Posts Tagged by pcs
| January 27, 2010 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
A modern variant of the mythical “grim and gritty” fantasy campaign is the “standard horror” campaign. How many of us have dreamed of running a horror adventure (horror generally doesn’t lend itself well to campaigns without high PC turnover rates) where all of the PCs are regular people forced to confront something horrific? How much fun would it be to have a flight attendant, a bookish college student, a big box store salesperson, and a construction worker have to survive a horrific threat before help…
| January 18, 2010 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I’m a big proponent of using everything my players give me, especially when it comes to PC backgrounds: If you put it in there, I assume it’s because you want to see it in the game, and I’ll do my best to make that happen. But why assume? As a player, I design character backgrounds this way. I include NPCs my PC would love to fight, fuck, or otherwise interact with; I build conflict into my characters’ pasts, and leave big, juicy pointers to future…
| July 2, 2009 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
I was running a Star Wars campaign a few years ago (revised pre-Saga) edition. One of the most helpful sections in the core book was a list of stat blocks for NPCs. As I wanted these stat blocks to be challenging for the PCs, I decided that the PCs would be standard by-the-book characters. When I showed up to the first session, I discovered that the group had a set of Star Wars characters that had been created for a game that lasted all of…
| April 6, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
My regular gaming group of five includes four GMs, which is fantastic for all sorts of reasons — but one of the best things about it is that as a GM, I’m constantly exposed to new ideas, new approaches, and new tricks and techniques that I never would’ve come up with on my own. The background-independent pilot session is one of those techniques. There are lots of ways to kick off a new campaign, but other GMs in my group have used this one to…
| March 2, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Last night, my group kicked off a Ghouls chronicle set in 1983 (Ghouls being a subset of White Wolf’s Vampire RPG — mortal thralls with minor supernatural powers, each bound by blood to a specific vampire), and our GM put a spin on the traditional prelude mechanic: He ran the session round-robin style. Preludes: Nuts and Bolts In WW games, preludes are solo (one player, one GM) mini-sessions that take place before the chronicle begins. Given the nature of WW’s games, they often focus on…
| 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…
| November 18, 2008 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
Here’s a question dug from my GMing archives. In a previous modern occult campaign, there were two players, Dan and Sarah, that played two characters, Drake and Shayla. Dan was very much into roleplaying and being “in character”, while Sarah found roleplaying awkward and preferred to refer to Shayla’s actions in the third person. Prior to the campaign, it was established between Dan and Sarah that Drake and Shayla would be madly in love with each other, soulmates as it were. It was also established that Drake was Shayla’s…
