The Frantic Fanatic

 Innumerable folks have pointed out that the undead in fantasy RPGs aren't particularly intimidating. Sure, they have a few immunities, but otherwise, a regular animated skeleton isn't mechanically much different that the garden variety orc.   Part of this problem could certainly be solved with placement. Again, as others have mentioned, let undead monsters rise up from pools of water or other airless spaces, to better emphasize their un-living nature.   One idea I've been chewing over, for non-sentient undead at least, is to change how they can be damaged. In movies, zombies can lose limbs, eyeballs, even legs, before they're finally stopped. You can beat the pulp out of them, but they still keep coming!  Now, lots of rules systems have introduced various damage reduction schemes for undead already, such as skeletons taking half-damage from slicing weapons. But, I had an idea beyond mere damage reduction.   What if, after players roll their weapon dam...

  While I adore the original domain management rules in the D&D Companion set, they always felt incomplete to me and needlessly complex. For example, extensive rules are given on how to account for expenses for a baron getting a visit from his king, but there’s no breakdown of how players can spend resource income. The rules mention trade routes and tolls as something that could be valuable to a dominion, but there’s no specifics on how to incorporate them in a dominion’s statistics.     And forget scalability! Can you imagine rolling for hex resources and population changes for every hex in an empire?   What I propose instead is a much more abstract system, where a dominion consists of jurisdictions, or portions, that happen to be under direct rule. When establishing a dominion, roll a d100 for each province (whether a hex, a duchy or an entire kingdom) for resources. This die roll is multiplied against several factors that then determine resource production...

VTTs have been around awhile, but from perusing various forum and blog posts, I get the impression that many gamers are unaware of their benefits. They're not just for virtual gaming sessions. They work extremely well for face to face games. So well, in fact, that you might want to reconsider investing in miniatures, terrains, etc. First off, I'll admit that there are a couple of big downsides to VTTs. If you use a PC at work all day, then staring at a screen as part of your RPG hobby may not be appealing. For me, this is definitely true towards Friday, when my eyes are pretty tired after finishing work. Second, the technical issues can be intimidating. I use Maptool, and Maptool connectivity can leave much to be desired. Plus, if you're using another software for voice, you have to deal with dropped calls and loss in sound quality. Having said all that, the benefits of a VTT outweigh the negatives. When they work (and I should note that the  majority of the time, these...