Jerry Wright 307's page

1,219 posts. Organized Play character for Jerry Wright.




A reference in another thread --"almost all of us do point-buy"-- made me wonder how much this is true.

I don't use point-buy, and only one of the people I game with likes it. And even he does it differently from the book in his campaign.

So the question is, how many people actually do point-buy in their campaign?

EDIT: Since someone will undoubtedly ask, I'll say that the reason I don't use point-buy is that I prefer the unexpected; I'd rather roll and have a chance of the dismal or the spectacular than be too similar to everyone else.


I was recently talking with my players, and one of them mentioned that I disallow more things in my game than in any game he's ever played in.

To put that in perspective, I have to say that in my 3.5 game, I don't allow anything that I don't have a physical copy of, so that means there are lots of feats, classes and prestige classes that my players don't have access to.

But I also have to say that recently I began scaling my game back, trying to bring it under control.

What stirs the most controversy in my game is the implementation of facing rules; because of them, sneak attacks have become backstabs again (except in the case of total surprise).

Part of the rules surrounding that is the fact that it doesn't matter if you know the rogue is behind you or not. If you turn your back, you are subject to sneak attack. This includes barbarians and other characters with uncanny dodge; letting a rogue get behind you is pretty stupid.

Half my players like this, and the others either don't, or have problems with part of it. (The one with the biggest problem plays barbarians a lot, so I have to take his objections with a grain of salt.)

My experiences in discussing changes I make in the rules for my campaign has made me wonder how other GMs handle this.

So I'm asking the question: What sort of contention exists in YOUR games involving house rules?


The last time I ran the playtest, I DMed, and didn't get much impression of the pregens. But this weekend, a friend of mine ran his take on the playtest (in different parts of the Caves), and I got to play two of the characters, since we only had four players and the Dm wanted to see all of the pre-gens in action.

The overwhelming need for real character creation rules aside, it was interesting playing the cleric of Pelor, with his heavy armor that served little purpose since he wasn't much of a melee fighter, and playing the fighter, since I hardly ever run dwarves.

I named the cleric "Albert the Myopic", which unfortunately turned out to be a prophetic name, since I only hit with his radiant lance twice in the entire game session. I used it a lot, but I just couldn't roll decently. There were jokes about smoking holes in the walls of the cave system, and "only Imperial Storm Troopers are so precise".

The fighter was also fun. "Helga of the Hills", a short blonde bimbo (Int 8) with too may curves. The only problem I had was that I kept forgetting about the reaper feat; I only remembered it near the end of the session.

We waltzed through the goblins quite nicely, but an ogre proved bit of a challenge, and the dwarven cleric took too many bonks on the head from the tree-trunk the ogre called a club.

As he lay below zero (and predictably failing DC 10 Con saves, since he was the one with healing word), Helga chopped at the ogre while the wizard lobbed magic missiles and the halfling slung devastating sling stones (cannon balls, those must be, at 1d8+3!). The scene was dramatically lit by a continuous barrage of radiant lance attacks on the walls, floor, and ceiling.... I doubt the ogre even knew Albert was trying to kill him.

In the end, it was as the ogre turned to flee with 2 remaining hit points after a mighty miss by Helga's axe that I remembered the reaper feat. The ogre dropped, and a quick cure light saved the fallen.

It felt a little like cheating, but d%#& it, he nearly took out the only guy in the party Helga thought was decent-looking! :D


I was on a different thread, talking about dungeons, and the 15-minute adventuring day was mentioned.

I occurred to me that the only reason it exists is because DMs allow it to.

In my game, I roll for up to six encounters in a day, using the old 1E encounter chance table. If I roll three, four, or even six encounters in a day, that's what the PCs encounter.

If they use up all their resources in the first encounter (i.e., if the spell chunkers run out of spells), the PCs will just have to figure out a different way to deal with the new threats (like maybe use melee and missile attacks to fight the monster, instead).

They aren't allowed to blow their wad and rest.

Sure, it makes for some rough encounters. But it means they have to work as a team, and they have to actually get creative.

It means they are more careful in their tactics, and they respect every encounter they meet.

And they have a lot of fun doing it. :D


I have a buddy who's running a Pulp game this summer, with San Francisco as the base setting. He's been having trouble finding maps and such from the 30s.

Does anyone know of a website or other resources that might help?

I found a copy of a 1930 street map of the city proper, but little else.


I recently ran a superhero game using the powers from the advanced version of Marvel Superheroes circa 1986 and the cinematic Unisystem rules, a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Believe it or not, they work surprisingly well together, even off the cuff.) It was set in the Marvel Comics Universe before the "ultimates" stuff came out.

The success of the game made me wonder how many others out there might be doing something similar; combining disparate systems into a chimera that actually works.


Does anybody remember the old school modules? The one I'm specifically thinking of is Verbosh, Judge's Guild #108, but the Wilderlands series was pretty good. (And I cribbed a lot from it back in the day!)

I bought my copy of Verbosh back in 1981. It was the core of my AD&D campaign in the day, and very recently, I resurrected it to be the core of my 3.5 game, along with a bunch of odds and ends from WotC's 3.5 download page and the G-series modules from TSR.

It's a lot of fun running modern players through the old world. Most of them weren't even born when Verbosh was printed. At first, they seemed to have some trouble with the punny names and comedic twists to the descriptions, but after an edge-of-their-seats run through the ancient temple in the mysterious dead city of Haygaras, they've gained a little respect for old-school gaming.

It's brought my campaign back to life, and given me a renewed sense of what real gaming is all about, after more than a decade of the-rules-control-everything gaming that started in our group with 3.0.

I feel like a real DM again.


The new covers are up in the product catalog here.

What do you think of the look? It's better than I expected from the blurry shots of the slide projected during the seminars. And that banner across the bottom isn't there.


I've been away from the D&D forums. Anybody know if they've announced the GSL changes yet?