Ravenous Role Playing

Making tokens for Gametable

This is a great post by NewbieDM on how to make your own chits/tokens/pogs for use on the game table. I’m going to have to look into this for my gaming sessions. I think it’s really cool stuff.

How To Design A Campaign

There’s lots of talk on designing campaign worlds, dungeons, adventures and such, but very little on the campaign itself. Here are some fantastic tips on getting a campaign started on the right foot.

How To Be A Confident GM, Part 2

Part 2 of the series on how to be a confident GM. I’ve linked to part one last week, so here’s part 2 if you were waiting for it.

5 Errors I’ve Made as DM

We all mistakes. It’s just a fact of life. However, it’s always better to learn from someone else’s mistakes before you have a chance to run off and perform them yourself. Check out this post on some of Ameron’s mistakes and how to recover from them.

Top Secret

I’m linking to this post by Monte Cook because I love Top Secret. It’s one of my favorite systems of all times. This post really brought back some great high school memories (and there aren’t many!) for me. It’s given me the itch to run the system for my current group, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. Like with Monte, there’s not much interest in running spies these days.

DM Advice: Contention At The Table

We all get together to role play to enjoy the gamin and camaraderie involved, but there are times when things get heated around the table. There are ways to deal with this heat, up to and including taking time to cool off. Mike Shea over at Sly Flourish has some great advice on how to bring the heat down to a simmer.

How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1

Confidence is one of the key factors in running a good game. If you don’t have confidence in your abilities to be a GM, then neither will your players and the quality of the game will suffer for it. Go see what Johnn has to say on the matter, and it just may help you improve your GMing skills.

Fear and Loathing in the Forgotten Realms

Even the mightiest adventuring warrior fears something. It’s just a matter of finding the right stimuli and having the player go with it. Role playing fear is hard when the player is sitting in a comfortable chair, eating a hamburger, drinking Mt. Dew and hanging out with his best friends. Here’s some advice on how to turn up the fear in a game and have your players still enjoy it.

Avoiding The Total Party Kill

Whether you are a GM or a player, there are ways to avoid the dreaded TPK. There are different approaches between the two sides of the screen, but they are equally important. Go see what Wimwick has to say on the matter.

“Inns” and Outs

Ahh… The inns of a town seem to be the refuge of all adventuring parties. Since they spend so much time in them, liven them up and make them a place worth remembering. You need more than just a slick name and a menu to set the atmosphere, though.

I just heard that Mike Cook pulled up a chair to the great D&D table in the sky on June 7th. He was an executive and a driving force at TSR during the 80s. He will be sorely missed.

More information can be found here, here and here.

Be at peace, Mike. You’ll be missed here on the prime material plane.

The day is rolling close (and I’m sorry for such short notice to those of you that are unaware of this event) as Saturday the 19th of June is Free RPG Day this year! I plan on visiting my FLGS to pick up whatever freebies are available. As I did last year, I’ll be posting reviews of all of the material that I receive. I hope to get my hands on one copy of everything, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m itching to try out new systems, new environments, new settings and new looks on old ideas. I always get jazzed about role playing this time of year because of Free RPG Day goodness.

Check out their web site (see link above) and see if there is a FLGS near you that is offering the goodies. If you do manage to find one, be nice and buy something while you’re in the store. I always do.

As promised, here is the Sunday Seven.

4 Best Ways To Handle Town Guards

Town guards are (or in most civilized areas should be) everywhere, but how to handle them? Follow the link to find out!

Running A Minimal Prep Game

I’m the type of person that runs one of two games. I either have every last detail prepped, noted, memorized and planned out… or I run by the seat of my pants. I’ll admit that the improv game is more fun for me than any planned game. What happens if you’re somewhere in between, though?

Google Calendar As Awesome Campaign Calendar

I had never thought of using Google Calendar to do an in-game calendar. That’s an awesome idea. I just wonder how I can import my current calendar generator software and it’s moon phases and such into Google Calendar? I wonder if there’s an API I could call? If you’re not going that far into it, using Google to track in-game events sounds like a grand idea!

The Cost of Grit in your Game

I just love critical hit/miss charts and all of the fun that goes into them. It adds so much more flavor to the game. Unnatural 20 has one for you that’ll knock your socks off if you’re into that type of things.

A couple of more neat finds…

Here’s some link salad from Newbie DM that tastes great and is good for your RPG waistline. Go check them out!

The DM Should Utilize Help From Peasants

This article from Krystal says up front that the GM should recruit the other players to help the game run more smoothly. I’m 100% in favor of this and already leverage this to its greatest when I can. The GM already has so much to do, that any little bit that can be farmed out to the players is beneficial.

World Building 101 – Choices and Player Agency

I love it when players contribute to my world-building efforts. Yes, my world is very detailed and well fleshed out already, but there’s no way I can think of everything on my own. While I did add a couple of minotaur-ruled nations to the world, one of my players came up with the concept that all of the rulers suffer from albinism and he wanted to be part of that ruling class. The idea was so cool, I let him do it. When possible, don’t just limit your players to helping you out when it comes to the crunch (like tracking initiative) but also with the fluff (like adding details to your world.)

I’m going to be out of touch and away from the Interwebs for a few days. I’ll do the Friday Five on Sunday, and since I’m making you wait for it (yes, all three of you reading this) I’ll post at least seven links on Sunday… maybe more.

This was a great week for RPG blogging and I had a hard time narrowing things down to just five posts. Here they are!

Torturing Player Characters

What happens when the good guys want (or think they need) to stoop to the lower levels of morality and torture someone? Well…. lots it turns out, even if they’re not a paladin or someone with a code of honor to uphold.

When Players Cheat

Urgh. I hate it when players feel the need to cheat. I’ve destroyed greater men for lesser offenses. Fortunately, now that I’m not playing with high school kids anymore, this is a very rare occurrence. If it does happen, here are some good tips for you.

Magic Item Side Quest

I love this idea! I’ve used it before and it works really well. Though, it wasn’t a “I wish I had this item, let’s go get it” type of quest. I called them “prequel adventures” where we took the character as he stood at first level and ran him through a solo adventure when the rest of the group could not make it. The reward was always some fancy, yet minor, magic item that the character got to keep. It helped make each character unique and they all held on to their items because they had earned them the hard way.

What inspires your games?

This post is all about cartoon inspiring games. While this may be great for Johnn, it doesn’t work for me. Mainly because I despise cartoon with a passion, but that’s a story for another time. My inspiration comes from books that I read, adventures that I skim for nuggets of goldenness, listening to my players (mainly listening to them talk to each other about the game) and some movies. What inspires you? Maybe Johnn’s thoughts on the matter will help you focus your search for those great “Ah Ha!” moments.

First Time GM: Looking for Group

I hate finding new groups. Moving, losing friends to them moving, changing jobs or just plain having a group fall apart sucks. However, there are things that can be done to make the process easier. Go see what Telas has to say on the matter. Maybe he’ll help you out with his post.