Ravenous Role Playing

I’ll admit it. I love maps. Give me a book of maps for Christmas, and I’m a happy clam for several days while I explore ancient and lost lands through the ink, paper, glue and covers of a good book of maps. This love of maps extends into creating them as well. I suppose that was why I fell into the role of GM for most of my games. I was the guy that loved to draw maps. I’d take the old blue-lined graph paper and draw dungeon-crawl after dungeon-crawl. When I discovered hex maps, I dove into creating overland maps as well.

Years passed before I discovered the joys of large artist pads for my world maps. The freedom of not using any lines for guides was quite refreshing. I would create world after world just for the sake of being able to draw maps. Hardly any of the worlds grew flesh on the bones of the maps, but I had the maps in case I needed them.

In the end, many of the maps (dungeon, world and otherwise) have fallen to the wayside and been lost to the ages. I still have quite a few of them, but they’re fairly tattered and torn. A sign of a good life for a map.

In the past decade (or so) I’ve discovered the joy of digital maps. Here, I’m mainly speaking of Campaign Cartographer, Fractal Terrains and Dundjinni. There are other products out there to fill the digital map niche, but these three products are all I need to get going with the creations from the macro down to the micro.

Some people can’t stand doing maps digitally because there is a fairly steep learning curve. A friend of mine suggested that I give some lessons on the blog about how to do digital maps using the products that I know and love. I’ve decided that’s a good idea, so I’m going to start a semi-regular series of blog posts with images, screen captures, maps and text explaining how to go about creating maps.

I’ll probably start with the basic world maps, but I’ll interject details on how to draw cities, castles, dungeons, ships and everything in between. Who knows? Maybe I’ll create another world while I’m at it and see where things lead with it.

The six of us (5 players and 1 GM) got together Saturday night to create Pathfinder characters for the newly starting campaign. Usually, when we start a new game everyone comes to the table with an idea of what they want to play. In this case, only one player had a solid concept and the rest of us sat around the table staring at each other with blank looks. It took a while of leafing through the books, character traits PDF and player’s guide PDF before things started to gel.

I was trying to sit back and decide last because I wanted to create a character that would merge well with the rest of the group. I didn’t do that in the Rifts game, and it caused tons of contention between Eric and me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that option on Saturday. I had to help get the ball rolling. Kelly was waffling between playing a rogue or a paladin. I think she was hooking more into the paladin idea, but didn’t want to create a character that would be at odds with the rest of the group. At this point, the GM said that not all paladins have to be lawful good, but can match whatever alignment of another god if the player chose to do that. This freed up Kelly to lean stronger towards a paladin.

What finally tipped the balance was the fact that I told her that if she played a paladin, I would play a cleric of the same god. We settled on Abadar, the god of cities, wealth, merchants and law. We decided to focus on the wealth part since both of our characters were from wealthy families. Nat, at this point, picked up rogue as her class and decided to, I think, worship Abadar as well since she feels that he will help guide her character to the greatest wealth.

Once I chose cleric, Rhonda decided to dive into her ranger class choice now that she knew we had a healer. I think she wanted to play a front-line fighter all along, but was afraid of the lack of healing that would be coming her way.

In the end we ended up with:

• Bill – The Gamemaster
• Eric – Wizard (Conjurer specialty)
• Rhonda – Ranger (Bow specialist)
• Kelly – Paladin of Abadar
• Nat – Rogue
• Me – Cleric of Abadar

I don’t have a full character background written up just yet, but I’m working on it. I tend to do this with most of my characters. It helps me know them better. However, one thing I’m going to latch onto is the 1st edition AD&D cavalier ideal of having the best armor at all times. This doesn’t mean the best AC, but the best looking. That means that I’ll choose mundane full plate  over half plate +4 because full plate just looks that much better.

As the game progresses, I’ll be giving a report of how things go. I probably won’t be doing a full campaign log, but my impressions of the game flow and how well the system works (or doesn’t).

As far as the quality of character creation goes in the Pathfinder system, I really like it. It’s quite simple and flows very well. Of course, I’m an experienced gamer, so this is usually true of most systems. However, I was reading the book from the eye of someone that had never played before, and I’m still impressed by the clarity of the rules and how well written everything is. This is definitely a game that could be tossed into the hands of a total newbie and they would be able to pick it up quickly if they had half a brain to work with.

PC Transformations: Or How Gandalf Became A White Wizard

There are always new supplements coming out for the current games. This is a boon and a bane. The boon is new ideas are always flowing into your game. The bane is that the game is not static enough to keep players content. They’re always wanting the latest and greatest classes, races, prestige classes, cybernetic enhancements, prestige classes, feats, skills, spells, powers and so on. How does a GM handle the influx of new ideas into an established game without disrupting the game? There are several thoughts on the matter, and DNAPhil over at Gnome Stew has a solution for you. Go check it out!

Bringing Back the Magic

Stop introducing boring magic items into your game! Give them a back story, a purpose, a history and some character. This seems to only be done with artifacts in most D&D games, but there’s no reason that “long sword +1″ can’t be called “Bartuk’s Blade of Bane” with a good story behind it. For more ideas on how to do this, head on over to D20 Source and check out their post.

Tie Their Hands and Steal Their Swords!

Are your PCs walking through everything you throw at them? Having a hard time challenging them without reducing yourself to throwing in the Tarrasque, his big brother and ancient mother at them? Take some of their items from them! Have their vital gear stolen or reduced to nothingness, and wrap an adventure around the process of them returning themselves to former glory. More details can be found in the post over at Dungeon Mastering.

Treasure and Mesopotamia

Gygax and Arneson pulled from great amounts of myth, folklore and history to create their rich and detailed worlds. It looks like Chgowiz is doing the same for his campaign setting. I really love the detail he goes into in his research and what he exposes on his post over at his blog. If you’re into the historical aspects of gaming (even just a little) then I highly recommend his brief writing on the topic.

DM’ing Thoughts

Key Our Cars has a great post on the basics of GM’ing a game. If you can get these foundational elements into place, then the rest of your efforts should fall into place nicely. For the full list, go visit their site!

Pathfinder Core

In my last review of Pathfinder, I covered chapters 1-8. This time, I’m just going to cover 9-11 because that is the last sections of the player portion of the book. Before I continue, though, I did want to point out something that I missed in my last review: the physical qualities of the book. The book is well bound with very high quality, thick paper. The printing is excellent and easy on the eyes, with a few rare exceptions. The fancy borders they put on all of the pages sometimes bleed into paragraphs, especially on the left-hand edge of the left-hand paper, which can make some words harder to discern. The usual “soda proof” glossy protection on the covers is also in place, which I’m very happy for. This glossy coating has saved a ton of my books in the past when an ill-timed mouthful of soda explosively merges with a well-timed hilarious joke or quip. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Now on to the rest of the player portion of the book.

Chapter 9 covered the basics of spell casting and the rules around how spells work. Again, the folks at Paizo did a wonderful job in clarifying rules, using images to depict exactly how spells work and making the whole process make more sense. I’ve been a role player for 26 years now, and these rules are some of the cleanest, easiest to read and most concise pieces of text I’ve ever read in an RPG. I think even the more junior members of my role playing group (and those adverse to reading the rules) will have a good time with this book.

Chapter 10 covered the spells. Did I read each and every spell description? No! There are 132 pages of spells! What I did, however, was to “spot check” the spell list. I started with the lists of spells at the beginning of the chapter. They are well put together and easy to read. The only problem I have with the list is the wizard/sorcerer spell lists are broken down by school before they alphabetized under each level. This makes quickly figuring out the level of a spell or skimming the spell list more difficult for people that are not used to how spells are broken down by school. I didn’t stumble through it much, but a total beginner will have a hard time knowing which school to look under for the spell he is trying to find.

For the several dozen spells (or so) that I read, the writing was well done and easy to understand. I came away from each spell listing with no questions about “What if?”, although I’m sure my group (and others) will come up with some that my brain is not. My only complaint about the detailed spell listings is the fact they chose to use a black background with off-white text for the spell name. While the black background clearly delineates one spell listing from the next, which is a good thing, it makes reading the text a little hard when you’re in a hurry. I don’t know of many people who casually read spell listings (though, I’m sure you’re out there.) Most of the time, a spell is being looked up in the heat of battle by both the player(s) and the GM at the same time in order to better remember how the spell works or to clarify some point. This means hasty skimming of the spell listings in search of a spell. The layout format Paizo chose for the spell titles inhibits this exercise just a slight bit. I know I’m being nit-picky, but when a product is as good as Pathfinder, you have to find something to gripe about, right?

Chapter 11 covered the prestige classes of the core Pathfinder system. These I did read thoroughly, and I am very impressed with the balance of the classes as a whole. Most of them are taken directly from 3.5 with some possible tweaks here and there with the exception of the Pathfinder Chronicler. This is an obvious addition to the list, and I feel it may be a bit overpowered as compared to the other prestige classes. Maybe this is just my first impression, and I could be wrong about that. The only way to know for sure is to talk someone into playing one of them. Heck, that someone might just be me. It all depends on what the rest of my group decides to do tomorrow night when it comes time to create characters.

This concludes the review of the player portion of the Pathfinder Core book. I’ll cover the GM portion of the book in its entirety early next week.

This is a hook for a modern or future sci-fi game.

The Internet has gone missing! No matter how characters connect to the Internet (dial-up, wifi, DSL, cable modem, ISDN, radio packet, satellite, etc.) they just can’t find anything on the Internet (or Ultranet or Crystal Wind* or whatever you call it in your world). They can connect and everything appears to be functioning, but there is simply no data out there. After talking with other people (in person, no less, since their online connections are down,) the group discovers it is just they that are having issues. Everyone else in the world hasn’t noticed a thing.

Who has sabotaged the PCs? For that matter, the PCs with neural implants (or some other form of cybernetics) how was it accomplished without their noticing?

* It’s my little homage to Daniel Keys Moran here. He calls the global network The Crystal Wind in his series of books.

Pathfinder Core

I just finished off my lunch hour reading chapters one through eight of the new Pathfinder Core book. This part of the book took me through character creation, races, classes, skills, feats, equipment, basic rules, combat rules and the miscellaneous bits of rules that are required for any RPG. I must say that I am quite impressed so far. The wide selection of powers, abilities, feats, skills and combat maneuvers is grand. My group is about to start a Pathfinder game, so I haven’t played any of the rules just yet, but they appear to be balanced and well written.

Paizo’s goal was to take D&D 3.5 and clean it up. They did an admirable job of doing so, and I can’t wait to see the game in action. The many things that D&D 3.5 did almost right has been nailed down and spit polished by the Paizo crew. While reading the rules, I could see how they would play out on the battle board quite well. They were easy to read, easy to understand and appear to be easy to implement in the game without slowing things down. Sure, we’re going to have to look up Bull Rush the first time someone does that action, but it will only slow the game down slightly as the rules explain how the maneuver works in clear and concise text.

I’m not sure, as of yet, which race/class/feat/skill combination I’m going to play. I’m leaning towards a rogue/wizard multiclass character. However, this time around, I’m going to let everyone else choose their character setups and then I’ll “fill in the blanks” of the party. Once we get rolling with the game, I’ll let you know which route I go and how it works out.

So far, I think my favorite part of the book is the feats section. I can see the progression of the feats as they build on one another, and each one brings something unique and powerful to the game. There are so many options, I can see three fighters being in one party, and none of them having the same abilities if the players choose to build their characters properly.

Good job, Paizo! Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see the Bestiary when it hits the shelves.

As I make my way through the rest of the book, I’ll let you know what I think. Expect part 2 of this review in a day or three.

This was a great week for RPG blogs. In a normal week, I save off 5-7 bookmarks that I pick from for making my Friday Five. We’re not quite done with Friday and I already have ten topics to cover. Without any further delay, here they are!

My Biggest Mistakes: Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign

My heart goes out to Mike over at Campaign Mastery because I’ve done this more times than I can count. I come up with a vivid, realistic, wonderful and overreaching world and campaign arc, and I want to share every last detail of my brilliance with the group… and they don’t want to hear it all up front. Most players would rather start with a small nugget of the world (like their starting village/city) and then learn about the rest of the world as the game carries their characters through the world. Mike, I’m right there with you in making this mistake, and I try not to do it anymore. My advice to other GMs out there is to start small and then filter in details as the PCs grow. It’ll be easier for them to digest.

Introducing New RPGs

Here are five great tips from Jim Davenport over at Roleplaying Tips. They cover how to introduce a new system to an established group. I can’t say it any better than Jim did, so if you’re thinking about starting up a Geist or Pathfinder or some other newer game (or even dusting off an older game like Mythus, Paranoia or the original Champions) then head over to Roleplaying Tips and see what Jim has to say.

In-Play: The Deck of Many Character Traits

JackOfHearts over at the At-Will blog has a great idea for coming up with character traits. Of course, instead of carrying around the deck of cards and the charts, simply modify an existing deck of card with the traits written on them. This is a great way to generate NPCs or help a player establish their character’s traits.

What Me Flee? No You Flee!

This is a good post by the bonemaster over at The Bone Scroll blog about whether or not a party should flee in the face of certain defeat. I could write an entire blog post about this (and just might someday), but my opinion is that while the group may be comprised of heroes with great power, there is always something out there with even greater power. The party should always consider fleeing an option if things get too heavy for them to handle. Not fleeing is a sign of sheer stupidity, and that’s the #1 cause of a character’s death in my games.

Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul

How do you get a campaign to last years instead of months? Seeing as how I’ve rarely been in a long-running campaign, I was pretty much clueless in this department until the folks from Campaign Mastery came along to educate me. The longest game I’ve ever run lasted a little over a year, and I’m quite proud of that number. The longest game I’ve ever played in lasted a little over three years, and it was a great three years. I’ll always remember that character with fondness because of everything that I went through with him. If you want to give your players memories that will last a lifetime with a long-running campaign head on over to see what the blog has to say about it.

On Darkness

I lived in the country as a teenager and finally made my way back out of the city into rural areas a few years ago. Unless you’ve been in an area with only natural lighting at night, it’s nearly impossible to truly appreciate how dark the night can get, especially during a new moon. RPG Blog II gets it right when explaining just how dark it can get. If you run a game, I highly suggest that you run out into the countryside some night, turn off the headlights and take in the true experience of natural lighting. It’s amazing and will change your perception (no pun intended) on just how dark it can get outside.

Heroes split up in town? Try ‘Jamming’

When the party splits up in the dungeon, the GM pretty much has to handle two (or more!) groups of people running amok in their carefully crafted areas. However, when they hit the city, it’s a different matter. It’s totally possible to allow one player to play an NPC merchant while you handle the wizard’s research in the library. This does require some level of trust in your players, but if you don’t trust your players, it’s time for a new group anyway. I’ve had the pleasure of doing this in a Vampire game many moons ago, and it worked quite well. It wasn’t a city setting, but rather a large party full of vampires. The Storyteller had us play our own characters, but told us that when our character is out of things to do to pick up an NPC to run with. He had little cards printed for us to tell us about our NPC and how to player them. He was obviously prepared and planned for this to happen. You can’t always do that with impromptu splits of the party though, so that’s where you get the players to play something other than their own character for a short sprint.

How To Introduce New Players

Adding a new ingredient to any established recipe can spell disaster for the dish. Adding a new player to a set group is no different. There are ways to make this go more smoothly, and this post by Brandan over at D20 Source has some great advice on how not the spoil the soup.

Achievement Unlocks

The folks over at Key Our Cars came up with achievement ideas based on their theories of what they’ll find in the freshly released D&D 4e DMG2. I like some of these, and may throw them into the mix of my game if I ever get behind the screen again. I just picked up my DMG2 yesterday, and I haven’t made it to the “achievements” section just yet, so I may have more input on this idea at a later date.

Something Old, Something New: What Makes a Great GM?
Something Old, Something New: Great DM’s

I’ve paired these last two posts into the tenth topic I’m covering today. These are posts from Chatty DM and Newbie DM. Chatty has years of experience and Newbie (as his name implies) is fairly new at the trade. They decided to team up together to see what they had to say about the same topic. While they post different qualities, words, thoughts and ideas, they both did a great job on their posts and I think every GM of every game system should take a gander at these two posts. You’ll become a better GM for it; I promise.

Everyone in the local region (can be a village, town, duchy or even a kingdom!) with tiefling blood has suddenly started to glow in the dark. There have been no other side effects (for ill or boon) other than the glowing. Of course, a tiefling thief attempting to lurk in the darkness will consider this an ill effect. Rumors abound that it is due to the experimentation of a nearby wizard’s cabal and that more dire experiences are soon to follow. What is the cabal’s intent? Is it even the cause of the wizards or are they the easy target to blame? It’s time for the PCs to gear up, head out and discover the true cause of the glowing tieflings.

Creating a new and inventive artifact each week takes me too much time, and I feel like the items are below my normal creative standards. I had not done any D&D 4e artifacts when I came up with the idea, and I didn’t realize how formulaic they were. It’s just not exciting for me to do them. I remember my days of playing AD&D 2e in which artifacts were much more dynamic and exciting… or maybe I just remember it that way. Since my heart is not into doing artifacts, I’ll find something a little different to do to fill the dead air.

However, I will continue to do the adventure hooks on Thursdays as those are quite fun to do and I feel the gaming populace at large can get something out of them.

Where I’m At In My GMing

This post over at RPG Blog II lists out some criteria for measuring where you are at in your GM style and career. I went through it and am quite happy with my score. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s high enough to keep me pleased with the result. I highly suggest that any and every GM head over to RPG Blog II and check it out. You’ll find your strengths and weaknesses if you’re just honest with yourself.

How To Make Skill Checks Not Suck

I hate skill checks that decide the fate of a game. I’d rather have good role playing than bad roll playing decide the fate of a campaign. DNAphil over at Gnome Stew has some good words on how to avoid scenarios like this that can spell certain death for a game session or an entire campaign that was designed with care and built with hard work.

Pathfinder RPG Resources

The next game I’ll be playing in (and maybe even running) will be a Pathfinder game. I really appreciated MadBrew’s list of links regarding Pathfinder resources, and I’ve already put some of them to use. Now if my book from Amaz—those people— would show up, I’d be a happy camper. If you’re thinking about playing/running Pathfinder, head over to Mad Brew Labs and check things out.

More Tips for Speeding Up Your Game

Who couldn’t use a faster running game? I’m not talking about speedballing through every encounter and role playing opportunity. I’m talking about making some of the more laborious and boring parts run a little smoother and faster. Go check out what Ameron has to say about the topic!

Another Dice Tower

I’ve always loved the idea of having a dice tower, but I haven’t wanted to shell out the Big Bucks for buying a pre-made one. I’ve also never put much thought into building my own because I know it would be made out of inch thick plywood and 2×4’s and would weigh in at roughly twice the weight of the Ptolus book. Well, the folks over at Key Our Cars put together a nice set of instructions and pictures on how to build one of your own. It’s even see-through, so you can watch the dice bang around the pegs as they plinko their way to the bottom. The cost, ease of construction and end-product has inspired me to build one on the next weekend I have free.