In previous posts for this month’s carnival I have spoken about different manifestations of darkness. Creatures. Places where it exists. Some folks have spoken about how to banish it by bringing light. Others have spoken about introducing it to your players to change the mood. This time I want to talk about the darkness within…
This idea came to me the other night and is burning a hole in my brain. I see all sorts of interesting adventure ideas in the future… ——————– There are a few priests, scattered throughout the world, who swear to uphold the “Burden of the Bones” when they are called upon. It is a sacred…
Hello fellow readers! Let’s take on the Darkside Personality Traits this time. These are the traits usually embodied by the bad guys. However, they could also be used by other characters to indicate a “fall from grace” or brush with tragedy, especially considering that people are playing in darker settings like Ravenloft and adventures like…
Welcome again fellow adventurers! Let’s take creating characters further yet. In the last article, we discussed backgrounds, personality, and appearance. Now we will discuss some of the other details like objectives, connections, and how to bring it all together. Details, details, details… Objectives You already know a bit about where your character came from and…
Can I just say that I’m a bit giddy? That’s right – “giddy!” Last night I started what is really the first campaign I have begun in earnest in at least a decade. I’m GMing. My two kids are among the 9 players playing and the rest of the crew is populated by the family…
As a player I often wondered how much time we actually spent on the road between locations. In some campaigns we seemed to ALWAYS be on horseback or foot, camping by the roadside, holed up in some creepy inn, or stuffed in the stacked hammocks aboard a ship… We never really complained all that much,…
While working on the upcoming Brick by Brick: Floors product (follow-up to Brick by Brick: Doors), I stumbled across a strange idea. If context is so important for everything in a game encounter, do we sometimes need some sort of inspiration to determine how the PCs have come to a particular place? Arriving at a…
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is Life and Death in RPGs (see here for the kickoff article) and shockingly enough in the insanity of my last few weeks, I have some ideas to share… Let’s start with Life, and then we’ll work on Death in the next post. For me, “life” in RPGs is…
A concept came up in discussion a couple of weeks ago about how to resolve inter-party issues. We’re not going to try it ourselves, but I wanted to write about it a bit to share it and ponder the idea a bit. It’s simple really… For each other character in the group, a player will…
Image by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com via Flickr Long title, I know… But basically I am wondering how we might take the small things, such as the method of writing, and use that in a game. And by “method” in this case, I’m thinking of the tools used to create the work. For example, were the letters painted onto…
