Ravenous Role Playing

Turkey Day threw me all sorts of out of whack, and I completely forgot yesterday was Friday. I blame my work forcing me to take two days off with pay for the holiday. Damn them! Anyway, here are the six links for today. (Astute readers may notice there are actually seven links, but only six sections.)

Magic Gems for Item Reward Flexability

This is very Diablo-ish, but I still think it’s a great idea. The main reason I’m linking to Sly Flourish is that they have a link embedded in their first paragraph that leads to Asmor’s Treasure Trove, which is a random item generator for 4e D&D that is very handy.

World Building 101: Keeping a Campaign Bible

I wholeheartedly agree with Brandan over at d20 Source. Every GM worth his salt must keep a bible about his world. No, we’re not talking about a holy religious text. We’re talking about a set of information about the world that the GM knows and can share with the PCs when necessary and appropriate. I personally use a Wiki for everything except my game plot notes. I suppose I could use the wiki for the game notes as well, but just not link to them and make them viewable by only me. Whatever method you use, make sure you have backups!

Be Thankful For Your Players

Ahhh… Thanksgiving in the United States this week. It meant time with family and/or friends, turkey, football and getting together just for the sake of gathering. It’s also a time to give thanks for the things you have. This includes your players. Quite often the GMs get all the thanks, which I feel they richly deserve, but the players are sometimes left out in the cold. When I run a game, I always thank the players for making the night memorable for me and I tell everyone that I hope to see them again next week. The players deserve some credit too, ya know?

Two ways to play: Roleplaying and Rollplaying

Mike over at Campaign Mastery has some great advice on how to turn die rolls into fantastic role playing opportunities. Turn that roll into a role.

Cross-Class Training II: The Teaching DM

What do GMs and teachers have in common? Quite a bit it seems. Check out the post over at Chatty DM’s blog for more info.

Chivalry doesn’t have to be dead – use knightly orders in your game

Chivalry, even in this modern day, is not dead. I refuse to let it die. Period. However, it seems as if the perfect place for chivalry to thrive is through role playing games, but so many people ignore it because it’s “too hard” or involves “too many rules.” That may be true in reality, but we only need to take a small subset of the rules of chivalry and apply them to the game in order to get the flavor. Check out how to do this over at The RPG Athenaeum.

It’s a long-standing holiday tradition in my family to watch both of the Thanksgivings games. The second game is currently paused on the DVR to give me time to write this adventure hook.

Four factions have invaded the PCs town. Packers from the northeast have shown up and are attempting to pack up and move everyone to a different location. Meanwhile, Raiders from the land to the west have arrived and are attempting to steal everything in sight. While all this is going on, Lions from the north are attempting to devour everyone in sight (but not doing a very good job of it). There is some good news. The local Cowboys guild have banded together with the PCs to put a stop to all of this mayhem.

Who brought these four strange factions into town at the same time. Is it some strange plot of the sorcerer, Goodell, who lives in the frozen wastes of the Northern Frozen Lands (NFL for you slow people) or is some other strange plot afoot?

Back in high school, I encountered one of the best GMs of my day. He ran three games: Paranoia, Hero Fantasy and Champions. Buddy was an amazing GM because he knew the rules inside and out. He reached savant-level knowledge of point costs, build outs, rules adjudication and every other aspect of the game. I aspire to be like Buddy some day when it comes to those systems.

When I first came across Buddy he was running a Champions game at the FLGS, and it happened in the time slot just before my regular AD&D game. I had time to spare, so I asked (rather shyly, I might add) if I could join his game. He opened me with welcome arms, and said he would gladly make me a character during the week, and I could join in the next Saturday. To keep things simple, he asked me to pick a comic book character that I would like to play, and he would build me out a PC. I was on a Silver Surfer kick at the time (and he’s still my favorite comic book character), so I picked that character to go with. He asked me for a name, and I totally blanked. I didn’t want to just go with “Silver Surfer” because that name was already taken. I figured I would go original, and I spluttered out, “Silva.”

He was happy with the name, so I figured I hadn’t committed a faux pas early on in the game. He created my character during the week, and I joined in the group the following Saturday. I had an absolute blast with Silva. I’d swoop all over the place. One session I learned, the hard way, what an OAF (obvious accessible focus) really meant in Champions nomenclature. A Bad Guy took away my surf board, and I was reduced to walking/running everywhere for the rest of the game. I bemoaned my pathetic fate of being bound by gravity and played it up quite well. I still had my ranged blast, though, and no one could take that away from me. Life was good.

I still miss gaming with Buddy. Moving away from my home state was a hard thing to do, and leaving behind Buddy, Mike, Tiffany, Chris, Jason and the rest of the gang was the hardest part of moving away. I try to get a good Champions/Hero game going from time-to-time, but it rarely gets beyond the character generation phase of things. Everyone seems to love making characters, but doesn’t delve too deeply into the system when it come to gaming. *sigh*

This has been a great week for RPG posts in general. I usually struggle to get five candidates for the Friday Five each week. However, this week I have ten to choose from that I bookmarked throughout the week. I’m running short on time today, so my summaries will be brief. As always, follow the links for more details.

NewbieDM Tutorial: The Battlemap Part III

As you know, I love maps, and this is the third part of NewbieDM’s ongoing tutorial about making some awesome looking maps. I have my own Fractal Terrains/Campaign Cartographer tutorial in the works. I have tons of screen shots, but have yet to put together the text that goes with them. While you’re waiting for me to get my act together, check out the third part.

The great escape: designing scenarios for imprisoned characters

This post inspired this week’s Adventure Hook, so go see what go in the crook of my mind and gave me some inspiration.

World Building 101: Effective Campaign Briefs

I love home-brewed worlds. I like playing in them, and I especially love running them. I’ve added this post to my permanent list of bookmarks for the next time I have to run someone through my own world setting.

Something silly

Chgowiz calls this silly, but I think it’s a great idea. His post is brief and links to the Diablo item name generator. I love these kinds of things because they can inspire so much creative thought just based off the name of the item.

The Five Maxims of the Dungeon Master

Follow these five rules of game mastering and you’ll be the better for it. So will your gaming group. Good stuff here.

One or more of the PCs wake up in jail with no recollection of the preceding night. Before they can demand a lawyer, to be released or talk to a judge, an officer of the jail announces that it was all one big mistake and releases the PCs from jail without answering any of their questions. As they walk around town after their release, parents pull their children closer and they hear whispers of, “It’s them.” and “I can’t believe they were released from jail”.

What did the PCs do? Why were they released from jail so quickly? Are they exonerated? Was it a mistake? Will they be arrested again and hounded by the authorities?

We were playing AD&D (1st edition) about two years ago and Bill was running the game. We had progressed to somewhere around 4th or 5th level and were getting along quite well. We had built a great party rapport and we all liked our characters. Things were finally starting to move along quickly and we were getting into the swing of things…. until….

Bill drew out a long, straight, five-foot-wide passage on the battle board and asked for a marching order. We did our best to put the biggest fighter in the front, followed by the cleric, followed by the other spell casters with our thief in the rear to guard that direction. Bill then pulled out a few miniatures and placed them about 50 feet down the hallway in front of us. We knew something was up. Bill always uses chits for monsters unless they are special, and then he pulls out the miniatures. In this case, there were no chits on the board. We knew we had run into another adventuring group.

That either means parley and trading, or bloody war. We were prepared for either eventuality, and then we heard the chanting. Our wizard recognized the spell as lightning bolt, and we were trapped in a straight line! Bill called for an initiative roll, and we ended up losing poorly. The other group got to go first. Their wizard unleashed his lightning bolt and Bill required all of us to make our saves… We collectively rolled: 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.

Yep. Nothing higher than a 2. No saves for us! With the rattle of his dice, Bill rambled off the damage and asked who was still standing. The math was easy for us. No one had anywhere near the maximum HP of the damage done by the spell. We were toast. Literally. The brief campaign ended with a TPK (total party kill.)

Now, you may be thinking that Bill is a hard-ass for killing us off that way. I’ll always defend Bill because he showed us the stats on the group after we were all dead. We should have been able to take them had the dice rolls not gone the way they did, and Bill does not fudge dice rolls. In the end, we rolled about as poorly as we possibly could have, and he rolled about as well as his dice had ever allowed. The combination of the two strokes of luck brought doom to our party.

We still laugh and cut it up when someone mentions the numbers “1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2″ because we all know what they are talking about.

Good times, indeed….

I broke with my habit and did not post yesterday in order to bring you six links today. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

Christmas Morning on the Battlefield

Treasure. Who doesn’t like it? I know I love it. With each monster I kill, it’s like Christmas morning when you get to open presents. You never really know what you’re going to get. For Scott’s take on the matter, go check out his lengthy post. I can’t do it justice by summarizing it here.

NewbieDM Tutorial: The Battlemap, a guest post by Jonathan Roberts
NewbieDM Tutorial: The Battlemap Part II

Two links for the price of one! Anyone that knows me, knows that I love maps. The more maps I create, purchases, own or imagine, the happier I am! The map making tips shown over at NewbieDM’s site are phenomenal, and I may try to put some of them to use to make my maps more eye catching and appealing.

Turning D&D 4e’s Economy on its Head

D&D economics have always been as strange and fantastic as the monsters included in the various bestiaries around the publishing world. Most players pay it no heed and just roll with the craziness. Chatty DM doesn’t seem to like this very much, and if you’re of a similar mindset, then head over to his site and check things out. You’ll be quite pleased with his ideas.

Serve up your D&D with a side dish of red herring

Mislead your players. Lie to them. Send them off on wild goose chases! So long as they have a good chance of catching up with the Bad Guy in the end of the adventure/story/campaign, they’ll love you for it and have great stories to tell. Want to know more? Head over to The RPG Athenaeum to see what they have to say there.

Go ahead and roll

Advice to the players: Don’t jump on your dice too quickly because the GM might be ready to give you a freebie. It’s great advice with a great story behind it. For more details, check out RPG Diehard.

The Decamer Campaign: Start with D&D’s 10 Stupidest Monsters…

I included this link over at Gnome Stew as the bonus sixth link (OK, if you’re counting, it’s actually the seventh link of the post) because the post is downright hilarious. I don’t agree with the concept of how to start a campaign. I think a campaign idea should be more fleshed out and inspired than picking 10 monsters you love to hate and running with them. However, Marting’ s write-up is great, but not safe for work or small children. Click the link above with that warning in mind.

A former roommate of mine and a friend of his from back in his home state of Illinois came up with an RPG of their own called Wasted World. The game was brutal. The setting was fierce. Characters died left and right, and it was rare to go through less than three characters in a night. This wasn’t much of a big deal because it took all of 8 minutes flat to create a new character and jump back into the action. The first few times I died, I lamented the loss of the characters and the loving backgrounds I had constructed in my head, but had not yet had time to write down. Then I realized that the characters were nothing more than a set of stats, some armor and a gun or three to use against everyone else, including the other characters.

I distinctly remember a particular purple d20 the GM would pull out when he needed a 20. In the game system, if you wanted to make a called shot, you had to roll a natural 20. Fair enough. Called shots to the head were almost always killing blows. When a particular character was really whipping up on the Bad Guys, the GM would pull out his special purple d20, declare the called shot to the head and roll in front of everyone. Nine out of ten times he’d roll a 20. Damn.

After a while, I decided that it would be cool to publish Wasted World. It was the ultimate post-apocalyptic, hack-and-slash game I had ever come across. I haggled with the GM, and bought the game, and his damn d20, for a grand total of $25. A few months later, he decided he wanted to run the game for some other friends and asked to borrow Wasted World (there was a single copy in existence, and still is as far as I know) to run. I got stupid and loaned him the game never to see it again. He soon afterwards moved back to Illinois with the game. Damn.

That’s OK. I still have his d20 and I use it for Paranoia these days. Muahahahaah.

Campaign Starts

How do you start your campaigns? There are a slew of options out there, but some of them are trope and have been done to death. Key Our Cars lists off some of the “done to death” ideas, and has a fresh perspective on how a campaign should be started.

Stunt Doubles for Absentee Players

Have missing players quite often? Don’t want to resort to playing board games on your RPG night? Me neither. Want to play someone else’s character while they’re gone? Me neither. Here’s an idea to keep some of the power levels in the group up while players (and therefore characters) are missing from the game.

Get a Real Job

What does your character do for a living? “Goblin Slayer” usually isn’t on someone’s resume. What do your characters do during downtime? GURPS has the best system I’ve seen to date on how to handle character income from a “real” profession between adventures. I’ve used it in the distant past with some good results. I’ve even had some players want more downtime between adventures in order to accomplish professional goals for their characters. Ameron has some thoughts on the concept as well. Go check them out.

Your Expectations Lose To Player Participation

Don’t run the game you expect to run. Run a game your players will want to participate in. How do you do that? Patrick, over at Gnome Stew, has some good ideas on the matter.

The 4 Stages of Magic-Users

This post made me laugh, so it made the Friday Five for today. Not only is the post funny, it’s also incredibly accurate. Go see what RPG Blog II has to say on the matter. It’s a quick read, I promise.

Sorry for missing this yesterday. Life caught up with me, and I didn’t get a chance to post like I wanted to… Without further delay, the hook for this week!

This hook works for all genres, except maybe prehistorical settings, since home brewing of beer, wine and mead has been around for thousands of years. I expect home brewing to be around for a few more thousand as well, but maybe in a different form in the far future.

A local home brewer has created a concoction to allow people to sleep deeply and dream. While they dream their dreams come true. The horrific dreams slay people. The beautiful dreams heal people. The strange, yet mundane dreams, also come true in a twisted fashion. How is this happening? The brewer claims to be doing nothing differently from his normal brews. Investigations of his equipment, ingredients and processes yield nothing strange. There must be an outside source influencing his brews. The brewer claims he is doing nothing wrong and refuses to stop creating and sharing his creations. The PCs are hired to investigate the strange occurrences.