Screamer's page

I'd actually like to make the case for specifications writiers. If you're writing a rulebook, it's pretty close to preparing a design for a building. You're setting the rules for the contractor to follow... It's not close-ended because there is a lot f room for the contractor to embellish, but it's the framework that needs to be followed.

My gaming group is mostly environmental engineers / consultants (with a restaurant owner and a teacher), but we consider ourselves "rules lawyers." It's what we do for a living and we LOVE to argue /parse / cuss and discuss the rules.

My "rule" for y'all to think about: Say it once, the way you want to say it. Refer to that statement frequently rather than re-stating it or re-wording it.

So I'd like to make the case for hiring engineers for the "book team" - we do great work!

This is a regular discussion at our table AMONG THE POWER GAMERS (PGs)... How do we keep from making it "unfun" for the non-PGs? It really has to be a self regulating thing. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you HAVE to do it every encounter.

And as a DM, I tell the table upfront: The bad guys are BAD GUYS - they cheat! I have a ton of D&D 3.5 books that are way more useful now to make the encounters more "challenging" to the power gamers. Many more of the 3.5 "buff" spells have stacking bonuses than the PF spells so it helps the bad guys' AC... When the badass fighter says "I hit AC 50" with a smirk and you get to say "Miss!", it takes the smirk right off their faces... It works the same for number of attacks and attack bonuses.

In a dungeon crawl, I had a Programmed Image appear when the party opened a small closet... The image was a colossal white dragon in a huge room. And as the dragon slowly turns his head and inhales to breathe on the party, the wizard and sorcerer (odd party makeup) both blasted fireballs into the "huge" room. Unfortunately the room was only 10' deep and they toasted the entire party... except the rogue. That caused the barbarian character to throw down his sword and wander off mumbling about stupid magic users. (Very memorable even though the guy retired his character over that!) It certainly wasn't what I figured would happen...

We play every Friday night til midnight. Note that I didn't have a starting time... We used to start at 6 but then everybody got all "responsible" and stuff. Lately, it's been lagging back to 7:30 or 8 before dice hit the table...

And there is some serious BSing lately (4 of us are in the same industry as competitors!)

My group is:
Dauble - dwarven sorcerer 20
Flame - human sorcerer 18 (NPC)
Semerkhet - human paladin 20
Stein - (Lifespark Construct) Flesh Golem fighter 10 (NPC)
Lobadi - dwarven favored soul 19 (no longer with us)
Indie - halfling rogue 20
Sasha - elf fighter (archer) 19

I've found the CR's to be pretty uneven. I've had 5 players (now down to 4) but with a couple of NPCs... We (myself and the 2 other DMs in the group) have about decided to give up on CR/XP... We just decide how many sessions we want it to take to "level the group" then divide the XP needed by that number of sessions. That way we still have XP so those casters that burn it like gasoline still have some penalty associated with it.

When the group was about 5th level, they walked through a relatively large group of stone giants (CR8) but a small group of ogres (CR4) gave them fits and nearly resulted in a TPK!

And let's not exclude series...

Glen Cook - The Black Company series.
Barbra Hambly - The Darwath Trilogy.
Larel K. Hamilton - someone already mentioned the Anita Blake series.
Larry Niven - Known Space series (including the Ringworld books)
James Blish - Cities in Flight (might be out of print)

I guess this is more for the ladies, but her books are really great. She is a very descriptive writer, if you like that kind of thing. It's worth getting your hands on a few of these if you'd like a more modern take on vampires, werewolves and the like.

Actually you may want to know that they are a little on the kinky side as well... quite the tour thru the BDSM universe BUT they are really excellent. And NOT just for the ladies...