December 2009

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.

Dungeon Dressing – What’s a dungeon anyway?

December 28, 2009 in Advice, GMing, Inspiration by Fitz | No comments

When you see the term “Dungeon” – what comes to mind? I typically think of a few different things…

  1. The great TSR gaming magazine published for from 1986 to 2007.
  2. A board game published in 1975 by TSR to simulate some aspects of Dungeons & Dragons.
  3. A place where people were imprisoned or tortured.
  4. A series of connected rooms containing possible encounters or combat opportunities.
  5. A power metal/thrash band from Sydney, Australia from 1989 to 2005.

Though I still have a few issues of Dungeon magazine squirreled away in boxes and a copy of Dungeon! the board game, I can truthfully say I’ve never heard any music from Dungeon the thrash band. That said, let’s focus on #4 because we can kind of roll #3 into it.

We often encounter dungeons when we play roleplaying games. Adventures like the Temple of Elemental Evil come to mind when I think of dungeons and dungeon crawls where you enter with your friends and try to survive as many levels and encounters as possible to escape with your loot.

But if you look at the general description, a dungeon in gaming terms is just a bunch of rooms connected by corridors. That could describe just about anything, couldn’t it?

A while back, Johnn Four raised the concept of “5 Room Dungeons”, which are awesome. Just enough space to create a unique situation for a group of players. But what I loved was that they weren’t all underground in medieval settings. Sure, some were. But mixed in were temples, swamps, islands, and other locations that didn’t have to be underground. What a concept! (You can download many of the 5 Room Dungeons at Johnn’s Roleplaying Tips site.)

So we know about dungeons in the medieval sense. Usually these were sets of rooms that existed under existing castles, keeps, or other buildings to house criminals, political prisoners, torture devices, and so on.

What about other places? Why can’t a modern building be a dungeon? Think about a modern hospital. Aren’t the floors in a hospital designed in a manner similar to different dungeon levels?

What about…

  • Spaceships or naval vessels?
  • Laboratories?
  • Office buildings?
  • Cave systems used by freedom fighters or terrorists?

Aren’t they all dungeons of a sort? Multiple rooms connected by corridors. Each room may or may not have “stuff” in it. Each room may or may not have guardians or traps.

So as we go through some other topics in this series, keep in mind that dungeons don’t have to be in fantasy settings or historically-based adventures. A dungeon can be any set of rooms connected by corridors.

Think about that the next time you walk through your house, your school, or your office building.

Next time we’ll talk about doors and what you can do with them in various settings.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Happy Holidays from Moebius Adventures!

December 23, 2009 in News by Fitz | No comments

Hi all…

Though we approach the end of 2009 with a little hope left in the tank, I’m truly hopeful for what 2010 will bring. More gaming. More blog posts about gaming. And possibly even the first Moebius Adventures product in a couple of years. Though 2009 has had its ups and downs, it’s been good to get back to things I enjoy doing and gaming is at the top of the list (next to spending time with my wife and daughters).

This blog has undergone a radical transformation from deadwood to once again showing signs of life. So we can only hope that 2010 brings more of the same!

I truly wish you all a very happy holiday season and a bright new year. May it be a good year for all of us.

Thanks for reading and a merry HO HO HO!

–Fitz

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

How do you perfect the craft of GMing or adventure writing?

December 17, 2009 in Design, GMing, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 2 comments

For me, “perfect” is an unreachable ideal. There is no perfect game, but we can work and strive for as close as possible. If everyone a) stays engaged, b) challenges each other and the GM, and c) has fun – it was a success. Without the interplay between players and between players and GMs, there is no game.

Writer Sitting B&WSo I’m always looking for other perspectives on how to create good adventures. Recently I saw an article in Entertainment Weekly about John Lasseter of Pixar fame. In the article, he stated his team’s formula for making great Pixar movies:

1) Toil to perfect the story.
2) Tackle technical innovation.
3) Take creative leaps of faith.

Why couldn’t we take that approach and apply it to… roleplaying games? If you think of an adventure as an episode or a campaign as a movie series, why not see how they work with RPGs?

1) Toil to perfect the story.

This one for sure applies. Story is the backbone for getting and keeping player interest. Yes, I’ve played games where all you do is clean out dungeon after dungeon. But without a reason for doing that – a reason for taking that path – all you’re doing then is stumbling through the dark killing things that move and taking any loot you find.

Occasionally, sure. I like a good dungeon crawl as much as anybody. But without having a story to explain WHY your PCs should care about these little podunk towns, why they should rescue the damsels or find the lost treasure of Whosit… they’re just going through the motions. As GMs or designers, we need to keep story in mind from the very beginning.

So before designing dungeons or monsters or setting up encounters… Make sure you have a story first.

2) Tackle technical innovation.

Now this one I’m not too sure about. As a software engineer, I have to admit I’m always looking for the next great gadget or piece of software to make my life easier (99% fail in this regard, yet companies like Microsoft are still in business – go figure). But I tend to go old school with my gaming and leave the toys off the game table.

I’ve seen many interesting and detailed discussions about using new technologies like Netbooks or Google Wave, touch-sensitive displays, projectors, and so on. However, I’m most comfortable gaming with a few books, paper, pens/pencils, and real dice.

Some of you may like to go techie when gaming – but so far I’m not one of them.

So maybe this one doesn’t apply in all cases.

3) Take creative leaps of faith.

This one I can definitely get behind. With story, you have the beginnings of a latticework you can add plot, setting, and characters to. But without being creative in how you create and present the end result, even the best stories can fall flat.

One huge creative leap for me is trusting in your players to fill in the gaps. Without the PCs, there is no game. GMs are there to set the stage and the PCs have to give it life in my opinion. So involve them from the beginning – let them fill in the backstories for their characters, let them describe parts of the world their characters would know intimately – get them involved in the creative process.

Another huge creative leap of faith can simply be presenting a heck of an idea in the story. Mix and match things in new ways. Take the Chinese Menu approach – a few things from column A, a few from columns B and C, mix, smooth over the seams, and voila…

Will the Pixar/Lasseter three-rule approach help? It certainly can’t hurt by offering another perspective.

So what are the cardinal rules for you GMs or game designers out there?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Religion in Fantasy Worlds

December 13, 2009 in Design, GMing, Inspiration, Resources, Rules, World by Fitz | 8 comments

This post was inspired by a post at the KORE rpg blog about the topic. And it got me thinking, which is sometimes not a good thing…

monk_bwReligion is definitely one of those hot buttons in the real world, like sex, money, politics, and many other hot buttons. As soon as you breach the subject however, some people want to either convert you or condemn you – and neither option really appeals to me.

I’m an atheistic-leaning agnostic… or an agnostic-leaning atheist. Just depends on the day. From my point of view, religion is a good thing for a lot of people, so I don’t make a fuss about it. If you want to talk to me about religion, that’s fine – but I don’t like being preached to. Just a personal thing. The door-to-door folks concerned with saving my soul should just move along. (I’m nice about it, but don’t want to waste their time or mine.)

What’s funny is that it’s also not one of the things I typically think about in my roleplaying. I’m more likely to play a cleric or priest as an NPC than a PC, which goes along with my leaning towards creating worlds with conflict these days.

My Immortals’ Wake setting has a church – the Church of the Mother – that has been twisted in the last thousand years to preach a message of no tolerance. History in the real world shows that many faiths have had issues with tolerating views other than their own. And I wanted to bring that aspect into my setting.

And, as with all things, there are those people within the Church who are more liberal in their views of brotherhood than others. A militant arm has sworn to destroy a group of so-called “demons” simply because they are an affront to what they believe. Other groups within the Church are more tolerant of the “demons” and even helps them from time to time.

However, priests in my games tend to be focused on the personal aspects of the mortal condition – helping the sick and poor, aiding those seeking sanctuary, providing spiritual guidance, and so on – not just the traditional D&D cleric point of view as far as mobile MASH and holy smash unit. As mentioned, there are militants in the Church of the Mother who certainly focus on what they think of as fighting the good fight. But most priests would rather tend to their flocks than fight I think.

As such, my priest NPCs tend to be more philosophers and scholars than weapon-wielding crusaders of faith. They’re more likely to talk you to death than beat you with a blessed club. These folks are also just as likely to be warped by greed or lust as any other mortal, so they may not be the paragons of virtue they’re made out to be. They’re simply men and women doing a job they believe in (or want you to believe in).

This is not to say that they don’t apply their healing abilities to those who need them. Nor do they stray away from praying regularly to the focus of their devotion. And miracles do happen. But these are mortal representatives of their faith who only rarely become vessels to the divine power of their gods.

When you bring in the whole wizard vs. cleric debate and wonder whether a priest might directly oppose a wizard and try to have them lynched. Many priests would decry that wizardry is evil and therefore should be destroyed. But many others would state that if their divine hosts could work miracles through the faithful, why would they allow magicians of other types not to exist? What’s to say that the wizard isn’t working divine miracles of his or her own and simply doesn’t appreciate the divine side of the equation?

A priest whose power base is threatened might turn his flock against a rival wizard, but that would erode his power base. The wizard would most likely fall to greater numbers eventually, but how many members of the priest’s flock would die first? Wouldn’t that give them pause?

So there is definitely room for religion in my games. I’ve only had one player ever convincingly play a priest in a campaign I ran. But I’m always hoping for another!

How do you use religion in your fantasy games? Is it a force to be reckoned with?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

What alignment is your GM?

December 10, 2009 in GMing, News by Fitz | 9 comments

I had an interesting conversation with my GM last week. We somehow got onto the topic of how evil he was as a gamemaster. Honestly I don’t see him as evil, but I ran with it for the sake of ignoring some other things I really didn’t want to work on. :)

yinyangBetween the alignments of Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Evil, we decided that he was a Neutral Evil GM with some Chaotic tendencies.

A Lawful Evil GM is a rules lawyer and typically more interested in enforcing the letter of the law as spelled out in whatever game he is entranced with at the time. Mike definitely doesn’t fall into this category. I don’t think I even fell into this category when I was GMing either – I’m far more likely to either make a ruling and go with it on the spot or stop the game to get into a philosophical debate about why it was phrased the way it was. (Occupational hazard when you’re the one who wrote the game.)

A Neutral Evil GM is more interested in game balance than the rules persay. Mike tries to be very balanced and err on the side of roleplaying and story more than focusing on either making sure the PCs get their butts handed to them regularly. I’d like to think I fall into this category myself, but I know better.

And then there’s the Chaotic Evil GM. These are the guys who sometimes roll dice for no reason but to increase his players’ blood pressure. (Mike’s been guilty of doing this from time to time.) These are the GMs who decide one session they want to really teach the PCs a lesson and beat up on them and then in the next session be really nice to make up for it… And then there’s my type of chaos, where I end up GMing a sandbox game and watching the fireworks.

Each of these types of GMs should be observed in their natural habitat and not removed through the use of force, or that might backfire.

Why Evil you might ask? Honestly good and evil are in the eyes of the players most of the time, not in the eyes of the GM. So the night that your GM springs an encounter with an invisible flying creature in a cave and nearly kills all the PCs (one actually did die in that case and was raised later), he might be evil. The night he just happens to leave a magical crystal sword in a pile of loot just so your character can use it, he might be good.

Just don’t anger your GM without good reason. Then you’ll see True Evil raise its ugly head. ;)

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Friday Links, December 4, 2009

December 4, 2009 in Advice, Articles, Friday Links, Resources by Fitz | No comments

Another week of awesome posts in the gaming blog community means I’m back with a new list of links for Friday!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving (if they celebrated) and is looking forward to some happy holidays. Winter has finally arrived in Colorado (with most of this week spent near zero degrees fahrenheit), so even I’m starting to think about Christmas.

Friday Links Banner 150x150But I digress. :)

Here are a few posts to contemplate when winter weather hits in your neck of the woods:

  • In the “Not Necessarily from This Week” category, we have “Fistfull of Lead: All the Monsters on a Budget” from Jonathan Drain over at Kobold Quarterly. The article tells us where to procure a solid collection of miniatures for your gaming pleasure. Everything from humanoids and skeletons to demons and insects is included in this mix and match collection for a bit over $100 US. Not bad!
    http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/article3132.php
  • Is Chivalry dead? The RPG Athenaeum offers some suggestions on how to bring knightly orders into your game in “Chivalry doesn’t have to be dead…” The tips on designing a knightly order are very cool – including what to do if a knight fails to live up to the code. As someone who’s designed a few knightly orders, I wish I’d had these tips when I was writing them. :)
    http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/chivalry-doesnt-have-to-be-dead-use-knightly-orders-in-your-game/
  • Also from the RPG Athenaeum, we have “Flesh out your hero with an anecdote or two,” which offers some awesome suggestions on quirks for characters that might not have occurred to you. The article covers things like quirky appearance bits, emotional bits such as memories that surface during certain conditions, or unique phrases from their adventures or where they grew up. Cool stuff to consider for NPCs as well as PCs I think!
    http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/flesh-out-your-hero-with-an-anecdote-or-two/
  • From Abstract XP, we have an article on “Writing effective setting in adventures (part three)”. Weather is one of those things I never get right in campaigns, from what it should be from a seasonal perspective or what it should be from a geographic perspective… So tips and hints for using weather in an adventure is quite welcome. And when you add in tips for avoiding cliche’s and bringing in culture, the article starts overflowing with ideas!
    http://abstractxp.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/writing-effective-setting-in-adventures-part-three/
  • Rob Lang over at The Free RPG Blog brings up some intriguing ideas about making fantasy RPG rules into something that doesn’t fall flat in “How to turn your stock fantasy RPG into a unique delight.” As someone who’s trying to make a generic RPG and start with the fantasy aspects, this was particularly well timed. By not only going back to the source of fantasy ideas – fiction, myth, and folklore – but researching games and other mechanics to borrow ideas here and there to add crunch to otherwise not crunchy bits, I may have enough ideas to finish something soon. :) Thanks Rob!
    http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2009/12/how-to-turn-your-stock-fantasy-rpg-into.html
  • Ravyn at Exchange of Realities proposes three ways to think about solving problems in “Three Problem-Solving Question Sequences.” And though this was meant for gamers, I might actually suggest it to my daughters as ways to approach many different things in life. It’s hard to argue with “What do I have and how can I use it?”, “What do I want and what do I have that can help me get it?”, and “What could solve this problem and how could I get it?” Although they all pose similar questions, it’s HOW they’re asked that’s the key… Very though provoking!!
    http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/12/01/three-problem-solving-question-sequences/
  • And lastly, we have a throwback to an earlier time for me… This picture of Orcus from the Lord of the Green Dragons just made me smile as I thought back to my youth and the early days of playing D&D. Good times. Does it reflect poorly on me when I think back on a big demon prince as a symbol of my youth? Maybe. :)
    http://lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/2009/12/old-school-orcus.html

Thanks to everyone who wrote the articles above and to the many more I have yet to read on the various RPG blogs I follow.

Have a great weekend!

–Fitz

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Rules Revamp After 15 Years… (Seeking advice and war stories about playtesting)

December 3, 2009 in Design, Playtesting, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 3 comments

After 15 years or so of working on the Moebius Adventures system as we designed it way back when, it’s nice to have your eyes opened by intelligent players who can provide constructive criticism from a different perspective. Instead of approaching the game as a static memorial to a fallen comrade, it should remain vibrant and alive as Sean would have wanted it. (You can see some of the previous playtest articles here, here, and here.)

Rules TextUsing these simplified and revamped rules, I’m going to go back to my “Wizardry 101″ concept and see how things shape up with a built-in, quick start set of rules for combat as well as how to handle some introductory magical concepts. Once I get the quick start rules module written, I’ll apply it to a slightly tweaked sample adventure and throw it out there so I can playtest some more and ask you kind folks to look at it and provide feedback as well.

Does anyone have any war stories about playtests? I’m interested in first-hand testing as well as testing from outside groups. I hope to learn from these stories and maybe even write up an article on best practices if I get enough feedback.

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? Either leave me a comment here or send me an e-mail at fitz (at) moebiusadventures (dot) com. I’d love to hear from you.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Technorati FavoritesFacebookTwitterDiggDeliciousShare

Tags: , , , ,