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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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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While reading through the brilliant DM of the Rings comic at Twenty Sided I came across a blog post in which Shamus discusses the simple fact that wherever there are barmaids, princesses and female PC/NPCs at least one male player will want to have sex with them. Which got me thinking, in most of the [...]
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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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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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Death happens often in D&D, so often in fact that its was a joke how fragile characters were until 4th edition. In most campaigns at least one character will end up taking a dirt nap before the game reaches its conclusion. Whether it is because of the dice or to feed the story varies but [...]
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Posted in Character interaction, Characters, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, Inter-player conflict, RPG, Roleplay on Nov 29th, 2010
Thanks for sticking with us for 100 posts. Your support and comments have made this entire effort worthwhile. As a celebration, the four of us got together for our first podcast to discuss character deaths. We talk about everything from the unfortunate inability of Pensive to play a survivable rogue to Gestalt’s magical ability to [...]
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In any good horror movie there’s always at least one character who wasn’t what he or she appeared to be. Sometimes these characters can be obvious and cliche, but true masters of horror always sucker-punch you with the “sleeper” bad guy. Today’s post is about planting a traitor in your party at the start of [...]
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