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One Spot #0: Hand’s Goods Is Now Available!

March 5, 2013 in Announcements, DriveThruRPG, Gaming, PDFs, Places, Resources, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | No comments

Welcome to Hand’s Goods… A place to find preowned items of all shapes and sizes, for a negotiable price. Mr. Hand isn’t the cheeriest of folk, but he’ll make sure you pay a fair price or get fair worth whatever you choose to sell.

One Spot #0: Hand's GoodsThis is the first in a new series of short (2 page), system-neutral supplements from Moebius Adventures designed to provide easy locations to drop into your fantasy campaign, complete with hooks, NPCs, and a few surprises. As the first One Spot product, it is free of charge to let you get a feel for how the series will work.

Each One Spot product offers the following:

  • One page full of player-appropriate information, including overview details, what and who to expect, along with a pair of images to set the scene.
  • One page full of GM-appropriate information, including NPC details, a map of the location, encounter/hook ideas, and a random table to help define what sort of relationship a PC may have with the place.

Each product can then be used independently or together to help busy GMs add details to their worlds without a ton of work.

Pick a spot, drop it in, and roll!

Get your copy for free today at DriveThruRPG or RPGNow and let us know what you think!

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RPG Blog Carnival: Life and Death in RPGs… – Pt. 1 – Life

March 4, 2011 in blogs, Gaming, PCs, Resources by Fitz | 16 comments

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is Life and Death in RPGs (see here for the kickoff article) and shockingly enough in the insanity of my last few weeks, I have some ideas to share…

Let’s start with Life, and then we’ll work on Death in the next post.

Dice for various games, especially for rolepla...

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For me, “life” in RPGs is more than deciding who lives and dies in a combat or trying to keep my PCs alive. It’s the roleplaying side of the house that keeps me interested and excited. So I try to define more than what a character can do and delve into why they can do it, when they learned it, and how they learned it or use it.

In the original Moebius Adventures system, we broke character creation into two large chunks – Childhood and Professions. Childhood covered everything up to age 12 or 14. And a character’s childhood might be very different than their choices of Profession. Look at a character like Conan. He was a normal child until he watched his family and village get slaughtered and was then taken as a slave. You think that might have shaped his attitudes, knowledge, and skills a bit?

So I propose that when folks are creating characters that they think about it in those two major buckets. What did the character learn as a child that has stuck with them into adulthood? And what choices might they have made as far as their professions go (or what choices were made for them)? Obviously not all skills you learn as a kid are useful. But many we continue to develop throughout our entire lives.

You could even go so far as to build in a tree of known associates. Who did your character grow up with? Have they kept in contact with any of those folks? Or did they part ways? Was it an amicable departure or one with enmity? Is it someone you might encounter during a game? What happens if a childhood enemy faces you as an adult? How is that different from a random monster encountered in an adventure?

Perhaps your character did or didn’t have a great family life growing up and they simply wanted to get out and explore the world or get away from what they knew before… What events shaped the decisions to learn particular skills? Did your parents teach you to forage and hunt or were you orphaned early on and forced to scrounge for food, learning what you could to stay alive? Did you gain any scars from early practice of weapons skills? Did you witness the death of a family member that you still seek revenge for years later (think Inigo Montoya)?

Not only do you end up with a basic history of your character to go with the skills they have, but you end up with contacts you can leverage in-game and that your GM can use to help tie things together and make them easier to relate to for your character. It works to the benefit of both the player and the GM to develop more backstory to better inform future events.

Yes, I know that D&D only gives you a few skill points here and there. Other games have the same issue. But slot a third or even a half of those skills towards defining your knowledge from childhood and you’ll end up with a better idea of where your character came from.

Next time we’ll talk about Death in a variety of ways. Stay tuned for part 2!

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Book Review: D-Jumpers Volume #1: A Gate to Adventure from DVOID Systems

November 2, 2010 in Books, D-Jumpers, Da' Vane, DVOID Systems, Gamemasters, GMing, NPCs, Ouroboros, PCs, Places, plot, Resources, Reviews, supplement, systemless by Fitz | No comments

When Da’ Vane (Christina Freeman) dropped me a note about the first D-Jumpers product from DVOID Systems, I was definitely intrigued. Da’ Vane is another of the folks going through Yax & Johnn Four’s Gamer Lifestyle Project. She started in April 2010 and in six months has released a book with help from Ouroboros I (Sebastian Klement), which is an impressive feat to begin with!

With that in mind, I started to dive into a final copy (minus artwork, which had been delayed) of D-Jumpers Volume #1: A Gate to Adventure… As a fan of cross-genre rules systems, my interest was piqued by the very first paragraph and the question – “Why limit your games to one genre, to one setting, to one world, to one imagination?” This product provides four different encounters in very different worlds – from fantasy and space opera to the great beyond.

Each of these mini-campaigns is presented as “systemless,” which should allow you the freedom to mix/match ideas and concepts but use any rules system from Storyteller and d20 to any other system you like or no system at all (though I’m not sure how that would work, it’s an interesting idea). As you go through each “Encounter,” they’re set up the same way, with an Objective, Hooks, Details, Development, Options, and a Checklist. This makes it easy to hop from one encounter to the next with a known structure.

“Gate Keeper” introduces characters to the multi-world concept of D-Jumpers. The PCs meet an inventor who’s managed to create a tool (i.e. spell or device) allowing adventurers to go to various places to gather critters, items, and information for him. He then can better plan how to take over the weaker worlds and gain more power… Of course, this evil genius doesn’t let the PCs in on his ultimate goal of controlling the multi-verse, so they won’t know what they’re getting themselves into...

→ Read More at Game Knight Reviews here...

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RPG Review: Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots To Inspire Game Masters

August 20, 2010 in Resources, Reviews by Fitz | 1 comment

Have you ever found a sandwich that’s so big, juicy, messy, and full of sandwichy goodness that you can’t figure out where to start eating it? That’s kind of what happened when I grabbed a copy of Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots To Inspire Game Masters by the authors of GnomeStew.com. This book should be like crack to not only roleplayers in general and gamemasters (GMs) in specific, but should also provide infinite ideas for novelists and short story writers seeking inspiration for their own works.

For those of you who aren’t gamers or roleplayers, there’s a huge and growing population of people who play tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs) who also write articles throughout the blogosphere. Gnome Stew (GnomeStew.com) is one of the more focused, schizophrenic (i.e. multiple-writer), and excellent gaming resources on the web today. I typically peruse the Gnome Stew RSS feed at least once a week to get an idea for what’s going on in gaming and stealget ideas for my own gaming blog (the Moebius Adventures blog).

The amazing folks at Gnome Stew evidently had their “eureka” moment in June 2009 and it took twelve months from that point to create this huge storehouse of ideas and inspiration for the community. As Martin Ralya, the owner of Gnome Stew, points out in his introduction – “To call Eureka a labor of love would be an understatement.” And the love shows.

Before launching into the plot descriptions themselves, the authors chose to provide a chapter about how to use the book. That takes up less than 20 pages of the 300+ the book fills. But without that information, it would be much more difficult to hunt for ideas on a particular topic. They have provided four different ways to find the perfect plot – by theme, primary genre, sub-genres, and tags.

The themes they use are the 36 Dramatic Situations written by Georges Polti in 1917. The book poses that there are only 36 basic plots used in all the dramatic works ever created or that ever will be created. It’s quite an idea and it’s still in use today by drama students, authors, playwrights, and many more. You can read the book in the public domain here. In terms of RPG plots, this helps by boiling down the initial idea succinctly and then building on it in the text of the plot description.

Genres are broken into four general categories. In this case, a genre is just a set of criteria for a setting that also lends itself to describing the overall tone or assumptions for stories fitting those criteria. In this case, they use three main categories – Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Horror – and add a catch-all “Other” category for any plots that don’t fit in the first three.

And when you get to tags, that’s where the real fun comes in. It’s obvious the editors and authors thought long and hard about how to make this book useful for readers. Like genres, tags in this case are just additional descriptive words to categorize a particular plot. These tags describe things like the type of Challenge involved in the plot, what Creatures and Enemies will be encountered, what kinds of Non-player Characters (NPCs) and Relationships are central to the plot, the Play Style, and the Setting. Beyond that, there’s also a broader “Features” general category for elements that don’t fit anywhere else.

Each of these descriptive methods is used to create a detailed index (four indexes are included – by theme, primary genre, sub-genres, and tag) so that you can simply peruse any of the indices for a particular idea or term. That certainly helps when you’re faced with the sheer volume of work presented in this book. Your other approach is simply to start at the beginning and read until inspiration strikes or you find what you are looking for. My problem with that is that I have hardly dented the Fantasy plots, which come first, so who knows if I’ll ever make it all the way to the Horror section!

There’s no way to do justice to the myriad plots described in the book, so I’ll just talk about one to provide an example of what you can look forward to.

“Vengeance Taken for Kindred upon Kindred” has a long title, but immediately I knew it was describing what I call the “Hatfields vs. the McCoys” problem. It’s a family feud at its heart. And in the fantasy version described in Eureka, it’s a tribe of orcs that’s split down the middle after a chieftan dies and his twin sons want to take the tribe in different directions. Stuck in the middle is a local town. With a war coming between these two factions, the player characters (PCs) must figure out how to save the town.

The plot goes on to describe the problems at hand, including the fact that they can’t face down all the orcs by themselves and what happens when the town mayor tries to make a pact with one camp for protection from the other… There’s just enough information to provide a framework for an enterprising GM to roll an adventure around it.

And at the end of the plot description, there’s a section describing what other genres it can easily be adapted to, including Action Horror, Cyberpunk, Grim and Gritty Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, Sci-fi, Traditional Fantasy, and Western. The section also describes all the various tags associated with the plot idea – alliance, deadline, innocent, isolated area, mass combat, sandbox, tactical planning, and villain.

As a GM, I think I could take this idea and spin it at least three ways right off the bat, which is awesome. It’s this kind of inspiration with crunchy details that really sets my brain on fire.

So if you’re a GM, a player, a writer of any sort, or just like noodling about story ideas, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots To Inspire Game Masters by the authors of GnomeStew.com should provide you literally hours and hours of gaming fun. One review I saw mentioned that with 501 plots at your disposal, that’s more than a year’s worth of adventuring time for even the most aggressive gaming group!

This article first appeared at BlogCritics.org here.

–Fitz

p.s. Be sure to pick up your copy today!

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Pre-made Art for Independent Publishers

August 16, 2010 in Resources by Fitz | 1 comment

Let me start out by saying that I am definitely not an artist. My artistic skills peaked when I was 12 or 13 and have had plenty of time to regress since then. But I understand the importance of artwork in roleplaying materials. Text by itself, even when you play with layouts, fonts, and lines – simply isn’t sexy enough. You have to add a few splashes of art to break up the monotony of line after line of rolling text.

Now, when I published the Moebius Adventures Core Rules book a couple of years ago, I used a combination of pieces. I contracted out the cover, redo my logo, and a few black and white pieces from Jason Adams (Rogue-Artist.com). Jason did an awesome job and if I ever get the oomph to put out another book, I’ll have him do more art and another cover. His prices were extremely reasonable and he worked with me to get things just right. I couldn’t have asked for more.

The other place I used may surprise you. I have a subscription to Clipart.com. They literally have millions of pieces of art available, including some great black and white shots of castles, knights, priests, and so on. My subscription also comes in handy when I design the occasional t-shirt to sell at my CafePress store or whatnot.

But beyond that, many artists have come forward and started producing commercial-use collections available at places like RPGNow.com.

Sade is one of the independent artists providing collections for use and has nearly 200 in RPGNow.com as of today. And she provides a ton of options – everything from computer-generated art to black-and white and inked pieces – from dragons to steampunk, weapons to templates, even cards for treasure and paper minis. Prices are great too – everything from $0.50 to bundles going for as little as $9 or as much as $65.50. Her Templates collection provides a ton of amazing stuff that an enterprising publisher could use out of the box to make an outstanding book. And her many collections of weapons are simply amazing.

Other companies – from Action RPG Counters to Ye Olde School Stock Art provide an amazing array of bits and pieces that could be used. Everything from fillers to amazingly detailed pieces and even cover art is available.

So if you’re thinking of publishing a book and you (like me) are not an artist, don’t fret. There are lots of available options that are available now. There are some amazing artists out there who will work with you to get you exactly what you want, but there are also some collections of stock art that might be right up your alley. Make sure you look around, check out the licenses for these beasties, and look for something that will work for you.

–Fitz

Where do you find art for your games?

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RPG Review: The Kobold Guide to Game Design – Volume III: Tools & Techniques by Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, Rob Heinsoo, and Colin McComb

July 5, 2010 in Resources, Reviews by Fitz | 1 comment

kobold_guide_3_cover

Hi there!

The kobolds are back with another amazing collection of twelve thought-provoking and informative essays from some of the best designers and writers creating roleplaying game material today. The essays cover everything from the simple question of “What is Design?” and work through contentious topics of creativity, craft, and how to recover when things don’t go well. Anyone who’s tried to write professionally understands the power of the blank page, rejection, and the unforgiving and untapped potential of any great idea you can’t quite find the words to express, but it’s a rare treat to get advice from some of the stars of the roleplaying game industry to address those problems. It’s nice to know the kobolds care.

As someone who aspires to be a game designer and writer, I find that rules are hard for me and settings are relatively easy. So as I perused the pages of the guide, I found myself trolling for tips and tricks to simplify my rules process and make finishing projects more of a reality than a wish. With that in mind, I will avoid talking about each essay in depth and instead focus on a couple that I found particularly helpful.

Wolfgang Baur has worked on some of my favorite gaming projects over the years, from the original Planescape line at TSR to adventures for Alternity, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, and a whole lot of D&D. He’s edited the Kobold Quarterly, Dragon, and Dungeon magazines and is the publisher and founder of Open Design – a collaborative game design company. Oh, and in his spare time he publishes the Kobold Guide to Game Design series.

Baur’s essay “What is Design?” tries to define a term that doesn’t lend itself well to a definition unless you have context on your side. In this context, he defines it as “its own discipline, but it always borrows and builds on other modes of creative work.” What does that mean in terms of roleplaying games (RPGs)? It means there has to be a balance between rules and setting. When they are out of balance, you can end up with a less than fun experience for your gamemaster (GM) and his or her players, which may cost you fans or customers. Rules must be focused on the setting and the setting must keep the rules in mind at all times. It’s a balance I know I’ve not yet achieved in my own games.

The other essays build on Baur’s beginning, covering the similarities between designing RPGs for the computer and for the tabletop; the basics of combat systems; the power of a good design, hook and dastardly plot; and the fun and heartbreak inherent in collaboration and any creative enterprise. Each essay is lovingly crafted by a master in RPGs today who knows what they’re talking about.

The other essay that really got my attention was “Basic Combat Systems for Tabletop Games” by Colin McComb. As I said earlier, system design is my Achilles’ heel. McComb manages to explain, in a Q&A-type of format, what you need to know about attack systems, who attacks and when, how things like area of effect attacks affect a group of targets, how to measure the consequences of combat through permanent or temporary damage, and so on. He then lays out a sample system using his own rules (minus stringent playtesting) to show how the questions can help you come up with a working system. The practical aspect of the article provides a ton of hints and help to avoid the common problems that plague beginning system designers (like myself).

Colin McComb was involved in 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons, but helped create one of my favorite settings for that edition – Planescape – and even helped with two of my favorite computer games of all time – Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2.

Rob Heinsoo has been involved with the 4th Edition of D&D and seems to have written half the sourcebooks that have been published so far. He’s the force behind the D&D Miniatures game and its first nine expansion sets. And if that’s not enough, he’s worked at Daedalus Entertainment, Chaosium, and A-Sharp in the 1990s.

Ed Greenwood is simply a legend in the gaming industry. Not only is he the author behind the Elminster Series, including Elminster: The Making of a Mage and Elminster’s Daughter, but he’s written hundreds of articles about gaming and continues to GM his own campaign. Where does he find the time when he’s typically writing three novels at a time?

And Monte Cook… What can I say about Monte? When 3rd Edition D&D and the d20 system came out, he was one of the three principle designers behind the efforts. And since then, with his own design studio Malhavoc Press, he’s managed to create several award-winning products such as Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, and the Books of Eldrich Might. In my opinion, he has one of the most unique voices among the game designers of today.

If you’re a GM, a game designer, or a RPG player interested in getting into the design side of how to create your own games – you can’t find a better introduction than The Kobold Guide to Game Design – Volume III: Tools & Techniques. These 96 pages will provide infinite food for thought and hopefully save you some pain and suffering along the way. I certainly have a lot to think about now…

As a final note, I think that kobold on the inside cover is up to something… don’t you?

Article first published as here on Blogcritics.org.

–Fitz

p.s. Be sure to pick up all the Kobold Guides at RPGNow:

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Typography or “How a font can redefine an idea…”

July 1, 2010 in Inspiration, Resources by Fitz | 6 comments

The elder Futhark, oldest Germanic writing system.
Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever noticed that advertising people are totally in love with fonts to express their messages? Have you ever wondered why? Ok, me either. I typically tune out commercials and skim past ads in magazines and on web pages… But I recently saw a couple of posts about typography that made me do some thinking…

Where do fonts come in handy in gaming? It’s a simple thing in most modern word processors or drawing packages to select one of the typically hundreds of installed fonts on a system. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably collected even more over the years. Then again, maybe not – I’m kind of weird.

Just off the top of my head, I came up with a few ideas for where to use fonts:

  • Though developing entire languages is often impractical, sometimes a font can be a cheap substitute… and if you’re consistent, you can use the same font for any pages/notes/letters your PCs find in a particular language so they KNOW – “oh! this is in Draconic and I don’t read it, so I’ll have to give it to Bob, our scholar…”
  • Wingdings is a simple enough way to encode a message so it takes some enterprising player a while to decrypt a particular encryption, but not so difficult that it becomes tedious. A little homework for your players is sometimes a good thing.
  • I’ve seen runes (Viking, Gothic, Celtic, hieroglyphs, cuneiform, etc.) that can make VERY cool ancient scripts if you’re in a hurry.
  • And if you combine the font/language idea with the runic idea, you can end up with a Rosetta Stone of your own that allows a scribe among the party to know how to translate from a particular long dead language of runes to one of the languages they know and then translate from that to common…

Really the ideas are endless. And of course fonts make printed documents look better too. [grin]

So back to those web articles that prompted this… they’re on the Smashing Magazine website in a couple of parts – “The Beauty of Typography: Writing Systems and Calligraphy of the World” and “The Beauty of Typography: Writing Systems and Calligraphy, Part 2“. Though Smashing Magazine deals with the art and technique of website design, these two articles provide amazing insight into the art behind a particular typography system that transcends the web.

If you’re interested in fonts, typography, or want to tackle the daunting task of creating your own writing system for a game – I’d encourage you to take a look at those two articles for inspiration. They have amazing details on Asian, European, Hebrew, and other forms of writing. Definitely worth taking a look anyway.

How do YOU use fonts or typography in your games? Leave a comment and share your ideas!

–Fitz

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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?

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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

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Blog Post: Friday Links for November 20, 2009 (on Sunday, November 22, 2009)

November 22, 2009 in Advice, Articles, Friday Links, Resources by Fitz | 2 comments

Yes, I’m a bit behind. To say that the past couple of weeks have kicked my arse is an understatement. That said, there have been some awesome articles in the gaming blog community that caught my eye when I had time to check ‘em out… So without further adieu, here are a few posts for your reading pleasure.

  • Friday Links Banner 150x150In the “not in the gaming community” category we have Philip Palmer from the Orbit Books Blog considering the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. We all know the answer is 42, but Palmer goes deeper into the numerological aspects of the answer and… the fourty-two texts of Hermes Trismegistus! (If you haven’t heard of Orbit Books, be sure to check out their website. They deal in some wonderful urban fantasy, fantasy, and science fiction materials that are full of story and campaign ideas!)
    http://www.orbitbooks.net/2009/11/19/the-meaning-of-life-you-read-it-here-first/
  • Next, in the “bad news for small publishers” category, we have bad news from Outlaw Press with their Tunnels and Trolls products. According to Andreas at the Omnipotent Eye, there are some questions regarding the use of artwork without permission among other things. I’m hoping it’s just rumor, but we’ll see how it all plays out…
    http://theomnipotenteye.blogspot.com/2009/11/latest-bad-news.html
  • Over at the RPG Athenaeum blog, we’re reminded to consider tactics in our D&D battles, not only as players, but as GMs. Using your opponents’ weaknesses presupposes a bit of knowledge on the part of those in the combat and some D&D critters, such as the kobolds used in one example in the article, should have enough brainpower to put 2+2 together to get 4. However, the trick is gaining enough knowledge of the battleground and your opponents before the battle to take advantage of such information… Looking forward to parts 2 & 3 of this three part series.
    http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/let-slip-the-dogs-of-war-part-i/
  • It seems RPGNow is having an extended Black Friday event between November 27 & 30, according to the Gaming Brouhaha. Next weekend will be a great time to find some awesome materials on sale!
    http://rpg.brouhaha.us/?p=1988
  • Brent Newhall has released a year of his earnings and web traffic for the two RPG PDF products he released about a year ago. I’m enthusiastic about such information as a self-publisher. It means people are making at least a little money with their hobby, which encourages other folks like myself to try to do the same. Thanks Brent and good luck with all your endeavors!
    http://brentnewhall.com/blogs/role-playing/21-Nov-09-one-year-of-tabletop.php
  • Zzarchov over at Unofficial Games pointed at a great article comparing DMing and software development concepts. As a software developer, I have to admit I’d not thought about gaming in those terms but will strive to do so in the future. Having the right bits that you can rearrange to suit particular needs in a just-in-time environment is a great way to view running a game.
    http://trollandflame.blogspot.com/2009/11/dm-and-sd-parrellels.html
  • And lastly, over at Gnome Stew, DNAPhil has encouraged us to properly care for and feed our creativity. Mine’s been starving a bit lately, so his advice is well received by yours truly. I love the idea of creating a new NPC, location description, or plot idea every day or every few days. It’s something I hope to put into practice soon!
    http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/the-proper-care-and-feeding-of-your-creativity

This isn’t a complete list of all the articles I’ve noted over the last couple of weeks, but a representative sample at least. I’ve been trying to share these out in Google Reader when I see them, which makes it easier to find them again in the future and keeps them available for others to find if they so desire.

If you’re in the U.S., I wish you a happy Thanksgiving. And no matter where you are, I hope you’re enjoying yourself!

Until next time…

MFJAHXWUHDX6

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