Because Gaming is More Than the Rules
Posted in Character interaction, Characters, Conflict, Roleplay, storytelling on Mar 22nd, 2011
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 [...]
Posted in D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Skill checks on Mar 16th, 2011
Getting players to use skills outside of the occasional skill challenge can sometimes be a bit difficult. In my experience, most players are more inclined to leap into battle rather than find another method to resolve their situation. While fighting is a major aspect of D&D, and for some people its even their favorite aspect, [...]
Posted in Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Houserules, Pathfinder, Roleplay, Urbana Arcana, items, storytelling on Mar 11th, 2011
So your party just saved a town from a dragon, the mayor renamed the town after the party leader and all the ladies want to get down with the rogue. What is that worth in game terms? Can the party get magic items and aid from powerful NPCs because of their actions? when does the [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Pathfinder, RPG, Roleplay, city building, storytelling, world building on Mar 3rd, 2011
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the cantina scene in the “Special Edition” of Star Wars always irritated me. Han shot Greedo under the table. Greedo never got to pull the trigger. That was how the scene was originally scripted and that’s how it happened as far as I’m concerned. When playing [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, RPG, Roleplay, backstories, city building, storytelling, world building on Feb 17th, 2011
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 [...]
Posted in Character interaction, Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeons and dragons, RPG, Roleplay, storytelling on Jan 31st, 2011
I thought that with the news that WOTC is releasing the Shadow Source book, I would write a post about how to roleplay evil characters for an evil campaign. Yes, I realize that Shadow Source is not synonymous with evil, you can play neutral or even good, etc. But sometimes, you just want to stop [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Character interaction, Inter-player conflict, Roleplay, backstories on Jan 26th, 2011
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 [...]
