Making Mundane Weops. Unique

I've never been happy that almost every player picks long sword and greatsword, so I made a special chart to make them more unique. I use this in OSR and Pathfinder. I use 20 only as crit threat,double damage.

dagger +2 to hit, D4 damage
short sword +1 to hit, d6 damage
long sword, threatens crit on 19-20, D8 damage
battle axe, ignores one Damage resistance(scale at higher L?) D8 damage
Mace, 0ne damage on a miss(Scalable?) D8 damage (Ok , should prob only be vrs Metal armor but not looking for that kind of complexity)
spear D6 damage, d12 damage vrs large creatures
great sword 2d6 damage
military pick d6 damage, x3 damage on crit
great axe D10 damage, +3 to confirm crit
quarterstaff(2 handed) D6 damage 1 bonus to AC
Etc.

Cheating DM: Puzzles, some examples

I got a request for so,e examples so here is the first one

Wall of Wonder
it is based on a Magic card that looks like a huge pile of all kinds of diff crap floating around. I thought this would make a great puzzle.The way I did this was blunt weapons did full damage and everything else did 1 point(I had determined that it was supposed to have a lot of hp)They never figured out to use blunt weapons as nobody tried that.

A Dif way to Dungeon Crawl

Here at Dragonsfoot http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=65381 The post discuses the use of the classic arcade game " Dragon's Lair" as a playable dungeon but it approaches it like a normal D&D game. You cannot represent DL with " Ok Bob, it's your turn what are you doing?" So I've got a germ of an idea.

The castle itself is a dream construct of the way-too-powerful-to fight Dragon. From a distance the castle is changing, growing towers, walls falling , getting bigger and smaller in rapid succession. The castle "eats" interesting things that the players will need to extract. It is also Multidimensional and planer and moves around.

The way I am planning on running it is that individual rounds are broken into 3 parts and only one player gets an action to interact with the "trap". a second player will be able to aid the "phasing" player in what ever action he takes. casting spells will be broken up over the 3 partial rounds(depending on L of spell).The phasing player will in essence be the party leader for the 3 partial rounds. The phasing player "job " will be rotated in some fashion(havent got this worked out yet). This is all run w/ the idea that you are trying to recreate the frantic pace of DL The growing and shrinking nature of the castle forces constant movement on the players A brief description of the situation will be provided with the idea of "looking around" will be an action that takes up a whole "partial" round. A few normal combats to be sprinkled in.

Since a lot of work will go into an encounter that should only take IRL 2 maybe 3 min., the rooms and traps are reusable (justified by the "dream logic")

This will obviously not work for a large group of players. Prob want to keep it to 3 or 4.
This will require MASSIVE prep time for what will prob amount to a 1 hour crawl at best (depending on how many standard fights you work in) That's why REUSABILITY is key. To make the prep worth it , you can rerun it w/ the "dream logic"

Not sure if I'm going to pull the trigger on this. But I really like the idea.Not promising a part two if I don't.

Cheating DM: Puzzles

I often create puzzles that I don't know the answer to. I drag it out until just a HINT of frustration sets in amd then BANG,next good idea from players is the answer! In 37 tears they never caught on to this.

Ok, the store is OPEN Again!

Ok for my first few posts I am going to repost some of my fav material in early posts as my creative juices are gone for now.

I'm pulling the plug on this

Theres maybe 2 of you left, no comments and all my hits are from sex shops and porn advertising, Thanx to the very few ofor following me,but the door is closed.

This blog is sort of in hibernation

Been in a really strange mood these days, only things I do are housework and listen to music. I've got TONS of paper and physical game projects and plenty of time to do them but no interest. Took my typical December break from gaming after all. Stop in every couple of weeks and check on me, I haven't abandoned this.