The Rogue Class, Part One
Now that the History of the Ranger is, er, in the past, I’m moving on to the Rogue. Sorry, I meant the Thief… and the Assassin… and the Thief-Acrobat… oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed. The rogue’s history is as slippery ...
The Ranger Class, Part Eight
After a week off, I’m back to finish off the ranger, like a horror-movie sequel. Throughout the series to date, we’ve seen the ranger transition from a super-fighter with a smattering of mystical abilities and an obligation to travel light ...
The Ranger Class, Part Seven
This time in History of the Classes, we’re wandering some distance afield of Dungeons & Dragons itself. Dungeon World and 13th Age both look to the dungeon-crawling action of D&D as their spiritual ancestor, though, and they both have a ...
The Ranger Class, Part Six
Thus far in this series we’ve occasionally seen big shifts in the ranger, as in 2e to 3.0 and 3.0 to 3.5. Those are peanuts compared to the shift to 4e. Every class underwent radical change. Having to strip the ranger ...
The Ranger Class, Part Five
The Ranger Class, Part Five After a week off to write some creepy spells, I’m back to talking about rangers here in History of the Classes. This time around, I’m looking at the Scout class of 3.5’s Complete Adventurer and ...
The Ranger Class, Part Four
In last week’s article, I examined the Ranger class of 2e AD&D, including its expansion content in the Complete Ranger’s Handbook. From OD&D to 2e, we’ve seen the ranger class trend from “warrior with assorted mystic stuff” in OD&D and ...
The Ranger Class, Part Three
In my last post, I looked back to the Ranger class of 1e AD&D. This is the history that Mearls and his illustrious cohorts have looked back to in creating 5e’s Ranger and Other Ranger, and as he has pointed out, ...
The Ranger Class, Part Two
Now that we’ve got a baseline of the original ranger class, let’s see what happens in the first Dungeons & Dragons to bear the name Advanced. I know that a lot of people have warm and impregnable places in their hearts ...
The Ranger Class, Part One
Okay, let’s get back to the History of the Classes, now that I’ve had a little while off and have recharged my batteries. As you know if you’ve been reading Tribality and/or dnd.wizards.com lately, WotC recently released the first five ...
LARPing: an Intro for Tabletop Gamers
In addition to being a twenty-two-year veteran of tabletop gaming, I’ve also been involved in live-action roleplaying for… hmm, looks like nineteen years next month. Like roleplaying games of every kind, LARPing is getting ever greater coverage in the media, ...