Questing's Readings - 30/8/09

After about 2 weeks of hiatus, I'm slowly starting to find my stride back into blogging. After spending some time to think and looking back at some of my older posts, I might decide to experiment with a few ideas, ditch some of my regular features and go for an entirely different direction with this blog. That might be up in a future announcement if I find it worth mentioning.

In the meantime, I've tried not to miss anything that is happening in the RPG Bloggers Network and enjoyed some of the readings that I wanted to share. This week we have some insight in party composition and combat length in 4E, an interview with Erik Mona and some other general advice.

Campaign Mastery
Types of Combat Hazards - Environment
This post makes you think your combat environment in three dimension instead of just visualizing it on the flat battlemat.

Dungeon's Master
Playing In An Unbalanced Party
A demonstration of what happens when you play in a party mainly filled by one of the particular roles in 4E. While the results are not entirely surprising but it does raise the question of whether roles play an important role in effective party composition.

GamesTopica.Net
Who hold the Responsibilities for Effective Characters?
An interesting examination of defining character effectiveness and whether it's the rules or the DM which should give the PCs a situation to shine in. There are some interesting thoughts on character effectiveness and I agree that it is up to the DM to make it worthwhile for PCs to be effective in some situations other than combat.

Inkwell Ideas
Final Results of the RPG Blog Readership Survey
The final results of the RPG Blog Readership survey are out. Although it can be a little hard to digest especially the ones with subjective answers but this is surely useful for any RPG blogger who wants to know how other bloggers respond to their content.

Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer
Pacing your Game
Some really good advice on how to set the pace of your game with good pointers of do's and don'ts. There are also some useful examples to learn how to set your pacing for different situations.

Musings of the Chatty DM
Friday Chat: The Issue(s) of Combat length in D&D 4e
The Chatty DM talks about the problem of combat length in 4E, what contributes to it, his own solutions and some other alternatives. While my group doesn't seem to feel the Grind (yet), this is quite a good read nonetheless.

RPG Blog II
Erik Mona Interview: Pathfinder, Customer Service, and Old School
An interview with Erik Mona on the topics in the title. The most interesting part that I find in this interview is about his thoughts about the Old School Renaissance.

Sly Flourish
Four Tips for Running Solo Creatures
Some DMs might find that solo creatures aren't working as they thought it should and they have been know to contribute to the grind that some people feel in 4E. These are some good tips that demystify that expectations and how to use solo creatures for effectively in combat.