Wandering DMs Wandering DMs

Dan & Paul discuss the role of skill systems in D&D and other tabletop RPGs. Not part of the initial Original D&D ruleset, they give PCs an opportunity to master individual skills in a fine-grained manner. Have they been beneficial to D&D, or a distraction? Do they work better in other games, like sci-fi or horror?



A skill represents the learned knowledge and abilities of a character. Skills are known by various names, including proficiencies, abilities, powers, talents and knacks.



During character creation, a player character's skills are generally chosen from a long list. A character may have a fixed number of starting skills, or they may be paid for using character points. In contrast to attributes, very few games fix a player's skills at the start of the game, instead allowing players to increase them by spending experience points or during "levelling up". Since some skills are likely to be more useful than others, different skills often have different costs.



Skills usually influence a character's chance to succeed by adding to the relevant attribute. In some games (such as GURPS), each skill has a specific base attribute to which it is always added; in others (such as Ars Magica), a skill can be added to different attributes depending on how the skill is being used. Some games (such as Feng Shui) add the base attribute to the skill at character creation time; after that, it is independent of the attribute and is used instead of the attribute rather than adding to it. Most games have a fixed penalty for attempting a task without a relevant skill; older editions of Shadowrun gave a complex network of penalties for using similar skills (such as attempting to pick an electronic lock by using the Computer skill instead of the Electronics skill). The text-based roleplaying game Avalon: The Legend Lives is noted for being the first text based multi user role-playing game to offer a developed profession and skills system.



This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Statistic (role-playing games)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The Wandering DMs take on rats and other vermin in D&D. From swarm enemies to wizard's familiars, Dan and Paul will explore every way to delight and torment your players with everyday pests.



The term "vermin" is used to refer to a wide scope of organisms, including rodents (such as rats), cockroaches, termites, bed bugs, ferrets, stoats, sables. Disease-carrying rodents and insects are the usual case, but the term is also applied to larger animals—especially small predators—typically because they consume resources which humans consider theirs, such as livestock and crops.



Any species can develop into vermin if introduced into a region where there are favorable living conditions and few natural predators. In such cases, they are seen as an invasive species and humans often choose to fill the role of the predator to limit the danger to the environment.



This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Vermin", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

This Mother's Day, Paul and Dan discuss the role of mothers in D&D and mythology. From troll wives to Grendel's mother to the spawn of all monsters, Tiamat herself, moms make an impact in our lives!



Throughout history, mothers have been depicted in a variety of art works, including paintings, sculptures and written texts, that have helped define the cultural meaning of 'mother', as well as ideals and taboos of motherhood.



The institution of motherhood in western art is often depicted through "the myth of the all-loving, all-forgiving and all-sacrificing mother" and related ideals. Examples include works featuring the Virgin Mary, an archetypal mother and a key historical basis for depictions of mothers in western art from the European Renaissance onwards. Mothers depicted in dominant art works are also primarily white, heterosexual, middle class and young or attractive.



These ideals of motherhood have been challenged by artists with lived experience as mothers. An example in western contemporary art is Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document. Bypassing typical themes of tenderness or nostalgia, this work documents in extensive detail the challenges, complexities and day-to-day realities of the mother-child relationship. Other artists have addressed similar aspects of motherhood that fall outside dominant ideals, including maternal ambivalence, desire, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment.



This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mother", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul discuss how to play a character in an RPG with a dramatic secret. How can we include the rest of the players in the fun without giving away too much? When do we reveal the secret to create the most satisfying dramatic moment?



Humans attempt to consciously conceal aspects of themselves from others due to shame, or from fear of violence, rejection, harassment, loss of acceptance, or loss of employment. Humans may also attempt to conceal aspects of their own self which they are not capable of incorporating psychologically into their conscious being. Excessive secrecy is often cited as a source of much human conflict. One may have to lie in order to hold a secret, which might lead to psychological repercussions. The alternative, declining to answer when asked something, may suggest the answer and may therefore not always be suitable for keeping a secret.



Anagnorisis is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery. Aristotle was the first writer to discuss the uses of anagnorisis, with peripeteia caused by it. He considered it the mark of a superior tragedy, as when Oedipus killed his father and married his mother in ignorance, and later learned the truth, or when Iphigeneia in Tauris realizes in time that the strangers she is to sacrifice are her brother and his friend, and refrains from sacrificing them. Aristotle considered these complex plots superior to simple plots without anagnorisis or peripeteia, such as when Medea resolves to kill her children, knowing they are her children, and does so.



This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Secrecy" and "Anagnorisis", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul and Dan get to bring back OSR guru Matt Finch to talk about his new Swords & Wizardry: Expansions, Monsters, and More!, currently on Kickstarter. What new things has Matt cooked up? And what updates has he finally made to the revered Quick Primer for Old School Gaming?



Swords & Wizardry is the longest-standing retro-clone of Original D&D, first published in 2008, and now there's a whole set of expansions to make your game wilder, weirder, and more flexible!



The Book of Options gives you 11 new optional character classes, new spells, new magic items, and much more. Now you can play a wily demon-hunter, a bard, a troubadour, an illusionist, and many others. Gnomes and Stygians are now playable ancestries in Swords & Wizardry for the first time in a 16 years!



Fiends and Foes offers more than 300 monsters (and doesn't repeat the ones from the Complete Revised Rulebook). Encounter the bizarre plant-animal Ultharians on their plane-shifting flamingoes, the giant, foul-mouthed fey cats known as Bulgrimalkins, along with many old favorites from Monstrosities such as the Artificers of Yothri. All are updated with morale numbers and revisions to the Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised rules.



Back the Swords & Wizardry Expanded Kickstarter

Dan and Paul are thrilled to chat live with the master of fantasy, Michael Moorcock. What are his current thoughts on the legacy of his writing Elric, the Eternal Champion, critiques of Tolkien, and so much more?



Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English–American writer, particularly of science fiction and fantasy, who has published a number of well-received literary novels as well as comic thrillers, graphic novels and non-fiction. He has worked as an editor and is also a successful musician. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, which were a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s.



As editor of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States, leading to the advent of cyberpunk. His publication of Bug Jack Barron (1969) by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament, some British MPs condemned the Arts Council of Great Britain for funding the magazine. He is also a recording musician; he has contributed to the music acts Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult, Robert Calvert and Spirits Burning, and to his own project, Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix.



In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".



This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michael Moorcock", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.