Diary of a Failed Game Designer

AD&D Player Options: “Skills and Powers” I have gotten the feeling over the years that this was not the most well thought of book from the 2 nd edition library. I have read that it over complicates character creation, That it's simply ripe for min-maxing and exploitation. These things may well be true.  Strangely I feel it’s kind of been forgotten. More to the point passed over. People still playing 2 nd ed play it strait, rules as written. “2154 Skills and powers”, “2149 Combat and Tactics,” and “2163 Spells and Magic” are three books that have been deemed either harmful to the games purity or worse simply unnecessary. Back in 1995 I bought “Skills and Powers.” At the time it was a revelation. Here in this book I had a way to ‘Build Characters” with out having to dive into GURPS which was pumping out 3 rd edition books at a breakneck pace, or Hero which was already on it’s 4 th edition by then. It changed the game in some very real ways. In fact I can say that I don’t th

(Wait you never asked for random birds? .... shit..) Do you need a random Bird? Of course you do……… Does the party ranger need a new companion? Yes, her normal, boring ass Wolf companion got killed by a manitcore last game. Whoa daddy, I got the charts form you. See below the magical mystical random bird generator! (Much of the info below comes from the CornellLab ornithology website.) There are no system specific stats below. I figure if the reader is in deep enough to be rolling up random bird companions, statting them out for whatever game the reader may play should be a breaze. Step one: Bird body type (Roll 2d12) Auk type (like a loon) Black Bird (tall thin fan tail) Chickadee style (Plump) Crow or Jay style Dove like Duck like Finch Flycatcher (small very aerodynamic) Pheasant like Sea gull shaped Hawk, Eagle, or Falcon Like (Bird of prey) Heron Humming bird King fisher Nuthatch Owl (night time bird of prey) Sea bird (often large like an albatross) Shore bird Sparrow S