Dungeons & Dragons is the 800-pound gorilla of the role-playing game industry, and Pathfinder is its younger, smaller, but still quite imposing cousin. These two games of heroic fantasy dominate the industry in terms of sales and profile. But what’s the difference between the two of them?

In many ways, they are extremely similar. Pathfinder began as a series of adventures for 3rd edition D&D, and then split into its own game when 4th edition proved to be less popular and third party friendly. Yet despite their similar roots, both games have also gone through new editions since that split. D&D went back to a more classic feel, while Pathfinder embraced mechanics and setting material that helped differentiate it from its ancestor.

Which game is better? I won’t answer that, because that boils down to a matter of opinion. What I will do here is compare the 5th edition of D&D to the 2nd edition of Pathfinder (the current version of each game as of this writing), noting the difference in their design goals. Both games provide a great heroic fantasy experience, but they do so in different ways. And here are the differences as I see them.

Continue reading “D&D and Pathfinder: What’s the Difference?” →

Originally published on Sidekickcast.com

If you’re a fan of role-playing games, you probably got introduced to the game through a little thing called Dungeons & Dragons. It may have come by a different name back then, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but the general gist remains the same. In my unscientific study, about 99% of gamers were found to have come into the hobby via some iteration of D&D.

I’ve hopped around a lot in the RPG hobby, and while I got off the D&D train, my current game of choice, Pathfinder, is an extremely close cousin of the world’s first role-playing game. While there are a lot of reasons I tend to stick close to the D&D tradition, one of the major ones is the oddball humor that the game’s history is steeped in.

I like a good beer and pretzels game, where the play is fairly casual and the jokes are frequent. And when it comes to D&D-style fantasy, the jokes have been baked into the game for decades now.

Continue reading “The Awesome Silliness of Fantasy RPGs” →

Originally posted on Sidekickcast.com

Thanks to whatever weirdness inhabited the heads of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, fantasy gaming has some really bizarre stuff baked into its history. I’ve gamed long enough to use a lot of that weirdness (including my personal favorite, the deck of many things), but there’s still so much more out there. Here’s a quick list of some of the fun items in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder that I’ve always wanted to slip into an adventure but have never quite been able to make fit.

Continue reading “Weird Magic Items I Wish I’d Used” →