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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 whi...
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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 ...
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Why Star Wars is the Best RPG Ever

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Everyone has some event in their adolescent years that shapes their lives and their outlooks as an adult. Perhaps it's a particularly bad breakup, or your parents’ divorce, or witnessing the horrifying murder of your father and vowing to avenge him. For me, I can name three things that made me the man I am today: 1) Robotech 2) The Swords of Power books by Fred Saberhagen 3) Star Wars : The Role-Playing game The first two are topics for another day, but Star Wars is always an acceptable topic for any conversation. I'm referring here to the original Star Wars RPG that was written by Bill Slavicsek and published by West End Games back in the late-eighties/early-nineties. The d20 by Wizards of the Coast was pretty good, but it doesn't deserve to hold the black felt, satin-tipped Sith cape of the original. In fact, I can't think of any other game that can compete with this masterpiece. You have to be really badass to get away with a head this shiny. ...
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Why My Favourite D&D Class Sucks

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I don't get to play D&D as a player very often. I usually end up on the DM side of the screen, which is cool because I generally enjoy it more anyway. But from time to time it's a nice change of pace to only have to worry about a single character instead of an entire world. It's also fun to throw down and beat the living daylights out of some monsters. My current D&D of choice, for better or for worse, is 4th Edition. The first time I got to run my own character in this edition was at last season's D&D Encounters event ( Keep on the Borderlands ), and I made the damn fool mistake of playing the cleric. ( See here for why Clerics, especially 4E Essentials clerics, suck. And while we're at it, here's a good argument for the suckiness of Monks). Next I tried a Gnome Bard for a high-level Living Forgotten Realms game, but that turned out almost as bad as the cleric. Seriously, what was I thinking? For the new Encounters season, I almost made...
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Monks Suck

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Continuing the idea of sucky character classes from C.D.'s last post , I humbly present the Monk. Monks in D&D suck. They sucked bad in 1st Edition, they sucked bad in 3rd Edition, and even now they suck more than a little. The only edition they didn't suck in was 2nd Edition. But that's because they weren't there. I suppose my beef against the Monk class is not so much in its intended function but in the players who choose to try and play it. Never has a class been more rooted in a heightened form of reality than the Monk. Except maybe the Thief/Rogue, but I can't say anything bad about them or they'll steal my coinpurse. Now see, I've always had this understanding that a monk was a fairly religious fellow who didn't care much for the company of those that didn't share his belief. Or, so I've gleamed from various PBS documentaries. I'm sure things are a little different in real life. But I've yet to encounter a player who understood ...
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The 5 Most Despicable Things Ever Done by Player Characters

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Player characters in RPGs are generally supposed to be heroes. Many games and game masters insist their players only choose "good" alignments to enforce this assumption. However, despite everyone's best intentions, whether through accident, greed or sheer boredom, players and their characters often end up doing horrible, horrible things. I mean, in D&D alone, the "heroes" make their living by robbing graves, murdering intelligent creatures and stealing their life's savings. And that's when they're on their best behaviour. I'm not here to preach about the morality in gaming (that's a post for another day). Today I just want to share some despicable, shouldn't-be-funny-but-they-kinda-are stories about nasty shit I've seen players pull off in the name of a "game." Without further ado... The 5 Most Despicable Things Ever Done by Pla y er Characters 5. In a post-apocalyptic zombie game (Dead Reign), the players were be...
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Love, Sex & Dice

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Because of the special romantic holiday we celebrate this week, I decided to come up with a special romantic theme article. Did you know that February 15th was National Flag of Canada Day? Sexy. Of course, the holiday I'm referring to is Valentine's Day, and the special theme is lovin' and bangin' in role-playing games. For those of you who are uncomfortable with this topic, you can stop reading now, and go here instead. Does love and sex have a place in table-top role-playing games? It obviously has a place in video RPGs, if Final Fantasy VIII and Dragon Age are any indication (WARNING: That second link is probably NSFW). But many players are uncomfortable acting this at the table and I can't really blame them. Sitting around the dining room table with four other sweaty guys drinking Dr. Pepper and eating Cheetos can make it hard to look into your friend's eyes and profess your undying love for him - I mean, his character, Mistress Clitoria Hexblade. It...
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