Ravenous Role Playing

World Building Week, Part V:Involving the Heroes and Tracking Growth

This is the last installment of the world building series over at RPG Athenaeum. This post involves the players more than the others because it’s taking the character backgrounds and merging them in with the existing world. This is the most treacherous part of the process because all of the GM’s well-laid plans may unravel at the introduction of a strange background from a player.

Gears of Ruin: Party Creation Session Template

Lots of my posts and links are about world building. It’s just what I’m interested in and fascinated by. This link, however, is just as important. It’s about building good groups. Without good party cohesion, the group will fall away into inner-party violence, bickering and possible PvP action. Unless you’re playing Paranoia, this is rarely what a group or GM is looking for.

Haunted House: 4 Tips To Terrify Your Players

In the past, I’ve only had one GM that truly scared me while in the game. I’m not talking about fear for my personal being, but fear for my character. To clarify further, I’m not talking about character loss to death or dismemberment. I’m talking about true fear of what my character was going to encounter next. Jim was a master at this type of setting, and it was only fitting that he would only run the game if we were in Ravenloft. I remember having nightmares about the NPCs my character met during the course of the game. If you want to instill this type of reaction into your player base, then check out these four tips over at Dungeon Mastering.

Why Do You Love Game Mastering?

I’m primarily a GM. I always have been. Sure, I go through phases where I do nothing but act as a player, but I’m almost always looking at the game from the GM’s point of view. It’s just in my nature. I guess it comes from years and years where I was the only person with all of the rule books and the only person with the desire to absorb them and put them into play. For Martin’s reasons on why he loves being a GM, check out the link. I may post next week my reasons for being a GM and why I love it so much. Look for it!

The Lost Art of Running Away

Ahhh… Running away. It is a lost art form. With all of the mathematical formulas for generating encounters these days, it seems rare for a group of PCs to be outclassed by the monsters they encounter. When this does happen, they are generally so shocked by the fact that running away seems to be the last thing on their minds. They’re always looking for an “out” or a “secret weakness” in the Bad Guy or something similar. Sometimes, it’s just good sense to run away from an encounter. It happens to the best of a group of characters.

This is a bit of a rip-off from… well… many different sources. It’s not an original idea, but it works well for the start of an adventure and/or campaign. I’ve done this to myself as a player a couple of times, and it was always fun to do.

The PCs (or maybe just one or two of them) wake up in the morning with no idea of who they are or where they came from. All of their skills and abilities are intact, except for those relying on memories or knowledge.

Who did this to them? Was it intentional or accidental? What triggered the amnesia? How are they going to regain their former memories… if at all?

I joined a new RPG group last week and the first time I gamed with them was this past Friday. It was good timing due to the fact that they started a new Forgotten Realms campaign on Friday. It’s set in Cormyr to start with, and I have no idea where we’ll be heading. That’s part of the fun of a game… not knowing the future. That’s why I like being a player. However, I had lots of downtime as we started at 3rd level and had quite a few powers/items to learn how to use properly. That’s OK. That’s part of a new game and a relatively new system. None of us have played much D&D 4e, and all of us are fresh from a Pathfinder campaign. There are rules that are similar enough between the two systems that we’d have to stop from time-to-time to look up a rule to make sure we had it right. Fortunately, we all are experienced role players and the 4e indexes are of high enough quality (though, they still fall short of Steve Jackson Games in the index area) that we can find most things quickly.

My character is an Elven Druid named Tallinhaldorian Milladorius (Tallin for short). I like the name. It’s sufficiently long to make Ed Greenwood proud. I had quite a bit of fun with my eight move, my powers and my abilities while wild shaped. It’s going to be a good campaign, and I can’t wait to get into the meat of things.

This week’s Friday Five is the first of the year, and a day late. I’d like to claim hangover or some other ailment as an excuse for the tardy posting, but the fact is that I joined a new RPG group last night and things went really really well. I was so jazzed about the new group that I didn’t have the time or thought to do the posting.

So, without further delay, here is the Friday Five:

Greatest Hits 2009: I’m Your Cleric, Not Your Bitch!

The title of this post is good enough to link to just for the fun of it. I love this title, and I love the article even more because it brings up some intra-party conflict between the tanks that absorb the damage and the healers that keep the wounded from becoming resurrection fodder.

D&D World Building Week, Part I: Concepts
D&D World Building Week, Part II: Cartography and Conflicts
D&D World Building Week, Part III: History
D&D World Building Week, Part IV: Culture

The last four links for this week are from The RPG Athenaeum, and they are the best four articles that I’ve seen in a long time on world building. There are major sections of books and even some entire books on the topic, and I’ve not seen anything better than the advice given on this blog. I hope the series continues and maintains the fine standards that they have held themselves up to. If you’re interested in starting your own fantasy world for any reason, check out what these guys have to say.