One gripe I have always had with D&D ability scores is - what are they for? Regardless of edition, they are only ever used for deriving other numbers. It would be much clearer if it were simply a -3/+3 stat since that is how it actually gets used. And yet, no one wants that. We all love our 3-18 rolls that we end up never using. It annoys me that such a prominent feature of PCs mechanically means so little. The exception of course, is the ability check in TSR D&D, introduced in B/X and which achieved peak infamy with 2e non-weapon proficiencies. The mechanic where you actually get to roll against your ability score. To begin with, let's acknowledge that there are many good old school reasons not to roll for ability checks in B/X: Most things that DMs in later editions require rolls for,  shouldn't require a roll in the first place as long as the players can describe what they are doing properly - And the ability score should be factored in by the DM in those cases an...

A complaint I've something seen concerning combat in TSR-era D&D is that it is too simplistic. You roll to hit and see if you hit or miss, roll damage die and that is it. There is no room for the kind of creativity that players might want to realise from cool action scenes in movies. By contrast, later editions allow cool moves to spice up combat. Feats in 3e allowed stuff like bull rushing, cleave, Disarm, Spring attack etc. In 4e, everyone gets a cool move they can execute. In 5e, feats returned and on top of that we get battlemaster maneuvers that let fighters pull off even more stunts like riposte, parry, feint, trip attack and similar (Rules Cyclopedia is guilty of the same with 9th lvl fighters getting access to special maneuvers). The fatal flaw in this, the older schooler might remonstrate (and I would join that choir) is that the approach to stunts in later editions gates them behind feats and class features. It defines combat in a way that strongly implies that if it...

Today, I stumbled on the excellent  Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque  blog and found this article that any aspiring setting brewer should read: World-Building: When is Enough Too Much? It really spells out and crystalises some of my own thoughts on why 'Brevity is king' In particular this passage: (B) A lot of world-builders are kidding themselves about the uniqueness of the history they've written for their settings. If it fits into the familiar pattern of “In the Age of Fire, the dragons rose and gathered these followers, but were eventually beaten back by the Knights of Gorro, led by the Great King Fajadhul who founded the city of Dahan in the Year 100030” you should realize that the words and dates could be swapped out to create the back story of a million other nondescript fantasy settings. This is sub-Tolkienism. Struck home with me. I have been brutally guilty of this in the past, and still am to a certain extent, though I am trying to condense it on...

This is a re-post of an article I originally posted at Strolen's Citadel , which ended up featured in  Roleplayingtips.com, Issue 441 as well. I am posting it here as it still informs my general approach to worldbuilding. I thought I’d share here a short list of four maxims that I use for good fantasy world building to flesh it out in a believable way that makes a setting come to life as a distinct world. 1. Internal Consistency, not Realism , is the benchmark of a believable fantasy world. You don’t need to make your world realistic to make it believable. What is key is that the elements in your world are internally consistent. Whenever you add an element to your campaign, be at a race, city, country or person, always ask yourself the following questions: Where did it come from? How does it affect the elements around it? How do the elements around it affect it? Also take time once in a while to consider how the various layers of your world interacts. I...