Vox Arcana - Blog

  From one of the greatest books of our generation, the Dolmenwood Player's Guide After talking with my players at length last night, I'm exploring the idea of old school gaming again. Turns out, ACKS gets many, many things right, as far as it relates to my preferences for running these types of games. Upon further examination, we might find ways to integrate these types of things into a modern DND game (not necessarily 5e, but still). One of the reasons my players objected to Dolmenwood is a lack of an official skill system. Now, I've gone back and forth on skills in games, and recently landed on the side of liking them a lot. However, there's something to be said about games without them. I also noticed that a vast majority of the time, players tend to rely on a small set of moves during their turns in combat, and a small set of skills while exploring. That is, players always advocate for rolling the things that gives them the highest bonus and/or damage output. My ...

  My son is gonna LOVE Minecraft Dungeons In old school D&D, dungeon crawling is an exercise in resource management. Those resources are: Torches Time Time is really a measurement of risk. After a certain amount of time, there is a chance of a monster appearing, which then uses up other resources: Hit Points Spell Slots There are some secondary things that might be used up if the party is injured, such as Potions of Healing, which cost gold Hit Dice (if short rests in a dungeon are allowed) Rations (if they help heal), which are really just a gold tax Spell slots used for healing Scrolls  This means that, much like overland travel, players are always pushing their luck to gain treasure at the expense of the fundamental resources of HP and Spell slots. There is a secondary game of inventory management in the form of balancing torches with carried treasure, and possibly another with rations. D&D is ultimately and essentially, gambling. The game utilizes resource m...

  Source: Zach Wolf's excellent Realms of Peril sandbox Travel rules in TTRPGs have been a constant thorn in my side. In theory, there should be some interesting gameplay and decisions that result from overland travel. In reality, it’s never led an interesting gameplay decisions for my players. Mayhap I’m simply running the rules incorrectly, or incompletely, but I still want to take some time to think about it, hence, this blog. In general, there are fundamentally just two components to (theoretically) make overland travel interesting. Those are resource attrition and time. Resources include things like player HP, stat penalties, rations, and torches. Time usually translates to how many random encounters you must make to get anywhere. This works as a sort of multiplier on resources: Yes, we have enough resources to travel to the dungeon that is one week away, but how will we plan for the one that is two weeks away? A party of players wants to move from one side of the map to ...

siofragames.itch.io ​  This is maybe on of the coolest damn things I've ever seen. I'm posting it here so I can find it later. 

My issues with the 2014 version of D&D are well-documented. At this point, it's almost become a separate hobby, wondering how I can fix the game. I once compared modern D&D to Old School D&D to a Chevy Silverado and a Bicycle; one is easy to maintain and modify, and the other is not. Modern (i.e. non-old school) D&D is much like the truck in this scenario, and one shouldn't pop the hood unless he is willing to make a mess and get his hands dirty. …And possibly break something important. For today, there are a few things I'd like to call your attention to. Namely: Lack of challenge for players Lack of long-term consequences Lack of survival mechanics (even though they SEEM to be present) The overpowered nature of spells and cantrips (see point 3) The lack of a consistent economy The overpowered nature of magical items, especially weapons Lack of meaningful/useful CR system Outrageous power curve after level 6 It's only fair to list things that I do l...