D20 House Rule: Favored Weapon

Let's get things out of the way: the Fighter class in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 sucks.  Not to say that it can't be made effective, or that nobody will ever find it fun to play, but the class simply can't compete on the same level as some of the more powerful classes such as the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.  Part of the reason this situation arises is likely due to the fact that a fighter's only real class feature is bonus feats, but the fighter will eventually run out of good feats to select, at which point his rate of power level gain will slow.

One of the things that I'd like to do for Tologan-Var is re-evaluate the feats in order to make them more powerful, but I also happened to stumble across the concept of modular weapons in a forum thread.  I don't really like the idea of modular weapons as such (to me, it feels as though the idea removes the already-tenuous connection weapons have to their historical counterparts and turns equipment into nothing more than a mechanical manipulation).  One idea that was suggested in the thread that I can get behind, however, was the suggestion that a fighter may be able to invest more points into his weapon as he levels up.  As such, I have the following class feature as a concept:

Favored Weapon (ex): At first level, the fighter chooses a Weapon Group that he is proficient in.  He may select one of the following abilities to apply to that group:

• +1 on attack rolls
• increase damage dice by one size category
• Increase critical threat range by 1
• Increase critical damage multiplier by 1
• Increase range increment by 50% of original value

At 5th level and every 5 levels afterward, the fighter may select an additional weapon group to apply a single effect to.  In addition, at each such interval, he may apply an extra bonus to one of the weapon groups that he has already selected. (The same bonus cannot be applied to a weapon group more than once).

D20 House Rule: MAD Spellcasting

A while ago I posted the beginnings of a procedurally-generated hexcrawl.  While I've neglected further postings on the matter, the project has since expanded into a programming project that implements the techniques that I was developing into a videogame.

A Sample Map of one of the many forms of the Island of Tologan-Var

While I would like to base gameplay off of the D20 rules, I've been considering implementing various tweaks.  One such idea was the implementation of Multiple Ability Dependance (MAD) for spellcasting classes: By default rules, there is only one stat that a given class has to improve in order to improve all aspects of their casting ability (Spells per day, Spell save DC, and whether or not a spell can be cast).  In this variant, each class would have two different ability scores that govern different aspects of spellcasting.

A Procedural Hexcrawl I:The Land of Arador

I've always found the idea of procedural content generation to be rather fascinating.  Since I also find worldbuilding and Role-playing games interesting as well, it's natural that I like the combination of all three elements.  As such, this series of articles will follow my creation of a hexcrawl-style map, procedurally generated as much as possible.

What is a Hexcrawl?

Hexcrawling is a form of content organization for RPG content in which locations or other points of interest that the players might run into are keyed to a grid made of hexagonal tiles.  In addition to the tile, each tile also has a terrain type.

A more in-depth explanation of Hexcrawling can be found in Justin Alexander's excellent series of articles on the subject.

Starting Out: The First Parameters

The two things we need to know right away when creating our hexcrawl are as follows:

1. How large are we going to make each tile?
2. How many tiles do we want?

I'll be using tiles with a 6-mile radius (giving them an area of just over 125 square miles), generated in a 24x24 grid.  This means that in the end, we'll have a total area of 72,000 square miles, roughly the size of the US state of Washington.

Our map will come from the Wildgen Hexmap Generator.  For this step, I generated several until I got one that I felt had a satisfactory mix of terrain types (all present, but not dominated by any single type).  The end result looks like this:

Asking YAFNAG for some suggestions, I've chosen the name "Arador" for this land.

The Out Casts Review: Unpolished, Unbalanced, and Nonsensical

 The following review was something I wrote during RMN's post-NaGaDeMo review drive back in July 2012, which I've already talked about here.  The game this review was attached to has since been taken down from the site, rendering the review unviewable to anybody except myself.  As such, I have decided to preserve the content of the review here on my own blog.  The text of the review itself is unchanged except for reformatting it for my blog; I'll discuss some of the out-of-date information at the end of the post.

The Out Casts: Unpolished, Unbalanced, and Nonsensical

The Out Casts is an RPGMaker VX game created by redwall10.  This appears to be redwall's first (and, as of this post, his only) game on this site; as such it could be expected that the game would not be a masterpiece.  Unfortunately, The Out Casts has many more issues than would be considered acceptable even for a first game, featuring unbalanced gameplay, a barely-sensical plot, and spelling errors galore.





Summary:
At this time, the game page for summarizes The Out Casts as such: "The Outcast follows the journey of Chris and Ashley, two siblings who have become outcasts for practicing magic, as they fight against the forces of Zio and attempt to reclaim their place in society. Throughout their journey, Chris and Ashley will be aided by Sakura, a woman from Japan, and a powerful fighter known as Alex 'The Guard'. "

In actuality, The Out Casts follows Chris and Ashley, two siblings who became outcasts after Zio attacked their village out of a sense of racism.  After defeating Zio, they then go on to fight his master, the Earth King, who kidnapped their mother.

Fire Emblem: The Amazon Challenge I

In which Muninn embarks on a quest for revenge against an evil uncle, armed with naught but the power of teenage girls.  Confused?  Then why not start from the beginning?

Chapter 1: Footsteps of Fate

A remarkably easy chapter, what with everybody on the enemy side being armed with an axe and Lyn having a sword.  Even taking into account the few enemies towards the beginning where the game forces the use of Kent and Sain, Lyn was able to grow from level 2 up to 4.

Level-Ups	Level	HP	STR MAG	SKILL	SPD	LUCK	DEF	RES	Weapon
Lyn	4	19	7	9	11	7	2	1	Sword D

Chapter 2: Sword of Spirits

Another easy chapter.  The boss, Glass, had a sword instead of an axe, but even so he was quite the pushover.  Didn't even bother breaking the west wall of the temple, because I had to send Lyn south to take care of the bandits in that direction anyway.  Lyn grew two more levels (to Lv6) and attained her C-rank sword ability.

See that 67 Hit rating (78.22%)?  That's the only attack Lyn was hit with in this chapter.

Level-Ups	Level	HP	STR MAG	SKILL	SPD	LUCK	DEF	RES	Weapon
Lyn	6	20	8	9	13	7	3	1	Sword C

Fire Emblem: The Amazon Challenge Introduction

I've recently held the desire to go back and re-play Fire Emblem.  Back in 2004, shortly after the game came out, I was quite into it (as can be seen from many of my game design documents that I have from back then which very much ripped it off took inspiration from this wonderful game).  I beat the game several times back when I was a frequent player of it and have only played it sporadically in the time since then, but in coming back to it, I've decided to spice my experience up just a little bit.

I intend to restrict myself to only using the female characters.

The Incomplete Guide to 2012 Anime (Referencing Cows)

The year is over, and what a year it has been.  In celebration of the end of a year, I invite people to join in reminiscence of the many anime series that we've seen come out this past year.  Anime can get a little weird sometimes, though, so it may help to relate things in a more mundane manner...

Ano Natsu de Matteru: You have two cows.  Aliens come to Earth and steal one of them.
Another: You have two cows.  Nobody acknowledges that they exist.
Chitose Get You: You have two cows.  They compete for your affection, unaware that you are not attracted to bovines.
Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai: You have two cows.  They pretend to fight demons.
Fate/Zero: You have two cows.  You place them in the care of a butcher, sit back, and watch the money roll in.