Taking the week off - and a question

I am taking the week off and letting the new guys run the show. I have to finish my already far too delayed game and do some work on other projects. I will be back Friday to post the links of DOOM.

My question is:

What do you think is better, or at least more interesting. A level progression for spells (standard D&D model), or a system based on a difficulty (you can choose any spell, but when you cast it, you must roll over the difficulty number for it to work)? And of course let me know if you have any unique ideas yourself, I would be glad to stea... I mean borrow it and give you full credit.

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10 Zombie Survival Intro Scenarios

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Can you smell Halloween on the air? Smells like non-toxic face paint and burnt pumpkins.

In case you weren't aware, I've been playing around with a zombie/horror game based on the Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel system - basically you send in a gang of 0-level schlubs, hoping that at least one survies to become a level 1 character in an on-going post-apocalyptic survival game. It uses basic d20 rules that everyone is pretty familiar with.

To keep the game as chaotic as possible, in our first playthrough I just rolled the scenario out randomly as we went along - determining encounters, locales, etc purely by a toss of the dice - and I plan to continue doing the same thing. Partly this is to keep my prep work down, partly it's to keep the tension and suspense high as the party never knows what to expect. Sometimes the group meets 1d4 stray dogs, sometimes they meet 1d4+1x100 roaming zombies. I've been using the many tables in Palladium'sDEAD REIGN™®© books (about the …
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Steal this New Map

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After watching these videos , I started playing around and drawing up some topographical maps in photoshop. They aren't my typical style, but I think my first effort turned out pretty decent.

So, here you go. Key up this map and use it for your game. The only thing I ask is that if you post it on your blog/Twitter/Google+/Facebook that you link back to here, or my Twitter, my Google+, or my Facebook page. Have fun.


The picture is quite large, so don't forget to zoom in to see the details.
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Several people have inquired whether they could my maps in their commercial (for profit) projects. The answer is: No, you cannot use these maps for any commercial project. Read the creative commons copyright below.

But, if you are a DIY RPG person, with little to no money, and really want to use one of the maps for something that you're working on, that might earn you a bit of money, let me know. We can talk, and if I like your thing, I will mos…
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Top 4 Bands That Write Songs Based on Their D&D Campaign

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There are many bands out there who like to play loud, ass-kicking, speaker-bursting music with thrashing guitars and pounding drums. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, most of them are total geeks. They may look like hard-ass biker leather fetishists, but in reality they're just D&D and Lord of the Rings nerds who hope that if they sing about dwarves and elves loud enough, people will think they're tough and not pick on them anymore.

He was almost cool. Then he opened his mouth.
Although I'm sure we could list thousands of bands that could fall into the genre, I'm just going to list The Top 4 Bands That Write Songs Based on Their D&D Campaigns. Actually, they're just my 4 favourites, but whatever.

4. Iron Maiden

Seriously, how many kids back in the 80s ran home after school to play D&D and listen to Iron Maiden? Well, probably not THAT many, but if you're reading a blog about role-playing games and you're over 30 years old, you know what I'm talkin…
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Why Clerics (Still) Suck

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There are some jobs that are just terrible. Cleaning industrial septic tanks. Being that kid with the drum at the front line of those old army battles. Even working on a porno set, which one would think is the best employment in the world, has at least one position that downright sucks (pardon the pun). Seriously, would you want to be the guy that has to mop up/towel down/hose off the actors and set afterward? Depending on the genre of movie being filmed, you may have some seriously screwed up stuff to deal with.

Know what’s even worse than all of those things? Being the cleric for an adventuring party.

It used to be worse. Through third edition, clerics were treated like a walking first aid kit. You were one of those little boxes with a red cross on them like in Wolfenstein or Doom, but with sexy legs that stick out of the bottom (that’s how I always pictured clerics, anyway). Your job was to cast healing spells, and if you ran out of healing spells you got out of the way whil…
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