Robot Viking » 4th edition

Grab an Issue of Kobold Quarterly for Free

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:56:48 +0000

You have to love it when two things you really enjoy mesh together perfectly. In this case, those two things are”D&D” and “getting stuff for free.” Until Feb. 14, Open Design is giving away pdf copies of Kobold Quarterly #14. Totally free. Just follow that link and enter the coupon code KoboldWelcome at checkout and [...] Related posts:

A Treatise on Active Defenses in RPG Combat

Ryk Perry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:11:49 +0000

Sometimes you want to do more than just stand around and let your armor take the hits in combat. Can the newest edition of D&D accommodate active defenses? 4E created an elegant mechanic that allowed active defenses to be used easily, and that’s something I don’t want to see lost. So what are active defenses? [...] Related posts:

Which is Better, Damage Resistance or “+1 or Better To Hit”?

Ryk Perry — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:34:36 +0000

There’s a lot of back and forth on the question of damage resistance and the role of magic weapons in D&D. Many players are opposed to the antiquated +1 or better to hit mechanic. How can the damage rules provide an underlying mechanical skeleton that describes the physics of the game world without bogging the [...] Related posts:

Why Wizards Needs PDFs Instead of a Virtual Table

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:20:14 +0000

It’s been almost three years since Wizards of the Coast pulled all ebook versions of their RPG products from virtual shelves, and there’s no sign that they’re coming back. In the meantime, they’ve developed the Virtual Table, a way to play 4E D&D online. They’re heading in the wrong direction. Here’s why. Predicting the Future [...] Related posts:

Fourth Edition Book of Vile Darkness — Review

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:45:22 +0000

A brand new Book of Vile Darkness, specially tailored for 4E D&D, was released this week. Just in time for Christmas! It’s got all kinds of advice on making your campaign, encounters, monsters and maybe even your characters extra evil. Eeeeeeeeeevil. Plus, a poster map! Earlier this year, Wizards experimented with a sort of soft [...] Related posts:

Heroes of the Feywild Review

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:45:47 +0000

Heroes of the Feywild is the companion piece to Heroes of Shadow, a player’s option book that offers new races and classes for characters who seek to explore the enchanted wilderness that lies beyond the firelight. When Heroes of Shadow came out earlier this year, I panned it pretty hard. At the time, I was [...] Related posts:

The Id DM Breaks Down the Complexity of 4E with Raw Data

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:46:59 +0000

The Id DM has become my favorite RPG blog. Any fool can write about RPGs (like me), but it’s something else altogether to conduct scientific analysis of actual statistics and quantify the concepts the rest of us talk about. His latest effort, analyzing the complexity creep of Fourth Edition D&D, is a tour de force. [...] Related posts:

Neverwinter Campaign Setting is a Sandbox for Characters to Play In. Or Destroy.

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:34:23 +0000

By now, RPG publishers have the campaign setting guide down pat. Slap together a few gazetteers covering the region, detail some important NPCs, add a few plot hooks and subversive organizations and you’re done. The Neverwinter Campaign Setting takes a different angle. This is so much more than a list places to visit and people [...] Related posts:

Greywulf Explains what WotC Stands to Learn from Games Workshop

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:11:08 +0000

At his blog of general geekery, Greywulf’s Lair, Greywulf himself lays out some of the missteps Wizards has made in the creation and promotion of the D&D brand, comparing them to the things Games Workshop does right in promoting Warhammer 40K. This is a topic we’ve discussed here at Robot Viking before. Greywulf does a [...] Related posts:

Blackbyrne Does the Timewarp Again with Sands of Despair

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:17:16 +0000

Blackbyrne Publishing’s Dark Veil Campaign continues with the fourth adventure in the series, Sands of Despair. The heroes have drawn deific attention, and even time itself becomes unstable as they traverse a desert that is not a desert in search of a magical artifact. This level 7 D&D 4E adventure gets bonus points right off [...] Related posts:

WotC Invites You To Return To Neverwinter

Tim Barribeau — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:45:09 +0000

WoTC’s big push at this years Gen Con was a return to Neverwinter, the venerable northern city that’s been a major crossover location for decades. Most of our readers probably remember Neverwinter Nights, the Bioware game from 2002 — but there was an even older title with the same name that AOL ran as one [...] Related posts:

The 3rd Installment of the Dark Veil Takes You from the High Seas to the Deep Jungle

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:59:32 +0000

The long-awaited third volume in Blackbyrne Publishing’s 4E Dark Veil adventure series has arrived. The Prophecy Revealed lets the PCs explore a jungle island infested by spiders and learn a strange secret that will shape their destinies. As with the previous volumes in this set (The Hidden Current and Manor of Deceit), the goal is [...] Related posts:

Recurring RPG Villains Come Back Like a Bad Penny

Ryk Perry — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:24:34 +0000

So there I was spending all sorts of time, crafting monster stat blocks for a chief-lieutenant type of recurring foe for my players and what did they do? They beat the holy living bejeezus out of him before he could even fire off his heaviest powers. Now my recurring foe was recumbent in death. So [...] Related posts:

Musings on Wizards of the Coast, D&D and Failure, Part 1

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:23:23 +0000

It’s a been a tumultuous year for D&D. Last year’s Gen Con presentations were full of big ideas and a release schedule packed with ambition, including the beginner-friendly Essentials line. Eleven months later the release schedule has been trimmed, long-time Wizards’ employees have been laid off, and Essentials appears to have crashed and burned in [...] Related posts: