening, all-told about eight hours. Take into account that the players will always be late, break for food, and rant about the state of the world for anywhere [...]
- DM Ride-Along: The Final Touches of Kh’bai
4 November 2007 10:14 pm (0)It’s hard to believe that this entire series of articles came about based on the hurried thoughts of last minute game preparation. What has stretched out over weeks in terms of the reports on Basement 51 flew by quickly over the course of only a few days. Before getting to the opening music [...]
- House Rules: Experience More
28 October 2007 6:36 pm (0)One of the greatest obstacles my gaming groups and I face is time. The era of week-long gaming sessions during summer breaks or blowing off a symposium on Truth and Hegel to play Dungeons and Dragons all day are long gone. Responsibilities and burdens like children, wives, and jobs relegate gaming to a [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Choices of History for Kh’bai cont.
25 October 2007 8:47 pm (0)Continuing from Monday….
On the heels of the short history of Kh’bai, I want to take a moment to look at some of the choices I made and why. As I’ve said, I always value a world that has a bit of background to it and I feel that also contributes a great deal towards [...]
- Warhammer 40,000 the Role Playing Game Sampler
24 October 2007 9:49 pm (0)Ok, maybe the word sampler is not the right word, but it is a demo of the game. While we have not had the chance to test the system here at the basement, we all have a connection to Games Workshop, so we are very excited to test the system and then we’ll let everyone [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Choices of History for Kh’bai
22 October 2007 8:29 pm (0)On the heels of the short history of Kh’bai, I want to take a moment to look at some of the choices I made and why. As I’ve said, I always value a world that has a bit of background to it [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Background History of Kh’bai, Part 2
20 October 2007 5:31 pm (0)While Kings Namadangken I and II represented recent history, their successor King Namadangken III would be the king that the player characters would be beholden to. I wanted him not only to continue an age of prosperity for the empire but also [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Background History of Kh’bai, Part 1
17 October 2007 5:29 pm (0)With my early map and a rough idea of what I needed from the world, I needed to flesh out the history of the Empire that the characters would adventure in. Early on, I knew the PC’s would be adventuring in the service of the King and Emperor of the nation of Kh’bai so [...]
- DM Ride-Along: The Lands of Kh’bai on Paper
14 October 2007 7:30 pm (0)With two players, one week, and a desire to delve into the various oddball rules of Dungeons and Dragons and, in particular, The Book of Nine Swords, the Lands of Kh’bai were born. But my first step in devising a campaign world is a map. For me, it is the map of a [...]
- New Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon
11 October 2007 9:41 pm (0)
Have you been wondering where the next great cartoon may come from? A cartoon that helps to truly express your feelings as a Dungeons and Dragons gamer? Well, we have the solution for you. From the website Fear the Boot, Shamus Young and Shawn Gaston have collaborated to create a new comic [...]
- Dungeons & Dragons and the Death of Creativity
9 October 2007 8:09 pm (0)While it seems that I have been stepping up on the soapbox a lot of late, I realize that it all has to do with 4th Edition’s looming presence that has me in an introspective mood. One late, late night (or morning if you prefer) some of us here at the Basement were chatting [...]
- What’s your inner D&D character? A revolutionary questionnaire!
6 October 2007 7:11 pm (0)From DungeonMastering, he’s got a pretty cool survey going. Answer 25 questions. That’s all you need to do to know what your inner D&D character is. It’s that easy! Oh, and if you get something confusing like Lawful Good Barbarian Dwarf or something like that…it’s all your inner turmoil that is confusing, not the [...]
- Just because it’s Friday…
5 October 2007 5:28 pm (0)Since it’s friday, which for many of us means going out with friends, etc…ok, who am I kidding, for most gamers it means the big plans for the nite are gaming…’cause you don’t have to be up tomorrow for work/school/whatever. So in that spirit, I present you with the token sample of Random Pics…
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- DM Ride-Along: Kh’bai for the Characters
4 October 2007 4:11 pm (0)I was looking forward to writing adventures for only two players. It reminded me of my earliest role-playing game days when it was hard to scare up an entire group in such a small town. (Yes, we’re talking back in the dark ages when notes were kept in spiral-bound notepads, not laptops, and [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Opening Concepts for Kh’bai
1 October 2007 4:01 pm (0)As I do with all campaigns before they begin, I work from a handful of central themes. In designing what will be known as the Kh’bai Campaign, I had the added element of doing so on very short notice after our regularly scheduled game had to be cancelled. With one week as a [...]
- DM Ride-Along: The Introduction
28 September 2007 3:51 pm (0)Over the past few months I’ve published a number of articles here at Basement51 about campaign building and customizing worlds for Dungeons & Dragons. Recently we had a gap in our normal gaming routine. Rather than lament another week without gaming, I took the opportunity to experiment with a few very unique concepts [...]
- Quick Start Rules for Shadowrun
22 September 2007 12:17 am (0)If your new to Shadowrun, or have just never been able to fit it into your budget…buying a new game system is always a roll of the dice Well, Catalyst Labs has been gracious enough to create some great “Quick start rule sets” so that you can give it a try. You can [...]
- FASA Studios Closing; BattleTech and Shadowrun still kicking butt!
21 September 2007 10:17 pm (0)Found this over on the the Catalyst site today and thought that it was worth reposting here so our readers could be aware of it the truth…
According to Mitch Gitelman, computer game developer FASA Studios has closed their doors. This has sparked a lot of posts around the net saying that “FASA has closed,” or [...]
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Here are a series of articles that have been posted over at the Wizard’s site about the development of the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Looks like it could be interesting. The first article discusses Race and why it matters, and the second is a short bit about Fighters and how their choice of weapons is going to be paramount.
Race
Why Race Matters
Set the wayback machine to May of 2004!
Even at that point, we knew 4th Edition was coming, though official work on it wouldn’t start for another year. At the time, the design team used to meet regularly in what we jokingly called the “Design Cabal.” And one day, in May ’04, we started kicking around the question of how many slices of pie a D&D character should consist of, and how big each piece should be.
In 3rd Edition, class and magic items were two big pieces of the PC pie. Race was important at 1st level, but by the time you hit 20th, there was rarely much to distinguish a dwarf fighter from a half-orc fighter. The difference between a +2 here and a +2 over there was drowned out by the huge bonuses from magic items and character level—it didn’t matter any more.
We wanted race to matter all the way up through a character’s career. We wanted there to be some difference between two characters of different races, all other things being equal. We had tried out mechanics like the racial paragons in Unearthed Arcana and the racial substitution levels in the Races of . . . series of books, and we liked the results.
In May of 2004, we started kicking around ideas like “the 20-level race.” In a 20-level race, at each level you gained, you’d get not only new class features, but also new racial qualities. Your race might predetermine which ability scores you increased at some levels, so a dwarf’s Constitution would always have an edge over characters of other races. It would grant you new special abilities as you advanced in level, always appropriate to your level, of course.
One key advantage we saw to this system was that it made it much easier to find room for new races without resorting to the kludgy and awkward mechanic of level adjustments. If we spread the tasty magical abilities of drow out through their levels, they could start at 1st level on a par with other character races. Races like the githyanki already anticipated some of that idea by granting new spell-like abilities at higher levels.
Well, over the next few years, things changed, as things are wont to do. We blew the game out to thirty levels, but put your most significant racial choices in the first ten. Above that, other choices started to crowd out room for special abilities coming from your race.
In the final version of 4th Edition, most of your racial traits come into play right out of the gate at 1st level—dwarven resilience, elven evasion, a half-elf’s inspiring presence, and so on. As you go up levels, you can take racial feats to make those abilities even more exciting and gain new capabilities tied to your race. You can also take race-specific powers built into your class, which accomplish a lot of what racial substitution levels used to do: a dwarf fighter with the friend of earth power can do something that other 10th-level fighters just can’t do.
The rules have changed a lot since that first idea of the 20-level race, but they still serve the same purpose: to make sure that your race stays not just relevant but actually important all the way up through thirty levels of adventure.
Class
Fighters: Choice of Weapons
Here’s a highly probable conversation lifted from the future, one year from today, as two players who’ve just met at a convention discuss their PC choices for their upcoming D&D game.
“I’m playing a 3rd-level human fighter named Graelar.”
“Cool. Is he weapon and shield or two-hander?”
“He’s sword and board, man.”
“Longsword?”
“Yeah. I thought about going high Con and using a hammer, but I wanted to start with the chance to make a couple of attacks, so I’m using rain of blows as my good weapon attack, and I went with high Wis so that I can switch to the better oppy powers later.”
“My elf fighter uses a spear. I like the speed and the option to go past AC. But you’ve got the fighter covered. I’ll play a halfling rogue.”
The names and destinations of the powers mentioned above might have changed by the time the game is in your hands. What won’t change is that fighters care about which weapons they use much more than other characters. Other character classes have specific weapons and weapon types that they tend to rely on while still maintaining access to a larger chunk of the weapon chart. The fighter is the only current 4th Edition class with capabilities that depend on the weapon they have chosen to train the most with. Even at 1st level, a fighter who uses an axe has a different power selection than a fighter who relies on a flail or a rapier or a pick. In the long run, fighters can diversify and master powers related to a few different weapons, but most will opt to focus on the weapon that suits their personal style, helps their interactions with the rest of the PCs in the group, and carries all the magical oomph they’ve managed to acquire.
Many fighters will opt for swords. Swords have the most flexible assortment of powers. In a fighter’s hands, the longsword is the queen of the battlefield and the greatsword is the queen’s executioner. But each of the other significant melee weapons offers the fighter unique advantages and opportunities. For the first time, you’ll be able to say “I’m an axe fighter” or “I’m a flail fighter” and that will mean something cool.
