Posts Tagged by background
| May 7, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by John Fredericks, and it’s a unique idea we’ve never discussed here before. Thanks, John! Introduction All GMs long for player investment in their characters and in the campaign world. As GMs, we’re often (very) caught up in the planning and running of the game. This makes it difficult for us to gauge whether we are meeting the players’ expectations at the table. In this article, I’ll share an idea that I used recently to garner more player input on their…
| February 28, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
As a GM, I used to struggle with player backgrounds and PC complexity. I thought that every PC needed to be extensively plotted out down to the tiniest detail, and ignored the fact that many players don’t enjoy doing this. Once I took off my blinders and looked at things from a different perspective — and once I’d seen for myself how enjoyable PCs who start off simple could be — this hangup fell by the wayside. Because just as pressuring your players to write…
| January 27, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I’m a big fan of having music in the background when I GM (and when I play, too), and have really gotten into it over the past four years. In that time, I’ve learned a few things that I find useful; they’re all based on having a digital media library (in my case, on my iPod): No vocals. When the primary activity of the evening is sitting around and talking, having an extra “person” singing in the background is incredibly distracting. The only exception is…
| December 10, 2008 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
What’s the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don’t be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack. One way to help players feel like they are taking part in a dynamic setting is to always have things happening in the background. (While mentioning that there’s a two lovebirds snuggling in the corner of the tavern is good color for description of a specific encounter, that’s…
| November 24, 2008 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Tell us a little bit about yourself… You’ve probably come up with some oddball character backgrounds, either trying to justify your twinked and leveraged character build, or just because a Somali Pirate-Ninja would be cool. (What’s not to like about a swashbuckling sneak with his own supertanker?) But have you given much thought as to your own background? What elements from your own past have you used, either to run or play RPGs? (Hey, GMs are a players, too!) I’ll bet that you’re using some…
| August 21, 2008 | Posted by Scott Martin |
When does a character’s story start? Books and novels often begin just as some exciting event kicks the characters out of their routine and pushes them on a new path. Occasionally the movie will give you a few minutes, or the book a few chapters, to get used to the character’s normal life– then it all changes. Thanks to A Butterfly Dreaming for inspiring this post and its sequel with Character Development: Flashbacks. There are a number of techniques you can borrow to include character…
| July 11, 2008 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
When I ran my first 7th Sea campaign I introduced each adventure with a short piece of fiction. This was often a cut scene that gave the players a little metagame knowledge as to the focus of the adventure. For those of you unfamiliar with 7th Sea, it was a swashbuckling RPG based on a fictional world that strongly resembled 17th century Europe lightly flavored with magic. One PC in the campaign was Thora. She was the daughter of (in real-world terms) an English noble and…
