RPG a Day #31 Thank

 

I’ve taken part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea was that there’s a prompt every day that asked you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There were a couple of alternate prompts offered but I tried to do the main one every day. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

For the final day of RPG a Day I’m going to thank my parents. Not only did they get me into role playing games they supported me in my playing of them. They encouraged me as well.

They bought me my first D&D set in the late 70’s early 80’s at the height of the Satanic Panic. That was when there was a strong pushback against D&D by a select group of parents. My parents didn’t care; at least as far as I knew. They saw that the books were a genre I enjoyed, got me to read, do math, and use my imagination. I think D&D made me a better reader, student, and writer. I owe that to my parents.

They also put up with my friends and I. When I was in high school we started playing D&D on a regular basis. Once a month or so we took over my family’s dining room and would argue constantly. My family thought D&D was mostly yelling at one another for several hours. We’ve gotten much better, I don’t think we yell nearly as much as we once did.

That’s it…RPG a Day 2021 is now finished. I’m going to miss this. I’ll see you all next year.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #30 Mention

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

I don’t know what to do for mention. I’ve looked at a lot of other people’s posts and nothing has really jumped out at me as a way I can fulfill this post. What I’ve decided to do is give three pieces of advice to anyone getting into gaming. I suppose I’m mentioning them here and we’ll call that the tie in.

1: Be respectful of the table and its tone. When I was in high school and really getting into the swing of gaming my friends and I created our fair share of asshole characters. It was funny to play the guy who did the weird destructive thing. It also ruined entire evenings. I’ve been the game master on the receiving end of the guy that murders the quest giver and I’ve been the player pulling the trigger. I don’t know exactly when I realized, “It’s what my character would do,” was only a decent defense once in a great while. If you find yourself using it a lot, you’re playing the wrong character for the table and should either make a new character or excuse yourself from the game. This may not be a failing on your part, because sometimes what your character wouldn’t do is burn an orphanage to the ground.

2: Help out when possible. Pitch in with whatever your group needs. This can range from tracking initiative to bringing snacks. Ask your game master if they need a hand cleaning up or getting ready. Always be willing to pitch in when you’re needed. Have an extra pencil or a spare dice. Remember sometimes you’re the one who needs a hand. This can also mean not showing up to a session. If you’re sick or distracted by a real life emergency then maybe let your game master know what’s going on and stay away. I’ve been in games where people showed up sick because they didn’t want to let the group down and just ended up giving everyone else their cold. The exception to this is if you’re having a hard time and need to be with people to help take your mind off of it then please come and play. It’s a good idea to let the gm know ahead of time what’s going on and that you may leave early or step away from the table if you need to. But once again just to make sure. If you need to be around people for your own emotional support please come to the game.

3: Learn the game. You don’t have to know the rules; god knows I don’t. Hell I run games and don’t know all the rules. There too many systems with too many mechanics to remember them all. However, I will learn the game. I know what dice to roll for an attack, I’ll make notes to keep my bonuses straight. Hell, I used to practically have a flow chart for my bonuses when playing my 4^th edition barbarian to make sure I didn’t forget anything and could quickly figure my to hit numbers when rolling. Do I have the rules for grappling in DCC, pathfinder, or D&D memorized? Hell no. It comes up far too infrequently and is well overcomplicated. I know where to look if I need them and can follow the instructions if I have to.

That’s my mentions. If you’re getting into the game these are some quickish tips and what to think about moving forward.  Maybe they’ll help you. They’ve helped me.

I’ll see you tomorrow for the final RPG a Day topic…thanks.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #29 System

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

There are a lot of really great RPG systems out there. I’m certain that there will be a great many people writing about some of the most popular and oldest systems on the market. I want to write about one where I love the system and enjoy it so much that it overrides my feelings about the setting. Not to say that the setting is bad. I’ve seen it used to great effect and enjoy a live play in this setting quite a bit. However, the dark tone of Blades in the Dark isn’t one that I gravitate towards.

Blades in the Dark is a story focused system that recreates heist stories. In Blades you’ll take the role of a member of a team of criminal who specialize in a type of crime. This can be anything from theft, espionage, to assassination. While these are your specializations they aren’t the only type of crime you commit. A session will consist of your group determining what sort of job you’re going to pull, how you’re going to infiltrate the location, and then starting play.

Preparing for the job takes the least amount of time in the game. Where some crime games make scouting out the location, uncovering information, and getting any equipment you’ll need a major focus of the game Blades choose to focus instead on the operation itself. To accomplish this you simply pick your job and target.

Once you’ve decided on a job you decide what approach you’re going to take. Will you go in violently with swords, bows, and magic? Will you attempt a stealthy approach and sneak in under cover of darkness? Or will you infiltrate using your social graces by entering the location during a grand ball or business meeting? However you decided to approach the job your GM will make an approach roll. They’ll build a pool of dice based on advantages, luck, complications, and information you might have and roll the dice. This sets what position you’re in when the session truly begins. Best case scenario you’ve begin inside the location with no complications having arisen to stop you. Worst case scenario you’ll be starting with your back to the wall and with some sort of opposition coming down on your position.

From there the game proceeds. You roleplay your way through the rest of the job, working the location, folks, and even ghosts to complete your objective. As you play through the GM will ask for checks. You’ll determine what skill you’re using to accomplish something, roll a number of dice equal to your skill, and take the highest individual dice. If you roll a 6 then you succeed with no complications. If you rolled more than one 6 then you’ve scored a critical and get a spectacular success. A 4 or 5 is a partial success you’ve done what you wanted but something went wrong, you lost a piece of equipment, hurt yourself, or raised some suspicion. A 1 to 3 is a failure and goes badly for you, it’s unlikely that you succeeded and will probably have something bad coming your way.

One of the things I really like about the game is the stress system and how it is used to reflect the lack of in game preparation. As you go about the job you’ll build stress and if your stress gets to a certain level then you’ll abandon the job. Your character will have reached the end of their rope and peaced right out of the job. One of the drawbacks of partial success and failures is added stress. The other way to build stress is to call for a flashback.

Using a flashback is an action you can take at any time change something in the story. You get searched at the door on your way into the party; flashback to earlier that day when you bribed the guard. Your target is hosting a dinner party and you can’t get close to him; flashback to getting a waiters uniform earlier. You’ve accidentally gotten the attention of local law enforcement; flashback to your childhood and how this particular guard was your best friend back in the day. Every flashback gives you a bit of control over the story but it also gives you stress. The more useful the item the greater the stress with a limit of 1 or 2 points.

There’s a lot more to the system and the game. There’s an entire section on maintaining your gang and base of operations, reducing your stress between jobs, and working on side projects. I love the system in this game and enjoy playing it.

However, I’m not a huge fan of the setting. The world of Blades is dark and unforgiving. There’s a brutality to it that it I don’t find appealing. It’s just not my kind of setting. But I do love the mechanics.

I’ve been taking my spare time to jury rig my own setting. Something I do from time to time when I want to do something a bit different. For me I’m going with a 70’s spy film type of setting. That’s more my speed.

What’s a system you love despite the setting? Have you tried to reskin it? How did it work?

Let me know down in the comments. I’d love to hear.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back for mention.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #28 Delve

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

I hope you’ll forgive me for being a little late today. I had some good family stuff come up and it made it impossible to get the blog posted before just a bit past midnight. Thus, technically, this is tomorrow.

Also, I’m going to ask a favor before I jump in. Today’s main prompt was solo and while I’m fascinated by solo RPG’s I’ve never played one. I’d love to try a couple out and if you can drop a comment below with a couple of recommendations I’d be grateful.

On to the topic.

I’m going to talk about the greatest delve I’ve ever been on; the Undermountain. To be specific, the Undermountain as run by my friend Scot. For those of you who don’t know the Undermountain is a massive dungeon found beneath the city of Waterdeep. It is run by the mad mage Halaster Blackcloak. While there are many entrances to the Undermountain, the most popular and celebrated is in the center of a tavern named the Yawning Portal.

The adventure was a boxed set containing several poster sized maps, multiple encounter guides, and a large creature codex. It was designed as a funhouse style dungeon where parties go in and go from room to room killing monsters, avoiding traps, and gathering loot. One of the elements of this boxed set was a lot of empty space. Large sections of the dungeon weren’t populated by the writers and left it to the DM to fill in the blanks.

There are a couple reasons why I love Scot’s Undermountain. First, there was very little dead space. Scot went through and created encounters for most of the dungeon. In the few places where he didn’t place an encounter, trap, or point of interest he’d done it with purpose. One of the first empty rooms we’d found was behind a heavy secret door and functioned as the perfect place to make camp.

The second reason was that Scot worked to give his dungeons character and sensible layouts. He’s dedicate entire sections to a tribe of orcs, a cluster of spiders, or a dark temple and its cultists. On your way to that section there’s be clues as to what was to come. You might find crude warding symbols, a proliferation of cobwebs, or occult symbols. If you paid attention you could figure out what was coming.

The final reason is that Scot to very detailed notes. I’ve been in three different Undermountain campaigns run by Scot. Each of them started at the yawning portal and while exploring we’d find signs of old parties. I still remember coming across the hole burned into the floor by a cursed coin that was caused by one of the earlier group’s actions. I also remember coming across the same hole several levels down as it passed through the ceiling and floor of multiple levels.

Scot’s one of the best DM’s I’ve ever had and while he had his flaws I will always remember with great fondness his Undermountain. Every piece from the hall of mirrors of opposition that ended up with me playing my own characters reflection for several levels after it beat me in a fight and left me imprisoned to figuring out a couple of seconds too late that the mist filled room of statues signaled a medusa.

Anyway folks, I could go on with stories about the Undermountain and the ridiculous things that came out of it for days. I’m very tempted to return to this topic if just to talk in depth about the Church of the Crumpled Helm, a temple of Mystra that was dedicated to the Paladin in our party and run entirely by prostitutes. For now, I think I’ll stop so I can get this up as close as possible to the deadline.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #27 Practice

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

Do you practice for a game? For me, if I’m going to be running a game for the first time I like to try and run it ahead of time. I especially do this if it’s for an event. I’ve talked about running things for Free RPG Day and my local game club.

For Free RPG Day I always try and run the adventure for my friends first because I know that Free RPG Day will require me to move quickly. I’ll be running the game in a slotted time so I can run a couple of groups through it. I want to make sure I get everyone who wants to a chance to play.

Playing it ahead of time lets me find any rules or questions that I might not have noticed reading the module. I’ve hit problems in the past with a trap being a game breaker the way it was written and had to make adjustments to it so that it was more of a possibility during the actual game. With my friends we were able to stop the game look up some stuff and make adjustments. If it had happened on the day it could have soured folks to the game. I don’t want to do that.

The same goes for large events. If I was running a battle interactive I always tried to hold a session zero where I’d run the module for everyone who was running it for the club. That way they’d see it from the players side, get to take their characters through it, and again if any questions came up we could pause and answer them. We also go together for breakfast the day of the game to run over any last questions and strategies.

The only other time I practice is if I’m learning a new system. When I’m sitting down with a new game, especially if I’m going to be teaching it, I will run myself through a couple of quick encounters and fights to make sure I’ve a basic understanding of the mechanics. I probably won’t get everything right but at least I’ll be going into that first game with an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing.

That’s about it for me. I don’t really do any other practice beyond that. How about you?

I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about Solo…maybe…

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #26 Origin

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

While theory has been an interesting topic to read today, it didn’t really click with me as something I could write about. I decided to look at one of the alternate topics. In this case I went with Origin. While I don’t imagine the fine folks who created this list considered we’d be a little over a month from Origins Game Fair in Columbus, I think I’ll chat about that today.

Origins wasn’t the first game convention I’d been to. I’d visited some local cons, a couple of colleges had events that were a day trip drive, and one or two places held a weekend long event that required I get a hotel room. Origins was the first large con I attended.

I drove out on my own, had a hotel room a bit too far away, and parked too far from the convention hall. The walk to the con was awful, it was way too far and took far too long. The line to get my badge was ridiculous and I was carrying my RPG books in an over the shoulder bag that was starting to hurt.

There were a few bright spots in the starting walk. I saw a couple of costumes, this was before cosplay had really taken off so costumes were a pretty unique occurrence. I talked to some folks in line, this is one of the few things that’s been a mainstay of all my con experiences, talking to people in line. I do enjoy meeting new people. Despite that I was not shaping up to a great morning.

Then I walked into the vendor’s hall and every bad thing melted into the background. I had never seen so much gaming in one spot. It actually took me a little bit to realize that this wasn’t the entire con, just the vendor’s hall. I thought all of my time was going to be spent in that room.

I was awestruck with how far apart everything was. I couldn’t see the back wall for all of the bright booths, tall displays, and colorful art that was hung everywhere. I spent most of the hour before my first game wandering around and looking at everything. It’s the one con I attended where I didn’t have a camera and I’m still disappointed in that.

I didn’t get back to the vendors hall much after that first hour or so. I’d made the rookie mistake of scheduling every inch of my time and didn’t have any to spare to get back to that magical room and look around. It’s something I’ve corrected since then.

If you’ve never been to a large con I recommend doing it at least once for the experience alone. I also recommend not scheduling anything for your first day so you can walk around the vendor’s hall and see as much of it as you want.

Origin’s was the first major con I attended and will always have a special place in my heart. It’s where I played my first battle interactive, learned about and played X Crawl for the first time, and got to experience so many great firsts. I look forward to when I’m able to return and spend some time there again.

Tomorrow I’ll come back and talk about fraction…I think.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #25 Welcome

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

When I think of welcoming people to the hobby the event that always comes to mind for me is Free RPG Day. I’ve volunteered at my local game store every Free RPG Day. Part of why I do it is that it involves new players. I love introducing new people to the hobby and showing them the games.

Two years ago, when we still had in person gatherings I was lucky enough to get to introduce a family to Dungeon Crawl Classics. My local game store also functions as a comic book store. During that year, a father and his two kids had come into the store. They saw the event and asked what was going on. I got to explain DCC to them and they decided to play.

I’ll be honest I was a little worried because the kids were both under six years of age and the module was a character sieve. What that means is that the adventure was designed to be particularly vicious. Everyone creates a couple of characters and plays all of them simultaneously. This is because the adventure is particularly lethal. I was worried how the kids was handle their characters being killed. I explained this to make sure that their father knew and could help if one of them had a bad reaction.

The game began. Everyone rolled up characters; we all had tons of fun with the random charts. DCC has lots of randomness and character creation is pretty quick because of it. It also means that in addition to everything else we got to name a chicken and a cow as these were random pieces of equipment that the kids rolled.

Once characters were finished we headed into the dungeon. Everything went pretty well for the first fifteen or so feet and then dad lost a character. Everybody laughed and dad pointed out that he had another character so he was fine. Having found the first trap the kids very carefully navigated around it; into the second trap.

They did okay for a round or so and then one of the kids lost a character. I remember waiting to see what would happen. I was worried about this exact moment. However, it was fine. They laughed. After that the evening moved on and we finished the adventure. Of the six characters that went in one survived by running across the heads of a terracotta army to cheers from everyone else.

Did I take it easy on them? Yes. Did I let them win, maybe at the very end I might have fudged a dice roll. But to me, in this instance, it was okay. They were young kids and I wanted them to experience the victory. Plus, in the end they got a copy of the module, one of them won a dice tower from the store, and their dad bought the rulebook on their way out.

I like Free RPG Day for that reason. That moment is when I think our hobby is at its best. Two kids got a fun afternoon with their dad, they laughed, they thought out how to solve puzzles, and they won.

For me, that’s as welcoming as it gets.

I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about theory.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #24 Translate

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

Recently I’ve been developing my own setting for D&D. The idea behind my setting is the modern world is invaded by orcs and other monsters. This event causes chain of circumstances to unfold and ends with my players being thrust into a world where they have to deal with magic, monsters, and a world that isn’t safe anymore and how they’d deal with that.

Part of the challenge for this setting is coming up with the altered familiar. This ended being things in two categories, real world things that have been altered to the new setting and D&D staples that have been shifted to fit the real world. This led to me figuring out how to translate D&D into modern society. I’m translating monsters, spell, and even adventures into our modern world.

Translating the real world to D&D actually ended up being far easier than the other way around. Part of the inspiration for the setting is a series of videos by Ginny Di on D&D aesthetic and how it would look in a modern world. I’ll link to it here. Part of what made the idea work for me is by limiting the characters to teenagers as you would in old school traditional D&D. This opened up a world of ideas.

The first was treasure. I didn’t want teenagers digging through every monsters pocket for loose change after a fight. I decided that all adventure and dungeon crawling functioned on Vimeo. Whenever a monster is killed all of its money is deposited evenly in the players Vimeo accounts. It was a nice solve.

Second was language and part of why teenagers work so well. All of the characters get a couple of bonus languages; text and emoji. For the start of my campaign all the characters will be human. This will certainly change later but this is how we’re starting. Since I still wanted them to be able to talk to other races and characters those two languages are universal. I also created a new item a magic compact. It’s a small hand held compact similar to you would find in any makeup store. Except the mirror is magic and linked to a network of other similar magical items. For some reason, to be revealed later, cellphones connect to this network. Additionally, all D&D races speak Arkinian, or the language standard to the Commonwealth. A human centric empire that spans worlds. Arkinina and English are exceptionally similar. Again for reasons that will be identified during the campaign.

These were small bits of the things I translated for my campaign. I have several new takes on magic items like a motorcycle helmet of comprehend languages that translates anything heard into subtitles on the inside of the visor. Spells have gotten a shift over such as Vecna’s Voice Mail which functions similar to Magic Mouth but records the message on your voice mail.

I’ve translated characters such as Halaster, the Mad Mage, who instead of building dungeons to lead adventures into his traps is an app developer who creates deadly challenge peppered around the world that the app will direct people to. I’m even playing around with the idea of translating Curse of Strahd to a small New England town where the players might get invited by a distant relative. Maine and Barovia are probably sister locals.

I’m even playing around with the idea of translating non-D&D adventures into my world. I could easily see a couple of Shadowruns fitting into this setting. Or possibly one or two Vampire scenarios, since I’m planning on having a little bit of politics play out in their home town.

Taking these different ideas and translating them to my campaign has been a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to seeing it to fruition and learning how it will all work in the end. Plus I kind of want to see Strahd with a New England accent…crap, I just realized I’d be the one doing the accent…I wonder if I can get a guest NPC to come in as Strahd?

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow for Tradition.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day 2021 #23 Memory

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

My first memory of playing a role play game was the old red box D&D. It was a present for my birthday. I was 9 or 10 and my mom found it. I’d never heard of Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t know where she heard about it or saw it but she knew I liked fantasy and she wanted me to read more. D&D offered both of those things.

I didn’t go well. My friends, my brother, and I tried to play in the back yard but we didn’t really click with how the game worked. We were so bad at it that even though I was the dungeon master I we were all looking over the module to figure out what was going on.

This led to other things. I found hobby board games and miniature gaming from this. I met friends I still talk to today. I eventually found my way back to RPG’s. I came back to Palladium and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I floated around there for a while before finding my way back to D&D. There were other games; many I’ve talked about this month.

But I still think back to sitting in the grass in my back yard. My friends gathered around and us trying to figure out what to do next.

I’ll be back tomorrow talking about translate…maybe.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #22 Substitute

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

I think there are a couple of ways to view substitute in gaming. The one I’m going to look at is taking a break from your regular game and trying something else for a little bit.

I think if you’ve hit a large milestone in your campaign it’s a good idea to take a break and try something else for a week or two. There are a couple of reasons for this. If you’ve just hit a large bit of the story, finished the huge dungeon, or defeated one of the big bosses for your game it’s nice to let the game master step away and take a break.

As a GM I know how much work goes into that last couple of sessions leading to and including the big move. It’s hard to jump back in and go for the next boss, dungeon, or encounter. It’s nice to take a break from the big story and focus on something else. It’s especially nice if it’s a change in genre or if someone else takes the lead as GM for a bit. The spare time to get my thoughts organized and set in a decent path towards the next chapter in the story.  

I know from my own experience that it’s hard to get into the right head space to reset the stories pace and go back to a more neutral position. I believe that my games in the past have suffered when I’ve tried to push on and move into the next story beat. That small break of a couple of weeks is just a nice refresher that gives me time to recalibrate and come up with a good place to head back in.

This may be just a thing I like to do, but it works for me.

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about memory.

Until then. Stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #21 Simplicity

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

For simplicity I’d like to talk about an amazing game for beginner players, Quest. If you haven’t checked Quest out I recommend giving it a look. It is a setting neutral system that gives you and your player’s lots of freedom for character/world creation with a set of easy to use rules for playing the game.

Quest uses a single D20 for all of its rolls. Everything is handled with that one dice. Success is decided on a basic scale with 20 is a Triumph or critical success, 11-19 is a success, 6-10 is a success with a cost, 2-5 is a failure, and 1 is a catastrophe or fumble. For the most part, players will succeed at their actions with the possibility of having to choose between two setbacks with a roll of 6-10. I like this because succeeding is fun and even the setbacks are just excuses to have something interesting happen.

I know that some people will balk at this type of system, but I like it because it lets the players and the Guide focus on the game without forcing in unnecessary failure. You can fail, and even in that you don’t just miss your attack, something happens. You will miss with your attack, but you’ll also do something in conjunction with that, maybe you drop your sword, overextend your attack and are now in a bad spot, or your attack went wide and shattered the 18^th century vase that the king was particularly fond of. Who can say?

Character creation is easy. You have a worksheet with a couple of questions on it and use those to figure out what type of character you’re playing. Most of the questions are character based. They help you fill out your characters hopes, dreams, and appearance. Some of the questions are mechanical, like what class you’re playing or the equipment you’re carrying.

As a quick tip, weapons in this game follow anime rules. You want a sword, sure that’s an option, but you can also go into battle with an umbrella, yo-yo, or fishing rod. Weapons in this game fall into categories of light, heavy, ranged etc. The category of your weapon will affect how much damage it does and other rules that go with it. For example, swords, hammers, and such do 2 points of damage.

World building is handled much the same way. There’s a worksheet that gives you a series of questions to answer. These help you define the threat to the world, starting location for the adventurers, and the general feelings of the populace. This gives starting guides a great introduction to world building. Plus once you’re done with either the character or world sheet you have an introductory paragraph to use when describing that thing.

Here’s an example of a setting I designed using this method.

Your story begins in one of the magical worlds that make up the Planar Roads. From the endless caves of Selinia to the floating cities of Gato, you’ll find a darkness has been sapping the will of the people. In this world, magic is quickly fading, danger is becoming more and more common, and daily life has become hard and unforgiving. It’s a lot like a cross between Hogwarts, Kingdom Hearts, and Pirate 101. People here are hopeful that the darkness will recede, but despair and fear become more entrenched every day.

Your acceptance letter for the Lady Primrose School of Etiquette for the Modern Itinerant Daredevils; a School for Gifted Youth with a Tendency towards Adventure has arrived by messenger hare. Hoping to rekindle the spirit of adventure a new headmaster has reopened the school and you are to be one of the students from its inaugural class. With any luck, you may be the ones to help save the Planar Roads and the countless worlds that call it home.

 

Both of the worksheets I’ve mentioned are available on the Quest RPG website. I’ve used them for other games as a great starting point for setting up a character or setting.

I’ve described the rules and creation mechanics and it sounds like a great game for beginners. How does it work for experienced players? Every seasoned player I’ve run through a game has enjoyed it. It took a little bit to get used to the freedom the system offers you. I still have a hard time coming up with setbacks for a 6-10 roll and the players are usually uncertain what to do when the game starts but once they get their footing everything moves forward pretty well. I don’t see us ever running a year’s long campaign of Quest, but it is fun for a couple of evenings.

One last thing on this game because I think it’s a wonderful touch. The rulebook is one of the most charming reads I’ve ever had. I’m not entirely certain how they did it. Reading this book was a pleasant experience. The best way I can put it is this. One the last page of the book it thanks me for reading the rules. I’ve seen this before and since then. This is the only time I actually believed the book meant it.

Those are my thoughts on Quest, if you can give it a look it’s worth the time.

I’ll see you all tomorrow for substitute.

Until then. Stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #20 Foundation

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

What is the foundation of a good game? I’ve read some of the other response to this prompt today. I’ve seen a lot of great answers. People have talked about rules, systems, culture, mechanics, and so many other things.

However, for me the foundation of a great game is the people at the table. I’ve talked about a lot of different things this month and it occurred to me I haven’t talked about my friends. I’m not going to get very specific because I haven’t talked to them to ask if it was okay; it’s something I like to do. I will talk in general terms though.

For me, setting up a game starts and stops with the folks at the table. I always try and pick who I think will have the most fun in a game when I invite people to play. There are some of my friends I won’t ask to a horror game because they don’t like that type of story. There are people who don’t like mysteries and I’ll not invite them to take part. Beyond those few things we all try and meet in the middle about pieces of the story we tell. We try and work together to figure out what characters will work best in the group.

There are specific stories about each one of them I’d love to tell. Maybe someday I will.

We do invite new folks to the table. I’ve met many good friends for the first time at an RPG night. My current DM was introduced to me in another friend’s game. That’s how it works.

Maybe for you it is a focus on the rules or the system. For me it’s always been about who will enjoy the game the most? Even with that I usually give my players a couple of choices for which setting and story we’d like to tell.

That’s my take on foundation. I’ll come back tomorrow to talk about simplicity.

Until then. Stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #19 Theme

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

There’s a lot of ways to use theme when writing adventures. For myself I tend to weave theme into anything I run in two different ways. Either by the concepts I weave into the narrative or the recurring types of encounters. Though I suppose the second one could be more considered aesthetic.

For the first one, I like to focus on the ways in which my players interact with things and how the world around them reflects those ideas back at them. In a Through the Breach campaign I designed I had a focus on family in my game. The overall idea behind the campaign was built around them being assembled by a professor in Malifaux to work as an investigative team working out of his manor house. I wanted the campaign to focus on the mystery but I wanted family to be a big part of the story.

Part of bringing this idea across was to use their first case as a way of introducing the idea of family to the party. They were going to investigate a stolen painting. While doing so they’d discover that the thief was being forced to steal the art by a local crime faction. When the thief turns up dead so he couldn’t reveal who his employers were I was going to arrange for his widow and son to be brought into the house as NPC’s by the professor. This was going to be how I started to inform family as part of the story.

I wanted the game to have this background focus on how family effects the decisions we make and the things in our lives. Even the villain for that campaign was partially motivated by their relationship with their family.

The other way I use theme is by how I add motif to specific adventures. I’ll have something that pops up over and over as a way of foreshadowing things that are coming. One adventure I enjoy for doing this is from Tales from the Loop. Spoilers for the first adventure in the main rule book will be found in the next paragraph.

In that adventure there is a recurring bird motif; birds show up everywhere. They’re decorations in houses, books on tables, and they show up in the description of the various locals. As the group travels through the adventure they’ll eventually come across birds as part of the antagonists plan. Hostile birds start showing up in town. But by the time the first bird attack happens, the players will have already seen some reference to birds a couple of times.

Moments like those, that subtly suggest what’s coming without saying it, are some of my favorite. You can also find a great example of foreshadowing themes in a recent episode of the Dungeons and Daddies podcast. Though that one is by the players and not the DM.

I think these things are important in helping build a great narrative. Though even if your group doesn’t play for story and just enjoys a good dungeon crawl the use of theme can be a great addition to the flow of the dungeon. I think back to the old days of D&D where random monsters lived in complex cave systems with no real logic behind what was where or how it got there. You know the maze of 10 foot hall ways that lead to a single massive room with a giant living inside of it despite the fact that there’s no way for them to reach that room.

However, that’s a rant for another day. I’ll see you all tomorrow for foundation.

Until next time. Stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #18 Write

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

Do I write my own adventures? Yep. I’ve talked about this from the other side earlier this month. I like to write my own adventures and supplement them with purchased content. It works best for me. For today though, I think I’ll cover how I start writing an adventure.

My first step is almost always determine the final boss. I want to know where the story is headed and it gives me a guide for what sort of things they’ll have to deal with. Knowing what the boss is lets me know what minions to use, locations to prepare, and types of underling encounters that will help set the stage. I want everything to be a gradual rise in tension to that final encounter.

 Also, the boss may not be the villain of the story. I’ve used the boss encounter as a stepping stone to future adventures or had it under the sway of a physically weaker character. This particular dungeon may only be a stepping stone in the overall villain’s network.

I also think it’s important to point out that the boss might not be a combat encounter. Sometimes the boss is a puzzle, a diplomatic encounter, or a series of emergencies crashing into one another like giant cosmic dominoes.

 A little while ago I wrote an adventure for Star Trek Adventures. The boss set the tone for the entire mission. For this mission I had decided that the “boss” would be a massive unstable wormhole in orbit around a mining colony on an asteroid.  The rift was destabilizing the asteroid and putting the lives of everyone in danger. It was going to be up to the team to evacuate survivors, stop the field generator that was causing the rift, rescue a Klingon scientist who was pinned by rubble, and get their own ship to a safe distance.

After I knew this was the boss encounter for the mission I was able to go in and seed the different things that led up to the final encounter. They were required to host a formal diplomatic dinner for a group of Klingons and Romulans to build rapport with both groups to improve the odds that they’d try and save him. I was going to have them examining an ancient control panel in a hidden section of tunnel that would eventually break down and cause the rift they needed to repair.

The entire adventure was either setting up the end problem, laying out future possible adventures hooks, and giving the group a chance to use their skill and look good doing it. This is why when I write adventures I start with the monster at the end of the book.

I’ll see you tomorrow when I talk about theme.

Until then, stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #17 Trap

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

I like traps. Grimtooth and I go way back, and I realize that’s a reference some of you are too young to get. For thos of you who are, Gritmtooth’s Traps were a series of books that were filled with incredibly unfair traps that were almost guaranteed to kill entire parties. The books were written in a catalogue style and given a bit of humor by Grimtooth’s utter disregard for players. While I don’t recall ever using any of the absolute murder pits that were Grimtooth’s design, I did learn for the books.

One of the things that I picked up and still use is this; not all traps are mechanical or in nature. Sure, a good number of them have springs, counterweights, hidden levers, and so many other moving parts. However, some of them are something else entirely. One of my favorites was a little trap I designed to get play on my player’s reliance on dark vision.

The trap was simple enough. A blind samurai was positioned in a fifteen foot round room. There was there were two exits from the room. The samurai was kneeling in the center of the floor with a bandage wrapped around his head indicating that he couldn’t see.

The group approached the samurai and talked to him. He was a decent fellow who followed the local lord out of a sense of duty. He was sworn by family honor to obey the lord despite his terrible ways. He also told them if they tried to get past him he would defend the hallway and the castle.

The group liked the character, and figured that since he was blind and outnumbered they would have an easy win. That is until he drew his sword. It was a magic katana with a Permanent Darkness spell cast on it. This worked a treat since my players had all chosen races that had dark vision so they wouldn’t have to worry about torches. It also meant that none of them had taken blind fighting.

This was my trap. No moving pieces, no bits of machinery to disarm, and no way to detect it via spell. It was a simple trap with exactly one piece in play; a blind samurai with a magic sword.

I love doing things like this. These little traps that get people without them really understanding what’s about to happen. I think we forget that a trap can be much more than a pit full of spikes. Though the pit of spikes can be a ton of fun.

That’s traps, tomorrow I’ll look at Write.

Until next time. Stay safe and be well.

RPG a Day #16 Villain

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

RPG a Day finally beat me. I just could not come up with a way to talk about move. I’ve seen some interesting answers to the prompt floating around, but nothing jumped out as a way for me to cover it. Thus, I’m going with one of the other prompts; villain.

I thought about talking about some of my favorite villains that my players have dealt with over the years. There are quite a few that really stand out for me here. I even considered covering some of the ones I’ve encountered as a player. Harlequin from Shadowrun was a nice contender here. In the end, I decided to go with a non-typical villain.

One of my favorite games is X Crawl. The game is set in a modern world where magic exists and dungeon crawling is an extreme sport televised for the masses. Every dungeon is designed and run by a Dungeon Judge. Their job is to challenge the crawlers with physical and mental obstacles while putting on a ratings grabbing piece of entertainment. It would be easy to call every DJ the players have run against a villain but I don’t think it really applies here. You see, most of DJ’s are just people who do this for a living. DJ Cudgel Up sets her crawls to highlight the athletes and make them the starts. Sure, she’ll kill some of them but that doesn’t make them villains any more than the doctor who administers the lethal injection is one.

However, there are a couple of DJ’s that are absolutely villains. Some of them are from published crawls and I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll use one of my own. DJ Vine Child was the head of Napa Valley Crawl. She hosted her event as part of a large wine celebration in honor of Bacchus, god of wine and celebration. She was pleasant, funny, and to all appearances ran an extremely fair crawl.

Except she didn’t. She was an emotionless killing machine. How she hid this was to choose a type of person and target them on each team. Maybe she went after elves, healers, tanks, or blondes. Whatever it was she picked a type every year and set out to absolutely kill every one of them. She curated her teams so there would be exactly one of her target on each team. It didn’t matter to her if the rest of the team lived or died as long as she killed that one target.

The time I ran her, I randomly rolled a party member and made them her target. That year she was going after the teams healers. To do this she had to set it up in a way to escape suspicion. Sure the DJ can kill tons of Crawlers and no one would care. But those deaths had to be random; they had to be the will of the Fates. To specifically target someone was crossing a line.

This meant that she couldn’t order the intelligent monsters to focus her target she had to be creative. I did this by setting up some out of crawl events as part of the experience. First, she held a huge festival the night before opening of the crawl. The festival was filled with music, lots of drinking, and ran well into the night. She would then schedule one of the teams very early the next morning ensuring that at least one team would have a bit of a problem focusing.

Before the second level she set up a charity bachelor/bachelorette auction. She seeded the crowd with people who were specifically there to win the company of her targets. As part of the date each target was given a gift of cologne or perfume that was mixed with a specific scent that she dosed the food of her more vicious monsters. This made sure the creatures would focus her target.

For the final level she could put an emphasis on her one target since only one team went through the final level. If she’s only focusing one target its strategy not part of some nefarious plan. She also worked to alter their lives outside the crawl. She’d try and sneak a subsonic noise generator into their hotel room the night before the final level to mess with their sleep. If they were allergic to something she’d try and get it hidden amongst the refreshments offered in the green room.

And if any of them survived the crawl she’d congratulate the team and be outwardly happy for the crawlers. However, a few months later during the off season, accidents started happening. Maybe someone was caught in a hit and run, there might be a mugging, or possibly someone fell victim to an obsessed fan given just the right push.

Her goal was to murder that one person on each team. If she did it during the crawl it was her best victory. If not, she’d still find a way to secure her quarry. This to me as villain in X Crawl.

What are some out of the box villains that you’ve seen over the years?

Anyway, I’ll see you all tomorrow when I talk about Trap.

Until then, stay safe and be well.