Playing Down

The RPGA just changed the rules for "playing down," in a most weaselly way: by fiat. Boilerplate text at the front of the module was changed, and Triad members have had to point out this change. No comments to the Wizards boards or the LG news list, and no debate. At this time, there is still no official announcement through Wizards.com or other official channels.

The best response comes from Soren:

At this point, I strongly urge the Triad to begin auditing every AR for every mod I judge from this date forward. Why? Because this just slipped from being a well-documented campaign to... not. And if some player at my table tells me that his brother's wife's second cousin's garbage man heard a Circle member murmuring an official new rule in the next stall in the men's room at a drag bar in Seattle, and that his half-elf is now entitled to keep all over-cap gold, I'm going to accept it at face value, and fill in the box accordingly, and let someone else figure out if he's telling the truth or not.

French roleplaying

Came back from AnonyCon in Connecticut, where the Roaring Scum played one last time. This group consists of me, three players from New England, and two players from France, who have made the trip to the two CT conventions multiple times.

The Roaring Scum have thrived without a cleric. I hate playing without a dedicated healer, but it works out here because of the party makeup:

Paladin/Sorcerer spellsword tank
Champion of Corellon/Wildrunner tank
Dragon Disciple tank
Spiked Chain Fighter
Archer
Archmage

The fighter types make themselves hard to hit. The poor spiked chain fighter suffers considerable abuse, but normally that's it.

An amusing story came from the French players. They talked about how different the play style was in their country. The casters would start the combat casting spells to protect themselves, rather than blasting the enemy. The fighters weren't willing to engage the enemies without some protective magics. Over here, we bravely charge the enemies.

(Insert your own French jokes here.)

The start of the RPGA Blog

From a late night rant in a Kansas City hotel room about the lack of Midnight Madness, here is the RPGA Blog!