Posts Tagged by movies
| March 6, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article was written by reader Todd Cash. It’s an in-depth look at how you can use the concept of TV pilot episodes to establish whether a campaign is worth your time. Thanks, Todd! Sometimes a game master gets an idea they aren’t fully sure how to nurture. Questions pop up that elicit concern for the campaign. How many sessions could this game last? Will my gaming group’s schedule ever let this work? For whatever reason, the GM isn’t sure they want to devote…
| December 2, 2011 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
I love starting new campaigns. As a GM it is so exciting to be learning the rules to a new game, and to start to think about how the campaign is going to be run. When I am learning a new game, I like to absorb as much information as I can about the genre and setting. In a way I treat this aspect of campaign prep like a method actor. I want to understand history and the role of the setting. So I immerse…
| July 21, 2011 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
Is it just a summer thing? Or does the fact I have two boys who run around with their holsters, cap guns, bandanas, stick horses and range hats have something to do with it? Or how about the fact that there is nothing like plopping down on the couch late at night and watching “Duel at Diablo,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” a train-lovers’ guilty-pleasure in “Breakheart Pass,” or just about anything else with chaps, six-guns and a lot of cowboys. Summer is when…
| August 5, 2010 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I’m fascinated by the similarities and differences between movies and adventures, as well as the ways movies can be used to inspire games, and a striking difference between them hit me recently: Pivotal moments in movies are often difficult to translate into adventures. I’m a spoiler nazi, so I won’t reveal the movie I was watching when this popped into my head, but here’s the pivotal incident: A firefight breaks out, and one of the main characters is shot. In many ways, his wound defines…
| February 15, 2010 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Reading fellow Gnome Scott Martin’s article on “Setting vs. Cast” made me realize that I generally don’t enjoy RPG settings borrowed from books, movies, or television. (For the sake of this article, let’s call them literary settings.) Asking “Why not?” led to this article, which includes advice for using literary settings. I recognize the popularity of literary settings; entire systems are written for them. But they also have some shortcomings, at least in my experience. Removing the cast changes the dynamic of the setting. In…
| February 3, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
While I was watching old movies and cleaning out my basement a few weeks ago, I watched a movie that made me go “Wow! That was totally someone’s role-playing game!”. It wasn’t the first time that happened to me, and this isn’t the first time that the idea has been discussed here on the stew ( 1 | 2 ). There are a lot of movies and TV shows that have the feeling of a roleplaying game in one way or another. There are some…
| September 24, 2009 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Do you ever step back from being the Game Master for a second, look at what is going on in the game, and imagine the action at the table as if it were a TV show or a movie. Even the most boring combat I recently ran has been brought up by the players in their stories because of the cinematic qualities it had. Role-playing games, movies, and TV shows can have a lot in common. Movies and TV shows make a good metaphor for…
