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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...

Image via Wikipedia

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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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...

Image via Wikipedia

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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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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How to Extend Rituals in WR&M

December 6, 2010 in Immortals' Wake, Rules, Seeking Feedback, WR&M by Fitz | 1 comment

With a Divine spellcaster, the magical energy used to achieve an effect is channeled through the caster’s faith in a supernatural force. This force can be as straightforward as believing in a deity or more open-ended or philosophical such as the belief in a cosmic consciousness, the spirits of nature, or the ghosts of ancestors past. And though the end result of casting may be the same as a wizard, many Divine casters use personal rituals.

When we were working on Moebius Adventures we always loved the concepts behind ritual magic. These are the bigger spells that could only be done with larger amounts of casters, magical energy, components, or skill to gain bigger effects. For instance, a one-person Teleport spell could be transformed into a much larger Gateway to move additional people or equipment.

Rituals are broadly defined in WR&M as a way for participants to “pool their mana” to meet the DL requirements for higher circle spells that might be otherwise out of reach. Partcipants are still beholden to the mana cost for the spell and any spell enhancements, but the difficulty level is reduced by 1 if it’s done in the minimum time (1 minute for 1st circle, 5 minutes for 2nd circle, etc.).

Ultimately my question is this… Though this application of ritual magic is good – shouldn’t it be able to do more than that? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? Should it work more like there’s a 4th Circle spell – Mass Last Rites – with bigger bang that should only be performed by mighty powerful priests or a group of priests on the same mission?

For Divine magic, I’m thinking about rituals like:

  • Last Rites
  • Focus (Worry Beads, etc.)
  • Lay on Hands
  • Blessing
  • Inoculate (Cure Disease)
  • Detox (Cure Poison)
  • Protection
  • And so on

It gets more interesting when you look at how the effects are applied and how they stack if they’re done with friends.

For instance, let’s say a priest is delivering Last Rites to a dead or dying person. Perhaps this ritual helps their soul get to the afterlife. Perhaps it blocks them from rising as the walking dead. Perhaps it is nothing more than a way to make their family and friends left behind feel better.

If you take Last Rites into the wild where it’s simply a priest and the deceased, that’s one context. If you have a priest performing the ritual in a temple, church, or other holy place, that’s a different context that perhaps lends more weight or strength to the ritual. And if you add in more priests all performing the ritual at the same time, that’s yet a different context that lends additional strength to the ritual.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. What happens if Last Rites is a way to settle the restless dead – your textbook zombie? It may take a minute for a priest to do the ritual on a zombie – and it may require touching the zombie on the forehead with holy oil. Not necessarily a great position to be in obviously.

Perhaps if you and your priest friend both are doing the ritual, you can knock off the requirement to touch the body and affect a zombie at a distance. Add another priest and maybe you can affect a group of zombies. Add more priests and maybe you can affect a much larger group of zombies… Can you imagine a group of priests all performing a ritual while wandering through a town infested with zombies – and watching zombies fall around them like driftwood?

So maybe in the Last Rites example, there would be three spells – Last Rites (1st or 2nd circle), Last Rites in a Holy Place (2nd or 3rd circle), and Mass Last Rites (4th circle). And it would be up to the priest (or priests) to decide when to go it solo vs. with a group.

As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out how to best integrate some of these ideas with WR&M and am getting there slowly.

What do you think?

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Review on GKR: Kobold Quarterly Fall 2010 Issue 15

November 25, 2010 in Inspiration, Reviews by Fitz | 1 comment

Hi there!

I’ve posted another review on Game Knight Reviews, this time of the 2010 holiday issue of Kobold Quarterly. Once again, the kobolds have carefully crafted a tome worthy of your attention – from druids and traps to giant ants and mounted combat, there’s plenty to whet your appetite.

Wolfgang Baur and his crew at KQ/Open Design have done it again, so be sure to check it out here at GKR!

–Fitz

p.s. To everyone celebrating Thanksgiving – I wish you a happy day with friends, family, food, and football!

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More thoughts about Typography, or the tools used to create it…

August 13, 2010 in Inspiration by Fitz | No comments

Hittite Cuneiform Tablet
Image by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com via Flickr

Long title, I know…

But basically I am wondering how we might take the small things, such as the method of writing, and use that in a game. And by “method” in this case, I’m thinking of the tools used to create the work. For example, were the letters painted onto wood or stone? If so, how old are they? What remains?

Let’s think about a few different tools… brush, stylus, chisel, and pen – just for a representative sample.

If you look at the cave paintings in Lascaux, they’re estimated to be around 17,000 years old. That’s a lot of years. That could come into play in numerous different genres of games. The paint used, colors chosen, or even the brush strokes can tell a lot about the artist and how fast a particular piece was finished. The prehistoric artists at Lascaux took their time and it shows. Some gang banger simply marking gang signs on an underpass probably won’t use a brush and will instead opt for a can of spray paint…

Another example would be the good old cuneiform tablet. Clay tablets and a sharpened stylus worked pretty well to document lists of payments or property somewhere around 3500 BC. It may not be the most expressive language in the world, but it works. Consider for a moment some priest documenting the steps for interment of a royal family member and warning anyone not to disturb the dead or face the consequences. Scratches on the wall are probably going to be ignored by most game parties I’ve been in – so who knows what might be behind that cuneiform-labeled door?

Why not use a simple chisel? It beats having to find some wet clay and where you put your stylus down… Some chiseled petroglyphs may be 800,000 years old. More recent ones, for example from Pompeii or Rome, are probably a bit easier to understand if your Latin is up to snuff. (Mine isn’t.) Chiseled stone is kind of like the permanent record for many civilizations we still don’t know much about.

Pen and paper don’t last nearly as long as paint, clay, or stone, but they can be much more expressive and perhaps in a more modern language a PC might understand without too much research. Paper and papyrus have been around for nearly 6000 years. But unless your paper and pen is stored somewhere the paper won’t mold, mildew, or wear away with sun and sand, it’s not going to last very long. Crayons don’t last nearly as long, but can leave a brief reminder on a sanitarium wall that someone did in fact live there for a time.

Cuneiform sign
Image via Wikipedia

So how might you use these different tools?

Take for example a Cthulhu campaign or any other setting that relies on the “previous civilization” model. Can you imagine a scientist from our era stumbling upon the ruins of a temple to the Old Ones and finding 10,000-, 20,000, 100,000-year old markings that get translated (correctly or not) to form the basis of a summoning spell? Or perhaps the previous arrival of aliens or monsters from other worlds or dimensions? Lastly, consider how much you could play with your players heads if it turned out to be graffiti from some punk with a paintbrush in the last 10 years who wanted to spark a hoax…

And then keep in mind the effects of time on a particular piece of art. Has some of the paint disappeared, leaving a message that may be misinterpreted? Or were large portions of a chiseled stone destroyed, leaving only a partial text that may not include the stringent warning about letting whatever was locked deep inside the tomb free?

Endless possibilities.

From fantasy to modern and beyond (computers anyone?), the tools of the trade have a lot to offer as far as inspiration. So don’t forget the little things…

I’ll leave you with some of the sacred text of Monty Python and the Holy Grail…

Chapman as King Arthur in Holy Grail

Image via Wikipedia

  KNIGHT:  There!  Look!
  LAUNCELOT:  What does it say?
  GALAHAD:  What language is that?
  ARTHUR:  Brother Maynard, you're our scholar!
  MAYNARD:  It's Aramaic!
  GALAHAD:  Of course!  Joseph of Aramathea!
  LAUNCELOT:  Course!
  KNIGHT:  What does it say?
  MAYNARD:  It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of
      Aramathea.  He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail
      in the Castle of uuggggggh'.
  ARTHUR:  What?
  MAYNARD: '... the Castle of uuggggggh'.
  BEDEMIR:  What is that?
  MAYNARD:  He must have died while carving it.
  LAUNCELOT:  Oh, come on!
  MAYNARD:  Well, that's what it says.
  ARTHUR:  Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaggggh'.
      He'd just say it!
  MAYNARD:  Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
  GALAHAD:  Perhaps he was dictating.
(quoted from Sacred-Texts.com)

(Funny enough, this article was inspired by something programmer-related at Design for Hackers and not Monty Python – but hey. You take inspiration where you can get it!)

–Fitz

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DVD Review: The Dungeon Masters

July 19, 2010 in Reviews by Fitz | 1 comment

Hey there…

People who play roleplaying games sometimes get a bad wrap. We get accused of practicing witchcraft or blamed for the suicides of individuals with mental illness, when all we’re doing is getting together to pretend we’re someone else for a while and hang out. “It’s a game, people” seems to be our regular response to this controversy, but that doesn’t stop some folks from trying to stop creativity and free thinking by banning books.

The Dungeon Masters is a new documentary from director Kevin McAllester (You’re Gonna Miss Me) that shines a light on the lives of three gamers – Richard, Scott, and Elizabeth. Though not typical of those people I’ve met in my nearly 30 years gaming, these three present a unique cross section of roleplayers from across the country.

Each of the three subjects of the documentary is involved in roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons. D&D was introduced in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Now on its 4th edition, it has spawned two feature films and hundreds of books. Games such as D&D provide a creative outlet for thousands of imaginative and creative people around the world to escape the realm of the mundane and experience the fantastic for a time.

D&D is traditionally a table-top roleplaying game, meaning that a Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM) leads a group of players, each with their own Player Characters (PCs) on an adventure in a make-believe world. Games like D&D provide a structured, yet open-ended, set of rules so that everyone plays fair and doesn’t just start changing the rules as they go. PCs have characteristics to define their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. And the players, in a way similar to actors on stage or screen, describe their characters’ actions and speak for them.

Scott is a gamer seeking a way to provide for his wife and son through his hobby as opposed to his job as an apartment complex manager. But as most of us with the same dream have learned one way or another, that’s tough to do. As a result, he spins the imagination he uses for gaming into a fantasy novel and tries to get it published through an agent.

Richard’s life is a little different. A reservist, he spends most of his time thinking about GMing his weekly roleplaying game sessions. GMs basically control everything that the player characters see in the game – from the rest of the population of a town or city to the monsters and even the weather. And Richard seemed to take a very adversarial approach to his games – going so far as to kill all the PCs in the game when they went into a Sphere of Annihilation and obliterated themselves, which put a strain on his group that bled even into the next group Richard GMed.

And Elizabeth is a different case all together. She, even more than the others, likes to inhabit her characters fully to the point where she dresses up as a Drow (Dark) Elf with face paint, a wig, and a costume. Elizabeth also plays World of Warcraft on the computer and enjoys Live Action Role Playing or LARPing with other individuals who like to wear costumes and wield fake weapons to get further into their own characters.

Where all of these people fall down a bit is with personal relationships outside the game. Scott’s wife seems to be the main breadwinner of the family while he chases his dreams of being a famous author and having a successful cable television series. Richard’s dedication to running his game meant less time to spend with his wife and within his church. And Elizabeth went from relationship to relationship seeking someone who would accept her as she is as a person and not just as a character.

Though I understand that overall there’s a positive message to the documentary that shows that change is possible for these people and they can mend fences to gain stronger relationships, I’m concerned that it portrays all gamers as socially dysfunctional, damaged individuals disconnected from the real world.

In my own personal experience as a gamer, I have spent time with many different types of people. And yes, there have been some odd folks like the guy who was occasionally on acid or the self-professed Wiccan. But for the most part, they’re just normal people. Most of the gamers I’ve met since college have had jobs, relationships, and are as ordinary as anyone you’d meet on the street. Some, like myself, even have families and still find time to game.

So the documentary seems skewed to me towards the more extreme ends of “normal” gaming behavior. Are there gamers who behave the way the people in the documentary do? Yes. But I can without hesitation say that I’ve never met anyone who tried to run their own cable television show.

Quality-wise, the documentary is very well shot. Most is in widescreen, with older video clips worked in here and there. In addition to the film itself are many outtakes that didn’t make their way into the final cut. I can honestly say that 99% of them would have made the subjects of the documentary seem even more unusual or crazy than they already do.

If you’re a gamer, I would strongly suggest you check out The Dungeon Masters to see how our hobby is being viewed in this case. The documentary provides an unflinching glimpse into the realities of these three lives and how they try to balance their hobbies and real life.

If you’re not a gamer, but know someone who is – I would encourage you to watch this documentary with them so they may provide a different perspective on gaming in their own lives. Use The Dungeon Masters as a starting point for a conversation about roleplaying – not the end.

But either way, I’d encourage you to check out The Dungeon Masters when it’s released on DVD August 3, 2010. For more details, check out the info page at Antidote Films here.

This article first appeared at BlogCritics.org here.

–Fitz

p.s. If you want to pick up this DVD when it’s released, check it out below:

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Is it time to ask your character some questions?

June 29, 2010 in Inspiration by Fitz | No comments

Yes, I’m probably going out on a limb here by asking you to talk to a fictional character – which can be further construed as asking you to talk to yourself. (Though recent articles say that talking to yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing – see here.)

Characters are rarely just numbers and words on a page. There’s more to them than that more often than not.

So why not ask your character, on paper or out loud, a bit about themselves? Consider it an interview. I’ve done it for characters in my pale attempts at writing fiction (had a long talk with a serial killer once that unnerved me a bit). But what do you ask?

There’s the usual stuff psychobabble stuff like:

  • What was your mother like?
  • Where did you grow up?
  • Who were your friends? Your enemies?
  • How was your relationship with your father?
  • When did you realize you wanted more for yourself than an average life? (Most characters lead extraordinary lives.)
  • Why are you here?

But how about some not so obvious questions… A recent article by Alicia Rasley at WritersDigest.com brought up 9 interesting questions to ask… Here’s a few from that article…

  • When you walk into a party, what do you notice first? The mood? The people? The decorations? The things that need to be fixed? The background music? The food on the buffet table? Whether or not you fit in?
  • Do you usually notice problems around you? What is your response? Do you write an angry letter to the editor? Shrug and move on? Analyze what’s wrong and how to fix it? Take it as evidence that the world is falling apart? What about problems within yourself?
  • Are you more interested in the past, the future or living in the now?Are you one to keep holiday traditions? If you had to move tomorrow, how long would it take you to make new friends?
  • How do you decide if you can trust someone? By experience with this person? First impressions? Intuition? Do you test the person somehow? Or are you just generally disposed to trust or not to trust?
  • Are you a deliberate, careful speaker, or do you talk without thinking first? Do you use slang, or do you use diction your old English teacher would approve?

I think these are interesting questions to ponder on a quiet evening or afternoon. Any extra tidbits you learn about your character makes it more interesting to play in my book. It’s those little things that sometimes make a huge difference.

Where does all this lead? Hard to say. You might write up a small biography for your character that you can pass along to your GM. You might simply compile a list of adjectives to remind yourself about your character’s personality and quirks. This could even be useful for a GM trying to further define the party’s arch nemesis or discover the motivations behind a local lord who thinks the PCs should be tossed out of town on their rumps…

What do you think? Have you spoken with your characters recently?

–Fitz

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Magazine Review: Kobold Quarterly, Spring 2010, Issue 13

April 19, 2010 in Reviews by Fitz | 1 comment

Hi everybody…

The good people at Kobold Quarterly are at it again, producing another fine issue of their roleplaying games (RPG) magazine. However, I have to warn you – perhaps this issue should have come in a paper wrapper because of the cover. The cover art features a scene right out of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a forest clearing teeming with fae-looking folk, satyrs, unicorns, and other critters all getting ready to party. Now, there are some carefully placed shadows, hair, and arms, but it’s tough to ignore that a good number attending the revelry are stark naked.

Before anyone gets up in arms, I’m not a prude. But my concern would be for those game stores who carry KQ on their shelves and the pre-teen and teenage gamers who shop there. If we want our industry to be taken seriously, it’s tough if one of our best magazines (who have taken over for the once great Dragon and Dungeon publications from TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Paizo Publishing) is presenting Boris Vallejo-style pictures without properly warning folks first.

Yes, this issue does deal with sex and romance in RPGs, but you could warn a fella first. It’s funny, because I don’t typically object to magazine covers. Many of the KQ covers have been suggestive, but not objectionable. I guess it’s the pure… nakedness… that bugged me here.

That said, the articles inside this issue are the typical top-rate variety that you expect from KQ these days. And alongside the articles about sex and romance, there are articles about gnomish flying machines, magic weapons, and some darker material about creatures like the Shoggoth and using Lovecraftian Gods in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Again, the mix of content is amazing and thought provoking as always.

Who knew the ecology and psychology of Shoggoths was a topic that needed exploration? These are vile creatures from H.P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulhu Mythos who can now be injected into your own RPG campaigns to add some additional “ick” factor if you need it. “Ecology of the Shoggoth” by Phillip Larwood describes shoggoths as an intelligent ooze that consume living tissue or material and add it to their bulk. But just because they’re intelligent doesn’t mean you can have a conversation with one if you see it sliming down the street. These grotesque creatures embody chaos itself and leave a path of destruction and insanity in their wake. Larwood introduces the concept of cults to these strange creatures who actually feed and worship them… not the kind of folks you want to take home to eat meet your mother.

And if that wasn’t enough to scare your players, Aeryn Rudel describes the properties of some of the Cthulhu elder god and some of the qualities of their worshippers in his article “Lovecraftian Gods”. These gods cover everything from chaos to true evil and I wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley. No goody-two-shoes gods here. I do wonder a bit at the game balance qualities of some of the powers the faithful get from these divinities. Things like the Veil of ‘Umr at-Tawil would drive me nuts as a GM or a player for example (a blue silk veil that gives the ability to see all possible actions an enemy may take and then interrupt them), but it’s nice to have additional options.

As a game designer contemplating a Steampunk setting, David Mallon’s article for Pathfinder – “The Arquebusier” – was intriguing. Introducing a class proficient with early firearms such as the Musket and Blunderbuss would certainly add numerous options to a game world. And some of the new feats included, such as Double Tap and Bulletcrafting make this class much more well rounded – giving such a character the ability to not only create such weapons and ammunition, but have proficiency in using them in combat.

By far my favorite article in the issue was Monte Cook‘s “The Thrill of the Unknown” – which cuts to the heart of game setting design, which is one of my favorite things to do. Cook suggests that instead of illuminating all the corners of every dark place in the world, the element of the unknown needs to remain ever present. As he says – “Remember… that the power of the truly unknown is that, because it is entirely undefined, we can never grow accustomed to it.” When you know what’s coming, you can prepare for it. And that’s fine most of the time, but leave a bit of mystery where you and your players can explore it together.

If you’re looking for inspiration as a player or a GM, look no further than an issue of Kobold Quarterly, past or present. Every time I crack open a copy I learn something new or find a new way to look at things… Be sure to pick up your copy of Kobold Quarterly, Spring 2010, Issue 13 at a gaming store near you or online at KoboldQuarterly.com. Even with the questionable cover of this issue, you’re bound to find something fascinating!

–Fitz

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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?

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