Because Gaming is More Than the Rules
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 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 Characters, Hero System, Roleplay, Superheroes, world building on Mar 18th, 2011
Today’s post is a follow up to For Your Own Protection in which I detailed the meta-human secret police force known unaffectionately as the Minutemen. They gained their name both because of its resonance with the American revolution and because the name implies that they can be anywhere in a matter of moments. The name [...]
Posted in Conflict, Hero System, Superheroes, storytelling, world building on Mar 15th, 2011
Government heroes like Captain America and Captain Atom have existed for decades and the military experiment backstory is common in superhero universes. The positives and negatives of these heroes has been explored by many major publishers and the idea of government only superheroes was the subject matter of Marvel Civil War. Personally I have always [...]
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 Dungeon Mastering, Hero System, Information control, city building, locations, world building on Feb 25th, 2011
After I worked out some of the problems with how to start a tabletop game that was designed to be an MMORPG, I had to take the time to decide what kind of MMO I was creating. This was much easier, and much more fun, than solving my initial problems but that doesn’t mean that [...]
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, Hero System, world building on Feb 23rd, 2011
My Wednesday night group has been without a game for the past few months now but I’m getting everyone back on the train with something new. Since our last game was D&D 4th I wanted to let people try something different and I didn’t want to use some generic fantasy setting, so I’m running a [...]
