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One Spot #1: The Painted Man Is Now Available!

June 4, 2013 in Announcements, DriveThruRPG, Gaming, PDFs, Places, Resources, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | No comments

Welcome to The Painted Man… A great place to grab a drink, shoot the breeze, and relax for a while! The Painted Man himself may greet you at the door or the friendly barmaid may catch your eye and bring you a drink. Don’t forget to try the stew! Just don’t sit in the corner where mysterious deals go down every now and then…

one-spot-1-the-painted-man-coverThis is the second 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.

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 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. 2 – Death

March 10, 2011 in blogs, Gaming, Inspiration, NPCs by Fitz | 7 comments

So last time I focused on life and using a character’s childhood and key events to shape their skills and backgrounds. This time, I want to focus on death from a few angles. (You can read part 1 here and see the RPG Blog Carnival collection on Life and Death in RPGs here.)

First, death doesn’t just happen to the PC or their fellow party members, but to the NPCs and monsters slain along the journey. Especially in fantasy RPGs, it seems every game I’ve played in we focus on “clearing the dungeon” or “eliminating the threat” – but basically we’re talking about killing critters, monsters, and people who get in our way. It’s just accepted as part of the equation.

Unfortunately, computer roleplaying games (CRPGs) have created an environment where you slaughter in-game monsters wholesale and pick up the loot left behind. There’s no conscience or consciousness of killing because they’re pixels on a monitor or TV screen.

When you play in a good campaign, there are costs associated with death. And for those new gamers who come from the CRPG world, it’s often a harsh reality when the morals, ethics, and laws of the world you’re playing in become relevant. Even forgetting the philosophical aspects of death, there are the practical aspects. Kill someone who tried to kill you and then figure out what to do with the body… Kill more than one  and the problem compounds. Eventually those costs come due in tabletop gaming.

Second, the death of your own character can be an interesting experience. I’ve had it happen so quickly after the character was created that it didn’t register and I’ve had it happen in longer campaigns where it was by choice, going out in a blaze of glory, or by happenstance, where I wasn’t ready to let the character go.

In a Battletech campaign, I went through the trouble of not only creating a character and customizing a ‘mech, but finding a miniature for the campaign. (In my gaming experience, buying a miniature for me tends to mean certain doom for the character.) In the first mission, we were doing a HALO entry to take out some target on the planet. I botched my roll and burned up on entry into the atmosphere. End of character and ‘mech. Thank you very much. As I recall I spent the rest of the night reading in a corner and watching the game roll by in my peripheral vision.

Another time in a “3 million and 1″ D&D 2e campaign (high-level characters constructed with 3,000,001 XP), we ran the campaign for a long time and eventually had to go out in a blaze of glory. We stood atop the battlements with a dwarven archer in plate mail (we called him Tin Can or TC for short), who we Hasted a few times and watched as he mowed down part of the army charging the walls. I don’t specifically recall how my wizard died, but I’m sure it was glorious.

But my favorite death story features a Palladium FRPG campaign. I was playing a mage and my friend was playing a ranger. It was just the two of us against the forces of darkness and we had many amazing adventures (including exploring a bit of the Temple of Elemental Evil). The end came when we were ambushed by a wolfen in the mountains. We tried. But this thing was too good and we were too unlucky. We bled out on that mountain pass and I will forever miss that character.

Sometimes a good PC can get under your skin. The best characters bring out parts of yourself you don’t even know are there until you play them. And when one of those characters dies, it’s like losing a little part of yourself.

Ultimately life and death in RPGs comes down to that factor for me. The goal is to roleplay a character to such a level that it’s a part of you and yet apart from you. Good characters should be easy to slip into, like a pair of old slippers worn for years. And when they die, you should feel something. When your companions die, you should feel something. It doesn’t have to be life altering, but the passion needs to connect you in some ethereal way with your alter ego in game.

Great topic for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. And a big thanks to Campaign Mastery for hosting!

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New Review on GKR: 650 City Encounter Seeds & Plots

January 8, 2011 in Reviews by Fitz | 2 comments

Hi there!

Just wanted to let you know that a review of 650 City Encounter Seeds & Plots from Johnn Four at Roleplaying Tips went live early last week on Game Knight Reviews…

650 City Encounter Seeds & Plots offers what you’d expect – a list of 650 thought-provoking ideas to help when planning a city-based adventure. There’s a solid mix of coincidence and deliberate attempts to suck the PCs into particular plots. And even if you don’t use them “as is” – there should be plenty there to get the creative juices flowing if you need a jump start.

The book definitely has some cool ideas between the covers – and the price (free) can’t be beat. Check out the full review over at Game Knight Reviews!

–Fitz

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Food for Thought – Articles, Posts, and Other Things Around The Net

December 31, 2010 in Inspiration, Links by Fitz | No comments

As we approach the end of 2010, I’m left wondering where it went as far as my gaming went. However, I look forward to 2011 being a series of new beginnings with my gaming.

Will it work out? Who knows? But I won’t know until I try…

But in the meantime, here are some things to ponder as we exit the old year and enter the new!

Happy New Year to All!

–Fitz

Things to Ponder…

Religion in Roleplaying Games from Matthew Meyer at Nevermet Games

How to Build and Market a Roleplaying Game

The Roleplay’s the Thing (Wherein I’ll Catch the Conscience of the Gamer) by Shawn Merwin at Critical Hits

Art…

CthulhuTech Art

The Art of Todd Lockwood

Steampunk Typography

Cartography…

101 Fantasy City, Town, and Village Maps

RPG Clipart for Maps

Dungeon Mastering…

Top 10 New Dungeon Master Mistakes

Running the World the Players Built

Fifty More Adventure Ideas (for D&D)

James’s NPC Generator

Storybook Generator

Adventure Hooks: Welcome to the Sun & Moon Tavern, Part 1 and Part 2

Using Templates for Session Prep

Playing…

Backstory Groaners – some of these are awesome

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PC Therapy?

September 13, 2010 in Inspiration by Fitz | 2 comments

A concept came up in discussion a couple of weeks ago about how to resolve inter-party issues. We’re not going to try it ourselves, but I wanted to write about it a bit to share it and ponder the idea a bit.

It’s simple really…

For each other character in the group, a player will write down in a few sentences what their character thinks of them. So if you have four PCs in a group, character A will write about B, C, and D. Character B will write about A, C, and D, and so on.

And if you really want to make things interesting, you can also ask for feedback on what the players think about their character and the others in the group.

The GM would then gather these little summaries and… then what?

That’s really where the idea stopped. What would the GM do with these little snippets of information? Would they distribute them to the players after sanitizing the text a bit to protect the players? Perhaps come up with the top 3-5 things for each character and distribute that?

But how does that information help the player? Once a character is created, it’s tough to change their personality or how they behave towards other PCs or NPCs.

Would this technique be more useful to a group just starting out or a group of more experienced roleplayers?

I think in our case, this technique would be very interesting, but ultimately self destructive. I’m not sure any of us would be prepared for what might come to the surface.

Any thoughts?

–Fitz

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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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The Edge of Sanity…

June 7, 2010 in Inspiration by Fitz | 2 comments

Hey all…

In my career as a gamer, at least since college, I’ve had a thing for playing insane characters. I thought I’d share some of those characters and how I dealt with their crazy behaviors.

The first time it happened, my character in a Call of Cthulhu game went crazy with a Tommy Gun and managed to murder all but one member of his team because he thought they were monsters. And it felt good. Not the killing part – just cutting loose of all rational thought for a brief moment. He just snapped and went insane based on the rules of the game (aka “missed his save”) and I went with it.

That moment led to my playing of a Malkavian in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign who was more than a little loopy. He liked having rules for everything. So if, in the course of an adventure, he encountered a situation that lent itself to a new rule, he’d add it to the list. Suffice it to say that living by those rules was a bit of a challenge at times, but a welcome one. The simplicity of the insanity was the key.

And more recently I played a rogue in a campaign that shifted rules a couple of times (from the freeform Hero to a thief in D&D 3.5e). The game was set in a world much like our own during the time of the Roman Empire. Didius (or “DC” as he came to be known – short for Didius Cato) was an escaped slave. And he had a bit of a thing about slavery.

If DC encountered a situation where a slave was being treated unfairly… For instance, on the auction block in a crowded marketplace… There was a chance he’d go a bit nuts and do what he could to change the situation. I’d roll a die and basically decide if he would (even number) or wouldn’t (odd) flip out based on the result. During one session, he basically slaughtered a number of guards as he worked to free a line of slaves being sold.

Somehow he managed to survive. But again, the simplicity of the insanity is what made it fun. He had a trigger (seeing slavery) and no willpower to speak of (thus rolling to determine his action). Sometimes he managed to contain himself. Then there was the rest of the time…

So if you haven’t played a crazy character, I’d encourage you to try it at least once in a campaign. As a GM, it’s easy to slip in a NPC teetering on the edge of rational thought. As a player, sometimes it’s less easy – but talk to your GM and give it a go.

If you have played crazy characters, I’d love to hear about them. What were they like? How did they come about? What guidelines did you use for bounding their nutty behavior? Leave me a comment below or drop me an e-mail at fitz(at)moebiusadventures(dot)com.

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Who has the power in a game?

May 31, 2010 in GMing by Fitz | 3 comments

Odd topic, but power is a funny thing. In real life, those who have it typically want more. Those without want some. And it’s not always what you think.

In a roleplaying game, you’d think the GM held most of the power. And to a point, you’re right. But without players, what good is a GM? Players hold the other half of the power in a campaign or one-shot adventure. It’s a give and take between both sides. Don’t kid yourself that there aren’t two sides to the game table though. However, they’re not always in direct opposition.

For me, it’s not (always) a competition between GM and player. Sure, sometimes it’s literally a competition such as a jousting tournament or a game of chance played in the game. But for the most part, the GM is there to keep the world in motion to give the players opportunities for action.

But I digress…

So obviously the GM has some power… but it’s spread thinly between NPCs, monsters, and plots afoot in the realm of his or her control. A fair GM doesn’t let the power of the dice corrupt him or her unfairly. A fudge here or there on behalf of the players is a choice GMs always have, but in the vast majority of cases I have to believe it’s not used against the players or player characters to hasten their demise. So in my view, no GM has absolute power over their domain if they’re playing fairly.

And the players have power to exercise on behalf of their in-game characters… Choices that may benefit the player or the group at large exist in great quantities usually. And it’s easy to see when players step out of bounds through metagaming or by doing something to harm another player, for the GM or other players may rise to the occasion and combat such inequities.

But in the best cases of gaming, it’s a symbiotic relationship between players and their GM. When the relationship becomes one-sided, it ceases to be fun for the other side and bad things may occur. Hard feelings, bad decisions, and things said in anger may result in the downfall of a group and the temporary or permanent harm to friendships between members.

Has anyone seen the demise of a gaming group like this? It’s not pretty.

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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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RPG Blog Carnival: NPC Show and Tell…

April 28, 2010 in NPCs by Fitz | 1 comment

I’m coming late to the RPG Blog Carnival this month, but better late than never, right?

Superman II
Image via Wikipedia

NPCs are an area where I either go very deep or very shallow. For example, a common theme I have in running a game is putting an Inn/Tavern in every town and there always happens to be an old man or woman at the desk or available when someone rings the bell.

This old person inevitably was a) cranky, b) hard of hearing, and c) difficult to deal with. So whenever the PCs would try and find a room for the night, they’d have to verbally spar with the desk jockey.

Desk clerk (DC): “Eh?”
PC: “We’d like a room for the night.”
DC: “A broom for flight?”
PC: [speaking up] “A ROOM FOR THE NIGHT.”
DC: “You don’t have to yell… I’m not deaf you know… I have a couple of rooms with one bed in them, but all 5 of you might have to draw straws… or there’s the [mumbles] common room…”

Yes, I like to torment my players. It’s part of the fun of being a GM.

On the flip side of the coin are characters like Lady Dagor, the female knight in charge of the Order of St. Greggor – a group of knights seeking the destruction of all demons in the world of Immortals’ Wake.

In her case, I always had a mental image of Sarah Douglas as Ursa (Zod’s second in command) in Superman II, but a bit shorter and wearing a combination of chain and plate mail. She buries her contempt for civilians well, but holds them somewhere above pond scum in the order of things.

Dagor focuses on two things. Firstly, she studies all the battles between the knights of her order and the Changed demons who control raw elemental energies. She feels she has a better understanding of how her enemy operates than they do in many cases and far more knowledge than many of the organizations also studying the demons (including other church members, the House of the Magus (mages), and the Chasers). This feeling of superior knowledge is both a good and a bad thing.

Secondly, she focuses on strategies for capturing, testing, and killing demons. Using her knowledge of how they operate and many of their tactics, she finds weaknesses to exploit and is constantly instructing those under her command to test such weaknesses vigorously in the field.

Lady Dagor is a stern task master and a good soldier, but also knows how to play the political game. As the first woman in charge of the militant order of the Church of the Mother, she knows she is empowered to do just about anything in the name of the Church. But even with this knowledge, she obeys the letter of the law and will rarely break with church doctrine.

It was her laugh that I settled on first. A haughty, full-bodied laugh that has been practiced and perfected over the years to throw off allies and enemies alike. She has few friends, and only “befriends” people if it is politically or strategically necessary.

But at the bottom of this superiority complex and the haughtiness, she devoutly believes in the teachings of the Mother. What she is doing is right on every level and that gives her the strength to do what she must. Is she evil? Not from her perspective.  But from other people’s perspectives? Yeah, probably.

Some NPCs, like Athena from Zeus’s head, come fully formed in my mind when they appear. Others sneak up on me. And others just pop up like that damn innkeeper. “Eh?”

–Fitz

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