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Looking for a Gaming Group… [Cross-post]

February 9, 2011 in Gamer, Gaming, GMing by Fitz | 2 comments

(I’m cross-posting this from my personal portal blog…)

Do you live in Colorado Springs, CO? Do you have a gaming group? Or are you looking for one?

I’m looking for a group that I can play tabletop roleplaying games with and possibly GM a campaign using the rules for Warrior, Rogue, and Mage in my setting of Immortals’ Wake that I’m currently writing a supplement for (Immortals’ Wake: Rivergate).

It seems like I’ve been roleplaying forever – from the early days of Dungeons & Dragons back in junior high school (1983) to playing the James Bond Roleplaying Game from Avalon Hill in high school to the many different games I played in college…

Dice for various games, especially for rolepla...

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After college, I even added a few more to the list:

  • GURPS
  • Vampire the Masquerade
  • Werewolf
  • Heavy Gear
  • Traveller
  • Hero
  • Moebius Adventures – The Age of Phaedrus
  • Moebius Adventures – Covert Directives
  • Moebius Adventures – Immortals’ Wake
  • and probably even more that I can’t remember…

Unfortunately, my last roleplaying group fell apart a few months ago, my online campaign idea fell apart due to lack of interest, and I am looking for something a bit closer to home (i.e. in the Colorado Springs area).

I haven’t GMed for a few years, but I’d love to run a campaign in Rivergate using the Warrior, Rogue, and Mage rules from Stargazer Games.

Anybody have a slot open for an aging gamer? I can commit to a session every other week if I’m running one, but might be able to squeeze a weekly session in as a player.

Thanks for your time!

–Fitz

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Rivergate Campaign Begins…

January 13, 2011 in Campaign, Immortals' Wake, Rivergate by Fitz | 1 comment

Last night we started our once a week online campaign for Immortals’ Wake: Rivergate and once again, WR&M proves worthy of admiration. Concept to character in less than 5 minutes.

Unfortunately that’s as far as we went, but let me introduce the two characters… My friends Kevin and Mike are the only two players in the campaign at this point, but hopefully we’ll attract others over time.

Kevin created what he calls a “Marine” – basically a tough sailor used to doing battle at sea. Not your average sailor.

Name: Looyis (pronounced like “Lewis”), or Loo for short
Description: 5’3″, close cropped blond hair, full beard, scar from above left ear to just under left eye (sword cut)
Stats: Warrior: 5, Mage: 3, Rogue 2
Skills: Athletics (Warrior), Swords (Warrior), Awareness (Mage)
Talent: Sailor
HP: 11
Fate: 2
Mana: 6
Defense: 8
Equipment: Sword, Dagger (x2), Adventurer’s Kit, Iron Rations (2 weeks), Backpack, Torch (x5), Leather Armor
Money: 184 sp left over

And Mike created a sailing buddy who has some woodworking skills…

Name: Neb
Description: TBD
Stats: Warrior: 3, Rogue: 5, Mage: 2
Skills: Bows (Rogue), Daggers (Rogue), Acrobatics (Rogue)
Talent: Craftsman (Wood)
HP: 9
Fate: 5
Mana: 4
Defense: 8
Equipment: Adventurer’s Kit, Backpack, Woodworking Tools, 2 sets of clothing (1 normal, 1 travel), Bow, 20 Arrows, 4 Daggers, and Leather Armor
Money: 166 sp left over

These two sailors have just disembarked on the docks of Rivergate’s Docktown and are going to figure out what they’re doing next… when we meet again next week.

So there you have it. We’ve started! Let’s see if we can continue the trend and figure out what kind of trouble Loo and Neb may get into in future sessions.

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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: Kingdoms of Kalamar: City Map Folio

July 16, 2010 in Books, PDFs, Reviews by Fitz | No comments

As a GM, it’s nearly impossible to get by without a few maps. Sure, you can come up with a village on the fly, or maybe a 5-room dungeon, but cities are sometimes tough to design at the drop of a hat. Not only are there landscape concerns, but population, location, general disposition (friendly or un-), and so on.

Thankfully, there are many creative, artistic people who have created maps for us already. The Kingdoms of Kalamar: City Map Folio from Kenzer and Company provides more than 30 detailed maps to use for inspiration or in a Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign. From the full color map of Kalamar presenting the region where all these cities are located to the gorgeous interior black and white maps, there’s plenty here to salivate over from cartographers Craig Zipse and Clayton Van Sickle III.

What impressed me the most was the little details. Though the maps themselves have few labels or legends, anyone familiar with maps appearing in RPG adventures or books over the last 30+ years will instantly understand what they’re looking at… from rivers and roads to walls, buildings, forests and plains. Seeing how buildings flow around obstacles such as major roads, rivers, and docks can provide fodder for the most inquisitive player to explore…

And each map provides a small summary of pertinent details such as the city size, longitude and latitude, type of government, as well as major alignments, races, and size of the population. Also included is the name of the ruler (or rulers) of the city – such as with Baneta… “ruled by wizard Lakaran the Twisted under figurehead Lord B’Pareso.”

I did find it very difficult (impossible in some cases) to find a particular city on the full color map at the beginning of the book. It would have been nice to perhaps broken the bigger map into smaller regional maps to simplify finding them in the larger context. I also found it interesting that every single map in this collection has a wall or other defensive structure completely surrounding the heart of the population. Though I can see having walls around some portions of a city, I can’t imagine that building one around a population of 20,000 people can be cheap or easy to maintain.

That said, the Kingdoms of Kalamar: City Map Folio (first published in 2004) offers GMs tons of inspiration for their own campaigns and worlds. Who knows what dangers may lurk in these literally thousands of city streets ripe for the picking? Definitely worth the $6.99 as a PDF from DriveThruRPG.com.

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How do you make module-driven games seem less railroaded?

May 24, 2010 in Advice, GMing, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | No comments

Hi all…

Yes, it seems that nearly every time I post anything these days, it’s asking a question. But before I ask, let me provide some context…

We have a very small group (currently 2 or 3 players depending on the week and a GM) playing a D&D 3.5e adventure set in one of the Paizo Pathfinder adventures (Second Darkness). The GM (Mike) and I have been discussing the fact that, like every other module-driven adventure either of us has played or run, it seems very linear. And, dare I say it, a bit boring for those of us playing who prefer story and emotional depth over combat.

Sure there are a few mysteries left. We only play once a month or so and sometimes not even that, so getting through significant parts of the adventure is iffy at best. And it probably doesn’t help that the two PCs in our group that are supposed to know and like each other are drifting apart (but that’s a tale for another day), so that’s not helping us move forward much either.

But here’s the issue… if the GM lacks the time to spin off his own ideas to make the setting more lively and engaging for the PCs and the PCs can’t stay together, how do we make the game more enjoyable across the board?

I suspect that if Mike as GM can find some nuggets of creativity in the module to build on, that’s one way to do it. And as a player, I can try and invest myself more in the world as well – perhaps going so far as to define NPC “friends” he may have met during spelunking beneath the city, in the wilds, or while avoiding the less natural parts of town (he’s a druid who’s probably swinging from neutral good to true neutral soon after some experiences he’s had in the campaign).

What do you do, as a player or GM, to make campaigns based around pre-written modules seem more lively? Or what do you do to revive fading campaigns when the enthusiasm starts to die?

Mike and I are both curious what others who have faced similar issues have done to help the situation… And not just what worked, but what didn’t… So we don’t unwittingly step in land mines trying something that probably was a bad idea from the get-go.

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. I’ll try and sum it up in a separate post so others can benefit from the combined wisdom.

Thanks!
–Fitz

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