BIND's rules have split into 'basic' and 'not-so-basic'. But now the divide has shifted again, this time without planning or care, just naturally. The 'basic' rules became 'must-have', or 'must-do', and the rest has shifted to rules which answer questions. Examples: "Roll for actions when there is a danger of something …

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Chaotician Writer of Mastodon asked, if zany encounter tables are boring , what makes a good encounter table? ' Return to White Plume Mountain ' makes a good encounter table, because: It's fast, grounded, repeatable, and it develops. White Plume Wandering Monster Table The first set is rolled Outside the mountain. The …

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I've been thinking about different structures for encounter tables. Highest & Lowest Roll 2D6 and check the highest and lowest scores: Highest Encounter Lowest Reaction No. 6 Military Unit 6 Ignore 1D6 x 20 5 Adventurers 5 Neutral 1D6 4 Giant 4 Attack! 1D6 3 Elves 3 Stalk 2D6 2 Trader 2 Friendly 2D6 1 Deer 1 Flees 2D6 …

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Using action points instead of initiative has been great. It works like this: Just Go! We just start, then whoever said they hit the bartender spends an Action Point. Most characters have 3. Once everyone's spent their Action Points, a new round begins. The table doesn't have that feeling of 'combat!, wait, no, roll …

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Random tables of D100 zany-silly things that might happen in your adventure need to cease, because they've stepped out of bounds. I get the motivation: emergent stories are great, it's what the game's all about. dice are great at 'emerging' those elements which become the story - the random challenge, the unexpected …

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All rules are bad, but many are necessary. A game about travel without rules for carrying things just forces the GM to come up with rules on the fly. But needing rules to resolve a lot of situations doesn't mean a lot rules. Designers can cheat by folding rules over each other, so they cover more area, without taking …

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Nobody struggles to roll a D6 and add +2 in their head, but there's something nice and immediate to any system that lets you just read the dice as they are. Here's a random proposal for a system which takes things into account, without any mental arithmetic. This whole thing will follow the format of my thinking on …

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I can't remember most of what playtesting taught me over the last ten years, but I remember these things: XP on the Sheet Players didn't like having to look up the cost to buy Traits with experience points. This seems a bit ridiculous, given that you only look up costs (at most) once per session and there are only a …

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When your turn comes, play as many cards as you want, then pick up one. If you draw an exploding kitten, you die. These rules are a rare treat, because they avoid the nasty element of so many games: reading and remembering. The first pitfall these rules avoid is any special notion of turn-order. By just saying 'your …

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Late to the party, you say? Nevertheless, Pathfinder's a great example of some awful design features. I took a little longer than the rest of the table to make a character, as everyone else had a tablet, with a program. Issue 1: When humans resort to software to make your 'pen and paper' RPG characters, something has …

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