Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Magic is Changing My World

Another installment of Howling Tower is up at Kobold Quarterly. It's the reply to last week's "Magic is Ruining My Game" -- "Magic is Changing My World."

When squeezed for time, DMs are tempted to fall back on the worst solution—a quick and artless nerf.  ... The alternative to nerfing is thinking long and hard about the spells in question and their impact on the assumptions we make about our fantasy worlds. The spells that give DMs night sweats are those with deep and subtle ramifications on world-building that game designers didn’t examine thoroughly. It’s the law of unintended consequences at work.

1 comment:

  1. It's not all the DM's responsibility, either. I very much endorse the notion that a truly good player (by which I mean of the kind that's a true joy to play alongside) will often voluntarily opt not to break the game with problematic magic simply because they can.

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