Here's something that is important for the whole group to pay attention to: Character Roles. The best description of the problem I have read came from Fang Langford when he was working through his description of Scattershot a few years ago. At the time he called it Sine Qua Non, Latin for "without which not". [The current version is here.] It is important to clearly label the ...

This post is inspired by John Arcadian's recent post, Ah, the good old Scry and Fry. Before I get into this post, however, I want to whip you into a frenzied mob. March with me and demand a solution to the whole "Scry and Fry" thing, especially the fry part. Gnome Arcadian, show us the solution or (raising torch high in gnomish hands) we'll show ...

How do you and your group generate stats? A lot of games answer this question for you; Hero System and World of Darkness are two popular games that lack random stat generation. For the last twenty years most newly designed systems have lacked random stat generation, though the exceptions have been the biggest players in the field. D&D in all of its prior incarnations and the ...

I've stumbled on a number of interesting posts that I have to share with you. Pastures of Green There's been a whirlwind of cool new settings and thought about settings out there recently. I can't imagine what would have everybody scrambling to update and create new worlds. Well, maybe if I stretch myself I can think of something... Troy here at the Stew has a couple of posts about Remaking ...

When you first think of running a campaign, there's probably one overwhelming motivation for your game. Whatever you do, don't forget it under the weight of all your research and preparation. Design your campaign to satisfy what you're aiming for. My group's current D&D3.5 campaign was conceived with two strong motivations in mind. We knew 4e was coming, but we had lots of supplements for third ...

Clem had a question in the Suggestion Pot: Supers gaming: In a world with ubiquitous security cameras, DNA analysis that can identify someone from a skin cell scraped from their knuckle by an evildoer's five o'clock shadow, image and profile matching software, huge fingerprint and medical ID databases, easy wiretapping and bugging etc.; how does an enterprising vigilante protect his/her/their/its secret identity? I just finished an interesting book, Superpowers ...

We recently completed a five episode (plus pilot) season of our first Primetime Adventures game. Here's a rundown of how we did it and what was involved. The group We founded our group a little under a year ago after playing together at the game store meetup group. Our goals were to enjoy games together and try out more indie games and techniques. Primetime Adventures (PTA) was ...

Clem asked about less special PCs in the suggestion pot: Almost all settings and campaigns seem to assume that pcs are a breed apart. They may start weak but, if they survive, they can eventually become extremely powerful and/or capable. Ok, suppose there are such special people in the world and that they are born with something extra that gives them this superhuman potential. Now suppose that the ...

We need a backup game. My game group had to cancel another session on Friday, due to very understandable real life issues. We had enough notice to cancel the session completely-- but that left us at loose ends. One solution for missing players, though one we didn't feel good about implementing on Friday, is just to run one player short. We've done it a few times ...

Sektor asked this question in the Suggestion Pot: I was wondering what alternatives exist for the battlemat, preferably without the miniatures and other small things that my players love to fiddle around with (all the while not paying attention to the game), but at the same time as clear and unambiguous during a complex combat situation. Right now, I use the excellent MapTool from RPTools (rptools.net) in ...

"As you leave the train station, you notice something is missing: the street is surprisingly quiet. A moment later there's a screech of wheels and the sound of a tommy gun..." When I met Bryan and Paul for the first time at the local game store's meetup, everything clicked. In a lot of ways, it was pure luck. Bryan had heard about Spirit of the Century and was ...

Phoenix came to town and was looking for a roleplaying group. I answered his email, because I was trying to get into the wider Fresno scene, and thought it'd be a good to help a new visitor find a group. (Mine, unfortunately was full-- an established group in the middle of the campaign, and I wasn't GM.) We met over coffee (and an amusing misunderstanding). ...

There are awesome moments in the game: A critical that drops the rampaging dragon, dodging the sorcerer's lightning bolt, or seducing the noble woman so your companions can make their escape unnoticed. There are moments in the game when the character fails in a way that isn't fun, or even breaks the table's suspension of belief-- like the ranger who can't shoot anything with his bow tonight, the ...