Posts Tagged by character
| March 13, 2013 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Every so often I get the urge to run a game around very tight themes – a game where all the characters are thieves in a thieves guild, a game where all the players are members of a military organization with specific ranks and duties, a modern game where intrigue and politics rule the day, not pure combat, etc. Something with a definite, described theme with information provided to the players about what type of game I’m intending to run. Sometimes I’ve even done weeks…
| November 8, 2012 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
In my continuing quest for a campaign, my group has recently picked a Savage Worlds super hero game with a home-brewed setting. As we started working on the characters, I wanted the players to not only have a background, but to have NPC’s that I could use during the sessions. Sounds plenty reasonable, and something that I have done in a number of games before. Rather than doing the normal list of NPC’s, or pulling them from their backgrounds, I wanted to do something a little different……
| November 1, 2012 | Posted by John Arcadian |
With Halloween having just passed, many of you were likely to have been inundated with hordes of costumed trick-or-treaters or co-workers. Halloween is a wonderful holiday, and one of my favorites, primarily for the costumes. Donning a costume doesn’t change anything about the person wearing it, but it does change the perceptions of everyone seeing the person. My Indiana Jones costume is little more than the clothes and jacket that I wear to work on a daily basis, with the addition of a fedora.…
| March 2, 2012 | Posted by John Arcadian |
I’ve come across this phenomenon a few times as a Game Master, and it has always presented a new and interesting challenge in how to resolve it. I recently came across it again, so I figured I would write it up as a hot button and see what our Gnome Stew community has to say about it. Picture this scenario: Player: Ok. I’ve got my character all set. He is a badass who used to work for the mafia. He left in a blaze of…
| November 21, 2011 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
It’s no secret that I love investigative adventures (heck, you only have to go this far back to know that!). I like playing them, I like running them, and I like writing them. That said there’s a lot of prep that has to go into building a mystery adventure and I thought I might share some of the tips I’ve come up with over the years. This is the first installment of a series of articles on writing mystery adventures. Know what’s on the character…
| October 6, 2011 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
How long is it okay to make a player wait to rejoin the game after losing a character? As I peruse RPG forums or read articles, I’m struck by the number of times I’ve come across some variant of this scenario: Rob Roleplayer finally gets to play in Mr. Legendary GM’s totally awesome campaign. Much fun was had by all and Rob Roleplayer remembers, with fondness, his character imprisoned for several sessions until the other PCs finally got around to rescuing him. Several sessions? Really?…
| June 23, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
Encounter types are one of the variables with the most potential impact on games. From design, through character creation to adventure design, encounter type impacts the flavor and success of the game. For the purpose of this article, Encounter type is the main function of an encounter. Common examples include investigation, combat, social, magic, or other skills but games with odd focuses can have more unusual encounter types like rocking out, scholarly debates, crafting, research, or romantic advances. From a design standpoint, the proportional mix…
