Here is a link to the example-of-play video: a short video demonstrating gameplay in the Five Moons RPG. At the bottom of this post on the Five Moons RPG blog is a transcript of the video. If you like this post and where these ideas are going, please check out the kickstarter for my Five Moons RPG… there’s only 4 days…
Here’s an interesting article on RPGs by John Wick. I always like hearing what he has to say, even if I don’t 100% agree with him. (I admit that his way of thinking has persuaded me in my shift away from D&D and the development of Five Moons RPG.)
I like cantrips. Part of my interest in cantrips was probably inspired by Jon Winter’s article “The Little Wish” in Dragon Magazine #221, where he offers suggestions as to what cantrips from each school can do (this is back in the 2E AD&D days, where there was a spell called cantrip, and it covered all the…
Here’s some news about this blog and Five Moons RPG! 1) I’m in the process of migrating my Five Moons RPG blog posts from here over to the new Five Moons RPG blog! I’ll still be posting all the usual stuff here (and linking Five Moons RPG blog posts over there to here), so this blog…
The kickstarter campaign for my Five Moons RPG is now live at this link! Thanks in advance for your support!
One problem I mentioned in an earlier blog is how the ability to swap spells every day means a wizard can (in effect) rebuild himself from day to day to better handle the threats expected that day, whereas a martial character’s combat feats are “locked in” (barring the fighter ability to swap a few of them over…
Today’s Five Moons RPG blog is a quick preview of a prototype stone giant stat block. You can also get it from RPGnow/DriveThruRPG. The numbers are still very much in flux, but I wanted to show: how the stat block is simplified by removing redundant information (like not listing Iron Will because it’s already accounted for in the Will save…
I’ve written and developed about a zillion monsters for D&D and Pathfinder. Low CR, high CR, mythic, and many weird corner cases. One of the reasons I wrote the Great Paizo Mythical Stat Block Spreadsheet was to handle all of the cumbersome math and formatting for creature stat blocks–calculating BAB, saves, skill ranks, numbers of…
D&D/PF has presented a lot of different ways to generate your ability scores–some simple, some convoluted. Roll 3d6 each stat, in order. Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, sort in order. 4d6 drop the lowest, sort as you please. Roll 6 times for each ability, take the highest result. 3d6 each score, in order, for 12…
That title is a lot of information. :p I’m writing a game called Five Moons RPG. I’m having a kickstarter to fund it, starting September 23rd. I’m having a kickstarter launch event on Facebook. To promote interest in the kickstarter and the launch event, I’m doing a series of giveaways between today (the 15th) and the…
Many of my blog posts about Five Moons RPG talked about things that are different from D&D/PF, but there’s a lot that’s similar! This article talks about some of that stuff (and for most of these topic’s I’ll be providing more info in the next few months). (Update September 23, 2014: If you like this post and where…
Debates about the D&D alignment system have been going on for decades. My upcoming game, Five Moons RPG, won’t have alignments, and here are a few reasons why. (Update September 23, 2014: If you like this post and where these ideas are going, please check out the kickstarter for my Five Moons RPG, which uses these ideas. Thanks!)…
One of the things I like most about roleplaying games is that they’re a cooperative experience: the players are working together for a common purpose. Each character might excel in a particular area, but the “win condition” for the game is “we complete the story,” not “I have to do better than everyone else who…
My RPG, code-named “Project Pentagon,” is officially… Five Moons Roleplaying Game! Here is the official Facebook page for the game. Here is its official Twitter feed. The kickstarter to fund this game starts on September 23 and ends October 28. Here is the official Facebook event leading up to the kickstarter launch. I’m waiting for the web…
About a year ago, I was involved in a discussion on the Paizo boards about why crossbows are worse than bows in the Pathfinder RPG (and, by extension, D&D 3E, and in this blog I’m using the umbrella term “the game” to mean both PF and D&D). It got really in depth about what a…
In the product page for “Project Pentagon,” I mention that a goal for this game is to “Create a longer play experience in the leveling “sweet spot” (the D&D/PFRPG equivalent of character levels 6 to 12).” But what does that mean? Most people who have played a lot of D&D (or Pathfinder) would agree that the “sweet…
For the purpose of this blog post, a “fighting style” is a combat-related martial ability you can learn, such as Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Dodge, or an actual fighting style feat from Ultimate Combat such as Snake Style. And a “spell” is… a spell, just like what you think it means in PF/D&D (fireball, magic missile,…
Earlier today on the Gen Con livestream podcast, I announced my big upcoming project: I’m designing a fantasy RPG and will be kickstarting it late this September. Currently codenamed Project Pentagon, its play style will be familiar to fans of D&D and the Pathfinder RPG, but colored by my experiences in the tabletop, card, and video game…
Part 1: The History of Wands in the Game Wands and staves in Basic, Expert, 1E AD&D, and 2E AD&D were pretty similar: there were a few with detection effects (like a wand of enemy detection, magic detection, or metal detection), a few that were specific attack effects (fire, frost, or magic missiles), a few that were just…
I started playing D&D with the original 1981 Basic box set edited by Tom Moldvay* and “graduated” to the 1981 Expert “blue box” edited by David “Zeb” Cook. My cousin David and I played the hell out of those games when we were kids. The hints of mystery and adventure hidden in the very rulebooks. The…
Sean K Reynolds 