Noisms has a great discussion on different philosophies of encounters: the bunch of mooks to kill versus the big thing to gang up on. He has some great points on being in the bunch of mooks rut and why as you level up it should be more giant killing.
D6:Wandering Goblin Masacres
I also re-read this very insightful post at The Alexandrian on a specific type of encounter, the wandering monster. I can speak from experience that having wandering monsters completely changes the tenor of a Type IV game. When I played it we played with just the GM placed encounters. When I ran it, I used wandering monsters, in fact we probably had as many wandering monster fights are planned encounters. The pacing is entirely different. Enough, that I'd add "wandering monsters and random encounters" close to the top of a "old school vs. new school" list.
D8:Letter Writing
Grognardling has a very fun post arguing about how everyone should contribute to Type V D&D and follows through with his own desires. Not sure if I'll write my post but I found his very interesting. Probably my favorite of the commentary so far.
D10:The Orcs of Navarone
Remember playing with plastic army men? Beedo says it's the same thing as running a location based adventure.
D12:What's in a Name
A look back at naming your campaign and how that signified you were playing your D&D and the attitude that doing so was a good thing.
Wow, thanks for the link and the kind words!
ReplyDelete@Christopher: You're welcome. I thought your take was great even if I doubt I'll follow the suggestion. Having bought (from TSR/WotC, not including the OSR) 10 versions of D&D (in order: Holmes, White Box, AD&D (MM before White Box), B/X, BECMI, AD&D2, RC, D&D3, Type IV, and Type IV Essentials) I don't see the need to plan to buy one more.
ReplyDeleteI probably will, though, and I did sign up for playtest.