Posted in Adventures, Character interaction, Characters, Dungeons and dragons, Inter-player conflict, RPG, Roleplay, Tropes, Uncategorized, backstories, storytelling, world building on Sep 1st, 2011
In his last post, Gestalt wrote about creating characters with more traditionally medieval values in his fantasy games. Now in reality, if you are striving to recreate (for lack of a better term) the most historically accurate medieval fantasy game ever to exist, that’s going to be very difficult. Many of the pieces of literature [...]
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If you are a long time reader of More Than Dice, you know that I am big fan of player characters and NPCs having close relationships. If that NPC can be a spouse, ward, or family member, so much so the better. Today I want to talk about why those relationships are important: so you [...]
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Star Wars is choc full o’ iconic villains, from Vader to Revan to the Hutts – the bad guys are larger than life and diabolical to the extreme. Part of the charm of the universe is the stark contrast between good and evil and the galactic level conflicts that are generated by a handful of [...]
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So last time I talked about how – for some of us – it can be easier to think of a character’s background in relatively recent terms, rather than going Freudian and beginning in childhood. Today I’ll be talking about how hopefully all of us can benefit from knowing how stories like these get told. [...]
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Hello friend, my name is Jack Connor. I was born in 1885 and I am immortal… Well, not exactly immortal. More like really hard to kill. I was the world’s greatest card shark, so good people used to say I was born with a deck of cards in my hand. Actually, I was the only [...]
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I hate writing backstories. While I believe myself capable of playing a variety of different characters in different ways, it’s difficult for me to think of too many interesting things that could happen to a character before early adulthood. While my current group doesn’t mind, I’ve RPed with people who would demand pages of character backstory about [...]
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I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently thinking about my 4e campaign that I plan on starting within the next couple of months. The problem I ran into this time is that I don’t want to run another sandbox campaign like I’ve done in the recent past. So I want to run something [...]
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Examples of blood oaths and blood brothers can be found in history and mythology cross-culturally. While it would be easy enough for two players to announce that their characters are blood brothers and detail a ritual that they would undergo, what fun is there if they don’t actually get benefits and disadvantages as a result? Since [...]
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Posted in Character interaction, Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Inter-player conflict, Roleplay, Uncategorized, backstories on May 3rd, 2011
An intrepid group of adventurers sets out to make their name in the world. With mighty swings, bawdy songs and esoteric spells they rid the kingdom of evil and earn their place among the legendary heroes. Along the way the heroes will fight many villains, striking down each with righteous fervor and without much hesitation. [...]
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Posted in Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, Houserules, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, Skill checks, Star Wars, backstories, city building, storytelling, world building on Mar 10th, 2011
Time to get personal. I have several permanent injuries. I tore a groin muscle several years ago. I’ve had both ankles surgically reconstructed. I also have a bad back from being rear-ended 3 times in one year. Over the years, I have learned to compensate for these injuries. I still enjoy quite a few athletic [...]
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