New Contest! Tell us about your Best Worst Villain!

Tell us about your absolute best worst villain! We have some cool prizes for you to win, so send it in!

With Prizes!

Every RPG session is rife with characters, and every RPG adventure is packed with bad guys, but there’s always that one villain who stands out from the rest.

We’re looking for that one villain that your players are going to remember. It could be your ultimate big-bad-evil-guy, the unassuming NPC armed with only his dastardly wits, or anyone in between. Really, we want to hear about that villain that all your players could never forget. Perhaps he has an unexpected quirk (every morning he shaves using his halberd?), or perhaps he has a tricked out light-saber (Darth Maul, anyone?), or maybe he’s the down-trodden con artist with a medical condition (Keyser Söze?)

Whoever this evil person is, we want to hear about him (or her)!

Your character must be a villain, someone who opposes or antagonizes the player characters.
The villain can be for any RPG, genre, or setting.
Entries must be 500 – 1200 words.
Stat blocks may be included, but do not count toward the 500 word minimum.
Art may be included, but is not considered when judging.
Entries may be made through our Contact form (below), or you can mail them to us at [stuffershack at that yahoo dot com place].
You may enter as many times as you like, but you may win only once.
The deadline for entries is in two weeks (July 24th, which is a Tuesday).
The judges consist of Stuffer Shack’s Crew.
The winners will be announced on Monday, July 30th.
We will have up to three winners. If we have 1-5 entries, there will be only one winner. If we have 6-10 entries, there will be 1st and 2nd place winners. If we have 11 or more entries, we’ll have a 3rd place winner.
All winners will receive two PDFs from Gnome Stew consisting of Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots, and Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs. 1st place winner will also get to choose one of the five sets of dice from Q-Workshop (shown below). 2nd place will get second choice, and 3rd place will get third choice.

Metal Steampunk dice — 5d6 Metal Steampunk Dice

Metal Dwarven D6 — 5d6 Metal Dwarven Dice

So, get your thinking caps on, and tell us about your best worst villain!

This contest is sponsored by Gnome Stew and Q-Workshop. For information on becoming a sponsor, click here.

New contest next week – get your villains ready!

Next week we’ll be hosting a new contest – Your Best Worst Villain!

It’s all about describing a great bad guy (or girl). We’re talking enemies and villains (not monsters), and we’re going to need a few paragraphs as to why they are so awesome. So, if you have an idea for a great villain, don’t turn anything in yet – tune in next week for the official rules.

The number of prizes to be awarded will be dependent on the number of contestants. More contestants, more prizes!

This contest is being sponsored by

And

If you’d like some information about sponsoring this contest, click here!

Favorite Site of the Month – July/2012

So, we don’t normally plug two different websites as our Favorite site of the Month, but these two sites are run by the same person, and both simply add to gaming in a great way…

I’d like to introduce Jaap de Goede, creator of the Dark Dungeon roleplaying game, as well as the Dark Dungeon Vaults (an aggregator site). If there’s one thing I like about gamers, it’s their tenacity in creating an entire roleplaying game, and creating a website that pulls together hundreds or thousands of gaming blogs in one area. Ok, that’s two things.

Here’s Jaap de Goede on how he started the Dark Dungeon RPG, and his aggregator site for RPG blogs, The Dark Dungeon Vaults…

As a Dutch native, I’ve been a fantasy role player ever since I picked up the Moldvay edition of D&D in 1981, and I still think that’s one of the best role playing games around. So you could peg me as an Old Schooler in that respect. However, I also started to design my own game variants soon after, inspired by Traveller and Runequest. Eventually, this culminated in the first versions of Dark Dungeon. With a best friend, who now also works in Film and Television industry like I do, I wrote up the rules in a confined room in his parent’s wind mill. That was in 1989.

The Dark Dungeon RPG
In the DD system we tried to put everything we liked from other systems. and strip whatever we thought was too cumbersome. Originally, we wrote the rules because we needed a clear system for our expanding group. The group actually grew so large that we decided we had to radically change the way we played, just to give everyone a chance to play. So, we designed a common world (again plundering everything we liked), and made a schedule of who could play when and who should game master the adventure. We wrote up the system, made a beautiful booklet which we printed fifteen times, and named it “Dark Dungeon”. This (of course) referred to Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons” booklets, which we didn’t take too seriously at the time. The whole preparation took several hundred man hours, and we laughed that we probably would only play two sessions before our scheme collapsed, so that each session should be priced at a few thousand dollars – if we would have asked money for it.

But it did not collapse. In fact, it was such a success that the game group expanded even further, to about a hundred and fifty in its heyday.
We had a few dozen regular game masters, and played well over two thousand adventures together, all through the 1990s. All in one world, and all in the Dark Dungeon system. Remember that this is a table top RPG, and that this was before there were MMORPGs!

The Blog
Time progressed, and eventually the huge DD group faded. The rules went through a few new incarnations, but as they were fairly stable since 1993, I also decided to put them out on the web. I think that was in 2001. We had several (hopeful) false starts trying to build websites and fora, before thankfully Blogger appeared, and I finally discovered it. Blogger is a wonderful app for tech-lazy writers like myself, and it finally gave me the opportunity to share with others what I had learned over all these years – without the nitty gritty of HTML.

So, with zeal I started to blog and write about everything I considered important and loved about the game. And that’s not just the Dark Dungeon system, which you can download for free from the site (and soon buy in a beautiful illustrated version on Lulu and DriveThru). There’s a lot out there, I figured, which you cannot see if you just go to the game store and buy 4e D&D (or 3e, which was just being launched as I started my first “blog” attempts). Much of the fun in Role Playing you just cannot sell, and you can only learn about it if you share freely. That’s what I wanted to show.

The Dark Dungeon Vaults
Once I had enough blogs, I signed up for the RPG Bloggers Network, which is a great way to share and be visible to many people. But, as they were facing some political issues at the time, they were excruciatingly slow to admit me or anyone else. Fortunately, in retrospect, as it motivated me to build the Dark Dungeon Vaults. Here you now can find well over 2000 RPG blogs on blogrolls, and I add new ones weekly. Actually I keep being surprised and stand in awe how much you bloggers are writing. There’s an amazing lot of good stuff, and some very high-quality coming out of the online community!

Dark Dungeon 2nd Edition in Print
With some luck, you’ll be able to buy the revised and fully illustrated Dark Dungeon starter rules in print this July. It will be out on LuLu and DriveThru, both in print and pdf. I’m very proud of it. Currently I’m working on the next few books, which you could call “Expert Sets”. The first one is planned for October.

Thank you, Jaap, for telling us about your game, your blog dedicated to your game, and your aggregator site. I absolutley love it that you are doing a great part in bringing gaming sites together, and I look forward to checking out The Dark Dungeon RPG when it comes out…

Never Unprepared – A Review!

Recently I was given a sneak peek at Engine Publishing / Gnome Stew’s latest book, “Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep, and asked to do a review. Let’s see how it goes…

Recently I was given a sneak peek at Engine Publishing / Gnome Stew’s latest book, “Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep, and asked to do a review. Now, I’m currently running a Serenity game – which has been great so far – but I admit that I’ve been very lackluster in getting those sessions ready (a common theme with my games, lately). Since the producers of the book claim that “[It] will help you prepare for games faster, avoid common pitfalls, and have more fun in the process,” I immediately jumped at the chance. Sure, I could do a review, but I was really more interested in seeing if it could actually help me prepare for my games better. Let’s find out…

At a Glance

Never Unprepared – The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep
From: Engine Publishing (enginepublishing.com) and Gnome Stew (gnomestew.com)
Author: Phil Vecchione
Publisher: Martin Ralya
Pages:128, 9×6 (digest)
Price: $19.95 print + PDF bundle, or $9.95 PDF

My Initial Thoughts

The producers of Never Unprepared have already come out with two well-received, high-quality role-playing game books. This (coupled with the truth that I am in dire need of a session prep attitude adjustment) has given me high hopes that the book will deliver.

Upon cracking open the PDF, I’m met with what seems to be a professionally produced book. The content is laid out nicely in a single column, Justified text format, with the occasional piece of art to break it up. We have Credits, a Table of Contents, a Forward, an Introduction, and a How to use this Book section. That’s all fine, but I wanted to get to the meat of the matter – I wanted to know how to prep my games better.

It wasn’t until I reached chapter 2, page 16, that I finally sat upright in my chair and began reading more intently. Up to this point I was a little let down, because it seemed that the book was going to be nothing but fluff. I don’t mind fluff, exactly, it just seemed like there was too much of it. Perhaps the author had to fill the book up to 128 pages for production reasons? I don’t know, but it was tedious. I really feared that the rest of the book was going to be filled with a lot of, well, filler.

So, my initial impression was not good.

The Rest of the Book

The book offers a step-by-step process of getting ready for your game session, beginning with Brainstorming. In fact, there’s a whole chapter on Brainstorming. This is the kind of stuff that I like. I like being shown and told what to do, and I like that it’s a step-by-step process.

Phil Vecchione’s concept of session prep includes five steps:

Brainstorming
Selection
Conceptualization
Documentation
Review

Each step has a devoted chapter of it’s own, and each chapter includes tips, tricks, ideas, solutions, and even your own personal skill assessment. I felt (after reading these five chapters) that I was finally starting to get my money’s worth (well, if I had paid for it, anyway).

The book goes on to include information on tools that you might use to help with your session prep (and ways to get the most out of them), and information on finding and developing a schedule to compliment your peak productivity. To be honest, I felt the author had some good ideas on utilizing prep tools, but the amount of effort Phil puts into helping you find time (or the creative energy) for session prep is not necessary. I found myself (once again) just trying to get to the next section. Don’t get me wrong, it’s obvious that Phil knows what he’s talking about, I just don’t feel that the section of time and creative management applied to me.

However, immediately after forcing my way through that section, I’m introduced to the chapter, “Your Personal Prep Templates.” If the step-by-step process that I mentioned earlier is the meat of the matter, the Personal Prep Templates are the delicious flavor. Of course, the book (as a whole) should explain how to better prepare for a session (and it does), but this section alone seems to provide half its worth. Earlier parts of the book help you prepare for the game, but this section helps you run it. Please don’t mistake those two as the same thing, because they aren’t. I guess I would say that the section on templates is a great little bit on how to improve as a GM, sneakily disgused within session prep. I don’t know what else to say about it. I simply found this section very interesting, eye-opening, and extremely useful.

The book concludes with information and ideas on how to prep using less-than-ideal time and situations, and helps you deal with prep under unusual circumstances.

My Final Thoughts

I was asked to do a review, but what I really wanted was to see if the book could improve my session prep, and thus, improve my game. So, I put it to the test. As I said earlier, I’ve been running a Serenity game with a minimum amount of session prep. I’ve been lucky in that my group has seemed to enjoy every minute of it, even though I have not. I’d forget NPC names, not know which direction to go with the story, and rely too often on food breaks to come up with ideas mid-game. You could say that if the players didn’t seem to notice and were having fun, then I’m doing fine. However, I don’t like the stress that comes with the uncertainty.

So, I spent some time preparing for the next session. I specifically followed the step-by-step method (Brainstorming, Selection, Conceptualization, Documentation, and Review), and then I spent some more time developing my Personal Templates. I wish I could tell you that our game was a raging success, but we haven’t played it yet. In honest truth, I’m simply really looking forward to it. I feel very confident, not that the session will run well, but that I will truly be the master of the game. I’m not really worried about whether or not the players will have fun (I think they would enjoy it even if I was completely unprepared), I just know that I will enjoy it, because I’ll feel confident that I’ll be running a good game.

As far as putting the book to the test, I’m confident that it passed. I am fully ready for our next session, and look forward to preparing future sessions. I seriously doubt there will be any more procrastinating or flying by the seat of my pants, because I feel that I now have the tools to prepare correctly, confidently, and to full effect.

In Conclusion

I found Never Unprepared to be a long read. I found myself getting impatient at times. And I found myself thinking that the book could have been cut to half as many pages. It wasn’t until page 16 rolled around that I started to find it interesting, and even then there still seemed to be too much filler content continuing forward.

I found Never Unprepared interesting. I found myself saying, “I’ll have to try that.” And I found myeslf looking forward to preparing and running my next game. While different sections of the book will sing to different readers, I found two sections which seemed to have been written specifically for me. I would describe the five-chapter step-by-step process as the meat of Never Unprepared, but I would say that “Personal Prep Templates” is the section that solidifies its value.

I dare say that every GM could benefit from this book, and if I hadn’t gotten a preview copy, I’d buy one myself.

Favorite Site of the Month – June 2012

Hey! We have our first Favorite Site of the Month since the 2012 SOTY contest wrapped up, and it’s a great one!

I’m a little ashamed to say that I haven’t been reading her blog for very long. It wasn’t until recently that I found myself absorbing her articles more and more often. She has this style of writing – well, I’m afraid to describe it for fear of not doing it justice – when I’m reading her posts, I just get the sense that she’s right there talking to me. Her written words just seem to speak aloud, as if we’re face-to-face. Not only that, but she says things that I want to hear, whether I agree or not. It’s just kind of… engaging.

But, that’s not why Tracy Hurley’s Sarah Darkmagic is our Favorite site of the Month; there are quite a few other reasons… Downloadable Delves, Monster Builder Tutorial, RPG Tools… you name it. However, what I’m impressed most about the site is its overall dedication of providing RPG material to gamers. Anyone can put up a gaming blog – and there will always be someone who can benefit from that – but with Sarah Darkmagic, gamers can expect the site to go the extra mile. This is even more obvious when you take notice of her recently (successfully) funded Kickstarter Project: Prismatic Art.

It’s a project aimed at providing a more diverse type of fantasy art, inspired from and depicting different cultures and backgrounds.

Thanks, Tracy, for putting up a fantastic site. I know Sarah Darkmagic will continue to flourish, and gamers will continue to visit.

All this for a little disk? – A Serenity RPG Adventure Idea

This is an adventure idea for the Serenity Role Playing Game, by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.

The player characters are approached by a woman claiming to have the salvage rights to a derelict boat. She asks to be taken on a four-day journey to the Higgins Asteroid Belt, where a luxury liner has been disabled. She also requires assistance getting into the boat and retrieving certain items.

If pressed for more information, Selene will say that she was a passenger on the boat when the captain wanted to show off for the passengers, and subsequently veered the boat too close to the asteroid belt. The liner was disabled, an then battered heavily. Several passengers and crew were killed, and the remaining escaped via life pods. She wants to retrieve as much of the luggage as possible (or so she says), and it will require the help of the player characters (they’ll have to board the salvage with her).

The salvage papers are actually legit, though she had to grease a few palms to make it happen (hey, passenger luggage from a luxury liner can fetch a fat payday). Particularly savvy characters will notice that, although Selene is dressed down to look “average,” she seems to be hiding the truth – that she is (or was) a sanctioned companion.

Upon arrival, the characters will notice that the salvage is indeed on the edge of the Higgins Asteroid Belt, but it seems to have veered a bit off, making it safe for docking. The boat has sustained major damage, and most of its life pods have been jettisoned.

After a few hours of retrieving passenger luggage, the player characters (or simply the pilot) will notice a freighter coming in very, very fast. They can make Notice or Awareness rolls, but the results will only determine how fast they can get back onto their ship and get ready for a fight. If they hail the incoming boat, all they get in return is a throaty growl (they will say nothing else). The ship is larger than the PCs’ ship, and has a large magnetic clamp. It isn’t a matter of getting out of there in time, it’s a matter of how prepared the characters can be when they get boarded.

The boarding party is only interested in stealing the cargo and luggage that the PCs are collecting, but will board the ship with hostility. Leading with flashbangs, they will enter and start shooting. Regardless of how many pirates are killed, more will contnue to board, preventing any of the PCs from entering the pirate ship. As the number of dead or dying pirates starts adding up, one of the pirates will receive a communication via earpiece. He’ll try to respond over the gunfire, “WHAT? SAY THAT AGAIN… ROCKY, JONES… WE… ARE… LEAVING… NOW!!!” With that, the pirates will try to leave. If they are prevented from doing so, the pirate ship detaches anyway and takes off.

An Alliance cruiser (three times as big as the PCs’ ship) is approaching. It will initially chase the pirates, but will veer off and close in on the PCs’ ship, preventing escape. When Alliance soldiers board the PCs ship (assuming the PC’s don’t shoot), they will disarm the PCs, take any surviving pirates back to their ship for medical attention and arrest, and then inspect Selene’s salvage papers.

They will interrogate the PCs, asking about what was brought on board, and if the pirates were able to take anything. They will then search the ship, tossing everything inside out – they will even search the PCs thoroughly. Highly illegal weapons will be confiscated and not returned. However, they will pay special attention to the newly acquired luggage.

When they are done searching, the PCs are told that their salvage rights have now been revoked, and that the luxury liner is now off limits. Weapons are returned, though they have been emptied of ammo and disassembled. Lt. Haviston is not interested in pestering the PCs with infractions and fines, and instead lets the PCs go. As he and his soldiers leave the PCs’ ship, he can be heard giving orders to get ready to tow the luxury liner.

What’s going on, really?

In the middle of the fight with the pirates, some PC can see Selene hiding something in a small nook somewhere on the ship. The Alliance soldiers were looking for this item, but they didn’t find it.

If confronted, she’ll say that she is an unregistered companion, and was with a client on the luxury liner when it was disabled. Her client (Michael Chan) confessed to her that he purchased a video from an Alliance officer, and wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it. She’s seen the video, and apparently finds it of some value. That’s why she spent so much in bribes to get the salvage rights to the liner.

The Video

The video shows General John Cherokee of the Alliance interrogating four recently arrested Browncoat “terrorists.” The terrorsts were recently caught damaging and defacing Alliance supply depots. General Cherokee presses them for information on finding more of their contacts, but quickly grows tired of this, and executes them personally (bullets and brains don’t mix). He’s then heard telling his assistant officer to dump their bodies, delete records of their arrest, and then to delete the video that was recording the interrogation.

And Michael Chan?

The assistant officer, in a moment of weakness, instead sold the video to Michael Chan for a large sum of money. Chan then went on a cuise liner with Selene (she was posing as a registered companion). He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it, he just thought it was an amusing piece of “art.” He died when the cruise liner was battered by asteroids.

And the Pirates?

When the assistant officer finally came to his senses, he felt the money he received from Michael Chan wasn’t enough to hide him from General Cherokee if the video went public. So, he hired the pirates to get it back. They were to retrieve it from the cruise liner if possible, or destroy the ship with a lot of plastic explosives if they couldn’t find it.

And the Alliance?

The assistant officer sold the video to Michael Chan, and then hired the pirates to get it back. He then confided to a “friend” about what was going on. This “friend” (unfortunately) reported to General Cherokee about what was going on. General Cherokee then dispatched a cruiser to get to the liner to acquire the disk.

And the PCs?

So, what do the PCs do with the disk?

Do they try to sell it for some quick cash?
Do they bleed it onto the Cortex for all to see?
Do they give it to a news company to do it themselves?
Do they make copies?
Do they let Selene pay them for the job, and let her take it?
Or do they destroy it so as to rid themselves of what could be one heck of a gor-am headache?

Whatever they do, Selene may or may not stick with the PCs (hey, having what appears to be a companion on board, can possibly open some doors for them).

New Store, New Monster Minis, and New Exotic Mounts!

Lots of stuff happening around here, and one of those things is upgrading our Store. With some new Monster Minis and Exotic Mounts (as well as a super-secret project getting ready to kick off), it was time for an upgrade. Check out some of the new items below, and then head over to the new Store for the rest. I’m pretty proud of it, and I hope you find something that will make your game even more fun!

(Minotaur - 1 or 2-inch base) It is said that in ancient times, a goddess would sometimes punish humans by creating Minotaurs. Seeing as how these minotaurs were neither man or beast (but both), they had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance. Through the centuries, the savage creatures have survived, creating offspring of their own. Some say that minotaurs can now even be taught to speak...

(Double-Headed Young Hydra - 2-inch base) You'll have to be either stupid or desperate to think that riding this beast is going to end well. Still, there have been at least a couple of brave souls who made it work (at least until the hydras finally ate them).

(Slee-stog - 2-inch base) Slee-stogs are great swimmers, preferring to live in or near lakes (and sometimes bogs or swamps). They aren't so fast on land, but that doesn't stop them from surrounding their prey, hissing as they close in.

(Camel - 2-inch base) They may not be as pretty or as fast, but a Camel will outlast any horse, any day. Besides, can your horse spit?

(Green Drake - 2-inch base) Green Drakes are simply mean, mean, mean. Not only is their disposition downright dreadful, but they rarely attack with deadly force, preferring to paralyze you with their venom so they can slowly pick your bones as you lay there suffering through it. While they can be dominated to be used as attack drakes, they absolutely will not accept a rider.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Don’t forget about those favorites that started it all…

Click here to check out the new store!

Player Maintenance: When is enough “Enough”?

Dirtbike riding and role-players have something in common – they both require varying degrees of maintenance…

I love dirtbike riding, I love tearing up the dirt, and I love getting dirty because of it. I love gunning it and climbing up steep hills, I love kicking up dirt on the rider next to me, and I love getting airborn. I love it all so much it’s practically my medicine.

Unfortunately, all that wear and tear takes it’s toll on the bike, and thus, it requires a boatload of maintenance. My first bike, a Honda XR650L, was a monster. It wasn’t really suited for someone who was just learning how to ride, but I didn’t care – crashing was par for the course. Between my ER bills, and the bike’s repair costs, we probably evened out.

After I finally settled into a nice rhythm of not crashing, my riding then became a matter of how much maintenance was required on the bike in order to continue riding. Sure, a lot of that extra maintenance was my fault, due in part to my excessive-aggressive riding style, but there were many times I didn’t want to ride because I didn’t know if the resulting maintenance was going to be worth it.

Well (surprisingly), dirt bike riding and role-players have something in common – they both require varying degrees of maintenance.

If you have a player…

that has tardiness or attendance issues,
that has two weeks to make a character, and waits until 5:00 P.M. game night,
who never reads the rules or setting, forcing you to spend more time showing him how to play.
who challenges the GM’s rulings unnecessarily,
who starts arguments,
who often interrupts the game,
or whose characters often create unnecessary friction within the party,

…then you may need to perform player maintenance from time to time.

But how do you do it? And how often? And when is enough, enough? How do you perform maintenance on this player so that the game can continue in relative harmony?

I suppose you could throw a few jabs from time to time, in the hopes that the player picks up on it. But what if they aren’t as sharp as sharp cheddar? What if they need a direct talkin’ to? Do you confront them? Can you? What if you’ve done that too often and are now left with leaving the group as your only option? Perhaps the offending player is forced to leave the group?

I’ve been on both ends of this dilemma. I’ve been the player needing to be maintained, and also the player who watches this problem unfold around him. I imagine this happens more often than not, and I long for the day when everyone at the table (myself included) requires the least amount of player maintenance, while still delivering the most amount of fun.

I guess what it boils down to is that you have to not only be able to recognize that there’s a problem (so that you can perform the necessary maintenance), but you also have to know when to throw in the towel and get a new bike altogether.

The question is, at what point do you get that new bike?

Changing how your players play (the right way)

I’ll be honest. That is me much of the time. Do I like being that way? No, but it’s hard to change because, well, I am always right.

How many times have you tried to influence how your players play their characters?

“You need to get into character more.”
“Give him a background.”
“Give him goals.”
“Give him morals.”
“Give him quirks.”
“Make him different from your last ten characters.”
“Just… roleplay more.”

A few months ago I had the opportunity to join a new group. It’s a great group, and I’m happy to be here. I was basically put in as a rotating GM, so I’ll be running one week and playing the next. It’s a great set-up, and I’m getting to know the players and their playing styles fairly well.

“I’ve never played a character with this much depth before.”

My game of choice for this group is the Serenity Roleplaying Game, using the fantastic Savage Worlds system. We’re all familiar with the Serenity ‘verse, and we all enjoy some Savage Worlds, so this seems like a good fit for me to run.

However, as I am wont to do, I tinkered with the rules – particularly with the Bennies (they’re like luck points or action points). If you know me at all, then you know that I really like the Aspect concept from the FATE system (we even have a nice series on it). Basically, the players added a few aspects to their characters, giving them automatic backgrounds, personalities, and traits. Their characters were instantly fleshed out and had tons of, well, character. The players could use their bennies normally, or use them as normal FATE points (gain a +2 bonus after a roll, or invoke for effect).

The curve ball, though, was that in order for them to gain new bennies they had to have their aspects compelled against them. This naturally brings into the story all of the characters’ backgrounds, personalities, and traits, making the story that much richer.

Well, after our second session, one of our players said to me, “I’ve never played a character with this much depth before.” I was immediately happy to hear these words, because (to me) that meant that he was changing how he role-played. He was moving on from the strong, silent type into a character that was a little more unique, one that had to make difficult decisions based on his convictions, morals, and beliefs. The player had been pushed out of his comfort zone, and in that endeavor, had found a little bit of role-playing reward and satisfaction because of it. In essence, he was evolving.

Yes! I’ve done it! I’ve improved a player’s approach as to how they are to play the game!

Annnnnnd then I realized that I am really just full of shit.

I’ve sat back these past couple of days reveling in smug. I was so happy about getting this player to conform to my way of gaming that I actually kind of felt a little stupid. Did I introduce the Aspects into the game because I thought it was going to be more fun, or because I wanted players to play more my style?

There I was, a brand new player and GM to this group, and I was thinking they have things to learn from me. I’d like to say that I introduced the Aspects to make the game more fun, but I think I did it to make the game more fun for me. Ergo, if it’s fun for me, it will be fun for them.

Who the hell am I to suppose that my way is better?

Sure, everyone seems to be having a good time, but I wonder, should I have just run Savage Worlds per the rules, should I get off my high horse, am I even on a high horse?

I don’t know, what do you think?

And the winner of the 2012 RPG Site of the Year is…

I’m very happy to announce that The Id DM is the 2012 RPG Site of the Year!

Out of 34 contestants, readers voted online to come up with five finalists. After that, the judges had an entire week to go over those finalists to determine their favorite. Points were tallied (twice!), and the winner was determined. While everyone certainly had a strong showing, it was The Id DM that finally took the lead. They win the prizes (shown below), the SOTY Shield, and the title of 2012 RPG Site of the Year!

Here are a few words about the finalists (they are not especially indicative of a judge’s 1st choice, though):

On The Id DM: “…It’s the quality of writing that made The Id DM stand out. The posts are intelligent, thought-provoking and deserve far more exposure than they have right now. The focus here is the content, and that more than speaks for itself.”

On Gnome Stew: “Gnome Stew is a site I consistently look up to in terms of focus of content and breadth of topics. Nearly any subject, large or small, that matters to GMs is covered by the team of gnomes, and their vast experience on the subject of GMing is seen most clearly by looking at projects like their books to know that they are serious.”

On Nearly Enough Dice: “I’m not usually one to listen to podcasts, but there is a lot to like here. It is easy to see how Nearly Enough Dice made it to the final round. They cover a fairly wide range of topics and while informative do also have a casual air that can make it easy to listen to. Definitely something to start following if you’re not already.”

On the Id DM: “One would be hard pressed to find a single site with such a wealth of material as cleanly presented, well written, creatively inspiring, or just plain fun to read as The Id DM. If you’re not reading it regularly, you’re overdue to regret this – stop depriving yourself and start reading now.”

On Dungeon’s Master: “Great usefulness for 4^th edition in particular. Also, most of the articles are transferable to other games.”

On G*M*S Magazine: “I loved the writing on this blog – accessible, entertaining, and very friendly. Probably one of the best written sites I’ve read.”

The RPG Site of the Year contest and award was thought up and implemented with three goals in mind:

To provide a fun event that readers and bloggers can take part in,
To bring to light some interesting blogs that readers may not have seen before,
And to award that one gaming blog for a job very well done.

I think we’ve nailed each of these goals, and it’s been a blast. I’ve especially liked seeing the good spirit shown by all, and meeting all the sites that I’ve never seen before. Just good times.

I have to say, last year – when we had our first RPG Site of the Year contest, I was also having a blast. I was enjoying the contest’s first year, and was really looking forward to it growing. Well, this year the SOTY Award has grown by leaps and bounds, and I wanted to thank everyone that has been associated with it. The sponsors, judges, voters, and contestants – it’s just been great working with you all to make this happen, so thank you.

I have a request: please take a moment to congratulate The Id DM on a site well-done. Please take a moment to visit our sponsors (shown below) – they have made the contest more exciting by donating prizes and showing support. And please take a moment to check out the contestants listed below. They may not have all made it to the final round, but they’re all unique and add valuable gaming material to our hobby (and come on, Cheese Shop? That deserves a click simply because of their name alone – and I like cheese).