It's Saturday morning, so it must be time for The Core Mechanic's weekly RPG blog round up. Right? Right! Here's what I picked out this week among all my blogosphere wanderings...
- General RPG Resources - MadBrewLabs rounds up everything from anywhere that is anything RPG! Bookmark that link now!
- Random Encounter Tables continue to make the reappearance. Ya think maybe something important to D&D was dropped from 4E? Well, I do and apparently so does Amityville Mike at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope (“Five minutes to curtain, Mr. Vargouille.”) and PatrickWR over at RPG DieHard ("Keeping Stuff Random"). Check these posts out for some insights into the pros and cons of the classic encounter table.
- Berin "Uncle Bear" Kinsman muses about the need for specific game systems for RPG products in his post "Would You Buy System-Free Settings?". Personally, i would say 'no' - but jump over there and let him know what you think!
- d7 over at The Seven-Sided Die asks "Is D&D possible without session prep?" - the answer is of course 'YES!', but his short post prompted so meaty discussion that is worth the read. The excellent discussion was driven by MadBrew, Greywulf, Wyatt, Dr. Checkmate, Donny_the_DM, and a few others (myself included) all chimed in with their own 2¢.
- Zachary_the_First, over at RPG Blog II asks "Is the GM a Dying Breed?" God, I hope not... but it certainly would be nice to be a player once in a while. Jump over there to read up on what the gang is saying and see the results of an informal survey Zach sent out to 30 or so GMs he knows.
- "AK-47s vs. Wands--Using Anachronisms in Your RPG Campaign" - over at LivingDice.com; come on... you know you want to read this one. I couldn't shake that 'evil GM laugh' all day after I read that post.
- "Retrospective: Vault of the Drow" - Once again, Grognardia's author James Maliszewski hits home with his retrospective of the classic D3 module. He reminds the readers that Gygax could write, and that these examples of short, no-plot adventures were actually some of his crowning achievements.
- Also, along the lines of looking back at the history of the game, 6d6 Fireball's post "D&D - History and Growth" illustrates some of the finer points of where the game has been and where it is going. In short - MORE MORE MORE than we could ever read. 4E is already slated to be over 8000 pages of rules and supplements. Take at look - there are even some charts. You can also hop over and read Oz's response to the same post ("D&D - History and Growth" at Lord Oz).
- And finally.. the COOLEST thing I've seen all week was the "HWACHA!" post over at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope. If you are going to read any of the posts I've featured here today, this is one you should watch.
Have a swell weekend!
Thanks for the double plug there!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link-love!
ReplyDelete