Because Gaming is More Than the Rules
Posted in Adventures, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons on May 18th, 2011
This post is part of a series. If you haven’t read part one you can find it here. Welcome adventurers to the second installment of The Return of the Black Prince. Today encounters two and three will be detailed as well as additional storyline elements. Background Having discovered the Sword of Light in encounter one, [...]
Posted in Characters, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Roleplay, Uncategorized, White Wolf, storytelling on Apr 28th, 2011
In my current Legend of the Five Rings campaign, one of the players designed an entire character concept around a samurai who lost his arm as a young boy. His whole life has been dedicated to the mastery of swordsmanship so he can prove he isn’t half a warrior as his injury would lead his peers [...]
Posted in Dungeon Mastering, Roleplay, storytelling on Apr 20th, 2011
Comedy can be a very difficult aspect to include in a tabletop game, especially as a DM. Players will generally find ways of injecting humorous interludes into your campaign by themselves but every so often it can be fun to purposely insert something quirky into the game as a DM. Generally speaking you shouldn’t try [...]
Posted in Character interaction, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Roleplay, storytelling, world building on Apr 19th, 2011
D&D is really cool, though it has been rad in the past. New cars are hot, bad cars are lemons and old cars are clunkers. A bummed cigarette is a loosie, a canned beer is a cold one and coke is coke but so is coke. Slang is part of our world and our daily [...]
Posted in Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Dungeons and dragons, Houserules, Pathfinder, storytelling on Apr 12th, 2011
In many warrior based societies the duel is the standard way of resolving conflicts which cannot be smoothed over with diplomacy. If two nobles claim to tell the truth, if one deeply insults the other, or if a crime is committed the duel is used as judge, jury, and executioner. This is due to the [...]
Posted in Character interaction, Conflict, D&D 4th, Dungeon Mastering, Roleplay, city building, world building on Mar 30th, 2011
The arena of politics is and always has been complex and filled with intrigue. Even the casual student of history is inundated with tales of corruption, party politics, and ambition. If nothing else, one must merely look to the innumerable jokes about the honesty of politicians to understand their questionable role in any society. That is [...]
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 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, Conflict, Roleplay, Star Wars, Tropes, storytelling on Mar 8th, 2011
Everyone who has seen the original Star Wars trilogy remembers that classic scene where Han and Luke dress up as storm troopers and take Chewie up to the detention level. The scene is finished off with Leia famously saying that Luke was too short to be a stormtrooper. Thinking on this scene I realized that [...]
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 [...]
