Posted in Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, city building, storytelling, world building on Feb 24th, 2011
I have talked a number of times about my DM “notebook”. In actuality, it’s a series of text files, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets that I use to save favorite creatures, story notes, and caveats for myself to never use something again. Today, I’ve decided to share with you one of my favorite low-level encounters. I [...]
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Before the hippies in the audience get up in arms, I’m talking about campaign materials. (Also, I work mostly from my laptop when DM’ing so I don’t waste paper.) I’ve got an opportunity to run a campaign again and I’m going to be doing it in a new system. I’m running my first Pathfinder game. I [...]
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Anyone who is familiar with 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder is acquainted with the spells per day system. Depending on your character level and your ability scores you are alloted a certain number of spells per day of the levels that you are able to cast. Unlike 4th edition which utilizes At Wills, a [...]
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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, Houserules, Inter-player conflict, RPG, Roleplay, Star Wars, storytelling, world building on Jan 27th, 2011
How do you know when a character has crossed over to the dark side? Star Wars: Saga Edition has dark side points: a numeric representation of how far towards the darkness a character has traveled. When a character has reached a number of dark side points greater than his/her wisdom score, that character can no [...]
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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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Gaming is a time intensive endeavor if ever there was one. Rare is the session in my group that will run less than three and a half hours and more common is the 4-5 hour session. Today I will be discussing how this time commitment has become more of a problem the older my group [...]
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Posted in Character interaction, Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Hero System, RPG, Roleplay, Star Wars, Superheros, Urbana Arcana on Jan 6th, 2011
I’ve been role-playing for a long time now. I started RPing in the 1980′s and picked up some pretty terrible systems. The biggest problem with growing up in that RP area is that I still have a lot of fondness for some of these terrible systems. Last night, I ran a one-shot of one of [...]
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DM: The Knight commander leans across the table and whispers the task you must complete to clear your name…. PLAYER (interrupting): We must cut down the largest tree in the forest…. WITH A HERRING ALL PLAYERS: *Laughter* As a DM your first instinct when a player interrupts you with an off topic comment or quote [...]
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