So, you have your character… some extremely talented wizard with maxed-out Intelligence. 18 or 19 is pretty high, right? And their name is… Grandalf (true story). You’re boppin along with your merry band of fellow adventurers when you come across a puzzle inside a dungeon. The gamemaster must have put a lot of effort into this thing because this puzzle looks particularly puzzling. Hieroglyphs, numbers, [Read the article]
I’ve been into RPGs for a while now, and I’ve enjoyed both playing in and running the game. I guess I’d split running vs. playing as 50/50, so I’ve had my fair share of game masters to learn from, and plenty of time to solidify my own style. I recently sat in a game with a brand new game master, and (like usual) had a [Read the article]
I know what you’re thinking, “what a dick.” The PCs were tasked with escorting a rich historian and his bodyguard into a known dungeon. Every decade or so the dungeon gets infested with new simple monsters and every so often it gets cleared out. This particular historian wanted to walk around the dungeon and map it out, but he needed a group or mercs/adventurers to [Read the article]
I normally recap our sessions in our own Facebook group, but decided to share this here because this time it was a different and particularly fun way to do it. Basically, I recapped the session from the viewpoint of the bad guys, letting the players get into the minds of their opponents a little bit. For this particular session, a pack of gnolls have been [Read the article]
Shadowrun: Anarchy (hardcopy, PDF) is the narrative-heavy, shared-storytelling, alternate ruleset for Shadowrun. Among other differences, it has a non-traditional, abstracted movement system that lends itself to “theatre of the mind” style encounters, more-so than a lot of other RPGs. The GM and players don’t need to know how many meters/squares away a shooter is; she is either Close, Near, or Far. During a player’s Narration, [Read the article]
You’ve got a big boss fight lined up. You want it to be scary as hell, with the players fearing for their character’s lives, while still invested enough to take on the beast. Any player who has glanced at the Bestiary or Monster Manual probably isn’t going to be amazed when you drop a description and tell them to roll initiative. That all changes when [Read the article]
There are role-playing games (RPGs) designed to take horror as the main theme, similar to horror novels. These games are designed around the concept that there are events and things making people jump, or squirm, or go mad. Elements of horror are important in storytelling because they help in creating the mood for the people experiencing the story as it unravels to them. A problem [Read the article]
I was watching Luc Besson’s new movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets… “In the 28th century, special operatives Valerian and Laureline work together to maintain order throughout the human territories. Under assignment from the minister of defense, the duo embarks on a mission to Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis where diverse species gather to share knowledge and culture. When a dark force threatens [Read the article]
Avid role-playing gamers are known to learn about the monsters they expect to encounter, especially players who also are game masters (GMs). This has made for a steady market of expansions for new monsters. But, then the race is on once again as the players get a hold of the expansion and soon know about the new monsters. However, there are some tricks a GM [Read the article]
Doors. Every dungeon has them. Rules governing traps and locks have made them an essential part of every dungeon crawl. Unfortunately, the narrative influence of doors on a given game’s events is a sadly underplayed phenomenon. Ask any adventurer about what they remember most in a campaign and it will likely be an enemy, a critical fail, a cleverly role-played moment, or some other non-door [Read the article]