- 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.
Mr. Johnson[?]
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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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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 much smaller niche of life than what it once occupied. But for the diehards, those steadfast weekend warriors still rolling dice while scribbling a grocery list on the back of their character sheet, the desire to play never seems to be diminished in proportion to available time. In fact, the same amount of imagination exists but gets distilled down into something more intense when the opportunity presents itself.
In the seventh grade I knew I would game more than half the nights of a given week and often get to play all weekend long. There was no shortage of opportunities to try out every character I ever wanted to play and every chance to devise any adventure that came to mind. Now, with only so many chances in a month to play, my choices seemed suddenly more constrained and important. As a player, I knew that the character course I charted would be played out over the coming year or two! And, as a DM, a campaign would stretch out in a similar fashion. The journey to level 20 would probably take even longer than that once I took into account sessions would be cancelled for one reason or another.
I would love to propose the obvious solution: my friends and I should just play more! But it’s not junior high or college anymore and, even if I decided to regress my mind for the sake of gaming, I’d need to drag my gaming groups along with me. (And I really don’t want to hang out with any of their seventh-grade alter-egos!) So, if I can’t slow down time out of game, the only other option was to speed up time in-game.
The Universal Speed Limit—
Third Edition D&D introduced a mathematically elegant system of balances that was previously missing from the earlier incarnations of the game. The experience point system in conjunction with the EL/CR system meshed very well to create balanced encounters and characters. Taking a moment to look at the numbers, though, a subtle deception reveals itself. A character doesn’t need 1,000xp to become 2nd level. Thirteen to fourteen encounters is what it takes to become 2nd level or to go from 2nd to 3rd,
If a DM balances his encounters right, it becomes unnecessary to track experience points at all. While not as dramatic as saying, “I’ve got 99,000 experience points!” the same character might just be six more encounters from 15th level. It’s important to understand what the players at the table find rewarding and if they value those big numbers then a DM should hold to those numbers but, behind the screen, plan according to the “Magic Thirteen.”
“Do you know how fast you were going back there, son?”
Realistically, once all of the catching up with one another and ordering food and interruptions were taken into account, one of my weekly gaming groups that would meet in the evening would push through three to four encounters per session. In a perfect world, where we gather every week all year long and the party makes excellent, four-encounter headway they will have had 208 encounters at the end of the year. Using the Magic Thirteen, they’ll be 15th level after a perfect year of adventuring and it would take over three months more to finish a “Going to Twenty” campaign. Now take into account that the group will usually average closer to 3 encounters per session and miss at least one session each month… Then the party ends up at 9th level and it’ll be over two years before they see their characters from 1st to 20th and, let’s be honest, a campaign will collapse from old age long before then.
Breaking the 13EPL (encounters per level) speed limit starts looking tempting. While the DMG suggests increasing xp awards by a percentage, it seems easier just to reduce the number of encounters that make a level. Effectively, it amounts to the same thing. Using the latter, more realistic schedule from above for instance, a party getting a level every ten encounters would be 12th level at the end of the year of missing once a week and defeating 3 encounters each session. As for balancing treasure, that handy chart on page 54 of the DMG lets you know how much wealth is available to distribute among the reduced number of encounters with a little simple math.
Unsafe at Any Speed—
There’s a difference between doing 138mph across the plains of
Like any house rule, it matters a great deal what the players at the table are assembled to do. Some people may feel that too much of the sense of accomplishment is stripped away. As a DM you may feel that the players might become to focused on “counting down” the encounters to their next level without really stopping to smell the otyughs. It can become a balancing act until the group finds its pace and there’s no reason a campaign can’t be designed with a speed limit in mind. While this concepts is encounter-centric, it becomes the DM’s responsibility to balance the role-playing aspects of the game that are just as important. A good story doesn’t necessarily unfold at the boosted speed limit of 8EPL and so the campaign or the speed limit will need to be adjusted accordingly.
Breaking the Magic Thirteen is a potential solution for groups that want a faster pace in order to enjoy the scenery of a 19th level world that they rarely get to see. But this makes the reduced number of encounters they will face that much more important. Each one of them needs to be memorable rather than feeling like some of the wandering/filler encounters that this approach is intended to do away with. With the right group, like the one I described above that has all the desire to play they had at age 11 but without all of the time, a quicker pace allows for the same sense of accomplishment but also caters to the desire to pursue more campaigns and classes in a year of real time.
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