As Cataclysm and his squad of nefarious super villains were carted away in holding cells, the people of Bastion City cheered triumphantly for their greatest heroes: The Guardians of Peace. Vanguard, Breakneck and Valkyrie stood before the people, their hands raised to silence the applause and adulation. The hero from another time, the fastest man [...]
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Posted in Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, RPG, Roleplay, Tropes, backstories, storytelling, world building on Feb 3rd, 2011
Amnesiac heroes are one of the most poorly used tropes out there. The worst example I can cite is Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Cloud was a tool. I’m still convinced to this day that they gave him amnesia because they were never sure how his character was supposed to develop. He’s not the [...]
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I’ve always been a fan of making sure that there is a character with noble descent in any of my games, whether I was playing the character or not. Just because you have a mismatched group of adventurers on a quest to save the world doesn’t mean that they all have to be ragtag vagabonds [...]
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It seems that these few days everyone has been discussing the change from a 12 to a 13 sign Zodiac. Despite the widespread belief that astrology is bogus, statements like “We are just not compatible” or “He’s such a typical Libra” can be heard uttered by otherwise rational human beings. This got me thinking… maybe [...]
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Posted in Character interaction, Characters, Conflict, Dungeon Mastering, Information control, RPG, Roleplay, Star Wars, storytelling, world building on Jan 20th, 2011
Sorry folks, but the devil’s advocate is in. On Tuesday, I talked about the wonder and majesty about playing around in the canon of the Star Wars universe. Today, I will tell you why I almost never do it. Star Wars has always been a bigger place than the canon to me. I still have [...]
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Posted in Character interaction, Characters, Dungeon Mastering, RPG, Roleplay, Star Wars, backstories, locations, storytelling, world building on Jan 18th, 2011
Lucas Arts has made millions by giving people an opportunity to step into the shoes of the main characters from the Star Wars movies and books and let them be part of the story. These iconic events are repackaged in a seemingly endless string of video, board, and card games and have been as long [...]
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I’ve had a tendency in the past to write about creating and utilizing NPCs. Whether its finding interesting ways to easily create new NPCs, making the characters more memorable, or using recurring characters for story-telling reasons, I like exploring the mechanics behind non-player characters. By allowing your players to create certain NPCs you to do [...]
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To start off this week I decided to do something different, I decided to start a discussion instead of my standard editorial/opinion post. I do this because when I began writing this post I realized that I was writing a work of pure opinion and mine is just as good as anybody’s. If I am [...]
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Psychic visions are popular plot devices in fantasy and film. Everything from Star Wars to Heroes uses visions of the past, present and future to help move the story along and provide sources of anxiety and conflict. Despite the value of divination as a plot source I find that psychic visions are often mismanaged in [...]
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For today’s black Friday post I thought I would talk about one of my favorite dark classes from 4th Edition: the Warlock. Warlocks are by nature a misunderstood and mistrusted group of people, reviled by the traditional arcane community and ostracized by the “mundanes” who fear the power of their nefarious/otherworldly patrons. Many players interpret [...]
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