Gelatinous Cubed

Sounds dirty, I'm sure. But that's what we tend to call it around the table, and I can't quite think of another way to express the concept as far as a game-playing experience goes.

It's one of the really cool things that 4th Edition D&D has refined in the game, and now that I've been cooling my heels as a player on the other side of the DM's screen for a little while, it's something I find myself looking forward to in almost every session.

It's that moment when you've decided you've waited long enough, the conditions are perfect, and you're going to blow all your carefully hedged resources in one big move.

In following with 6d6's weekly themes, the second portion of the RPG Blog Carnival involves everyone's favorite hot topic of 2009, the state of the hobby in regards to preferred edition.

I think there's a lot of good discussion to be had regarding the differences of the editions, the playstyles that they map to, the broadening of scope they provide, and the impact on the fanbase.

The trouble is, I can't seem to find very much of it. People seem unable to compare editions without getting, well, heated about it, if you know what I mean.

If, God forbid, you find yourself being drawn into an edition flamewar, repeat after me this little mantra: It doesn't really matter.

The joys of gaming should transcend edition and ruleset. Don't get me wrong, the ruleset you choose is important - it dictates the feel of your game, but just like almost any gamer out there, you are well within your right to play exactly any game you want, and as to what everybody else is playing - well, again: It doesn't really matter.

One of my long-term goals for G³ is to get back into doing a lot more drawing and artwork, but I've been at a little bit of a creative impasse. To help jump-start some of my gaming doodlery, this weekend I purchased Tony Dowler's excellent solo mini-game, How to Host a Dungeon, and stayed up far too late last night using it to map out this little glorious place:

Click here to see the high-rez scan.

A great time was had by all (being me), and the rules were clear, concise and made for an entertaining four or five hours worth of time, though I imagine if I did it again it'd go a lot faster now that I have a sense of the process (especially the complicated Age of Monsters).

(thank you, Kirin, and welcome!)

I admit it. Most of my games are dungeon crawls. Session after session of exploration, exciting combat and working your way up (down?) to an entertaining cavalcade of cardboard villains. Now I would like to emphasize that I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - I'm pretty sure I run a ridiculously fun game of exciting combat and cardboard villains, after all my players have kept coming back to the table for years and years of this stuff - so on one hand, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Yet I feel like we are sort of hacking ourselves into a bit of a rut - somehow I've lost some sort of enthusiasm for character drama that at one point came a lot easier, and I want it back.

Especially since lately I've been up late reading my copy of Burning Wheel. My reaction to it is similar to what I hear a lot of reactions to it are - I want to like it, it's full of all sorts of amazingly good stuff, but I'm worried that I'll have to work too hard to actually play it. But this post isn't about the Burning Wheel, I guess it's about discipline and gaming complacency. It's really me dreaming about broadening my DM skillsets to encompass a greater milieu than I'm used to.