Artificer's Intuition

 Captain Tarkin: It's when things do not go as planned that concerns me. What then? Anakin Skywalker: It's when things don't go as planned that we Jedi are at our best. Trust me.  - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Citadel 3.18 One of the traits that most Dungeon Masters (and everyday people in general) have trouble with is spontaneity.  People freeze with the thought of going into a situation unprepared, whether in real life or in gaming. Today, I had a "real life" situation where I had to be spontaneous.  I had to go to a meeting to present to a director of a program.  The meeting was supposed to be cancelled, but the e-mail service got jacked up and didn't process until halfway through the meeting.  It didn't matter.  We continued anyway. Afterwards, I realized how calm and comfortable I felt during the entire thing.  Why was this?  What made being spontaneous work?  The only time I had to gather my thoughts was during the ...

"Make Mine Marvel!" - Stan Lee About a month ago, I picked up the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying book.  While I'm still learning the rules (and need some friends to play with), I find the concept of the game really exciting and enjoyable.  The game seems to flow more from roleplaying and actually being your character instead of trying to roll dice/kill things.  The game system is set up to take full advantage of using your powers to create great story points.  It's like an action vs reaction kind of a thing. How does this apply to DnD? First, most DnD players seem to complain that there isn't enough roleplaying, or that their players don't get into the game enough.  Though not every player is all about roleplaying (or every group), there are some subtle tricks that can make things head in that direction. In MHRPG, each character has milestones they can reach.  This includes things such as mentoring an ally, or stepping up and becoming a leader....

 "...accurate maps don't come cheap. In fact, it's often more profitable to steal an accurate map than try to buy one on the open market, or so many sea captains claim."  - Chris Perkins, Iomandra Wiki Page I spent part of yesterday browsing through the wiki page for Iomandra, Chris Perkins' home campaign.  In it, he has posted various maps of his world and some of their cities.  I was quite amazed, needless to say, as mapping my campaign world is something I've been trying to do for a while now (or at least finding a way to map Genkar, the city the heroic tier characters have been involved with). For quick reference, here is the link to all of Chris' maps: http://community.wizards.com/iomandra_public/go/gallery/view/1?pref_tab=photos I looked at the map of Io'galaroth and was amazing by the detail Chris put into his map.  I was determined to start making some maps of my own, and started brainstorming how I was going to do this.  I fig...

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  - Semisonic, Closing Time   I apologize for my lack of blogging in the past two months.  Since April began, I've been going back and forth with Wizards on an article I'm trying to get published, so my writing efforts have been more about the article than anything else.   That being said, I have also got to experience the joy of being a DnD Next playtester.  My e-mail arrived, and I happily went and printed out my packet to take a look.  Just from reading the rules, I was already stoked about playing.  The rules seemed much cooler, and everything seem more streamlined and more supportive of exploring and interaction. I started playing DnD two years ago with 4E, sometimes delving into older source books to see what the hype about 3.5 was.  I've always DMed 4E, and nobody has ever asked me to play anything else, so while my experience of editions is limited, I know the ...