Rule of the Dice

I was glancing through the Pathfinder Bestiary the other day, re-familiarizing myself with some of the monsters and their stats, when it hit me; the magic is gone. Just a year or so ago, when I played my first game, there was this allure and mystery about the seemingly limitless monsters and beasties that populated the various fantasy worlds. Now, I see them as stat blocks and powers, obstacles to pit my players against. Perhaps it was bound to happen as I became the primary gamemaster for my group. But it's still left me feeling somewhat disappointed. The realization that a small part of the game is now gone for good leaves me wanting that feeling of surprise anew. I can't recall the very first monster I ever faced as a player, though I imagine it was something suitably low-level. Like a kobold, or goblin, or possibly a level-0 farmer. Something easy, that was for certain. Or perhaps Farmer Smurf, the level-0 Smurf! But I can remember the combat I most enjoyed from those early...

I've heard it said that the MMO is the single greatest threat to pen-and-paper roleplaying. In all frankness, I find this a little hard to believe, having played a fair number of online RPGs, but then I'm no industry analyst and you can't deny the sway that 12+ Million (Capital M!) gamers and their monthly revenue have over even the big leaguers like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo. So I guess it isn't entirely unreasonable to call MMOs an "enemy" of traditional RPGs, but then it wouldn't be entirely accurate either. After all, MMOs and traditional roleplaying games are clearly two separate beasts. If you don't believe that, try playing both in one day. There's little comparison mechanically, socially, and, for me at least, they each fulfill a different gaming need. But, is there anything we can take away from MMOs and bring to our own table? I think there are at least two key things that we can incorporate more into pen-and-paper gaming. Ins...

I will preface this Saturday Sorcery by saying that I am of the old school mindset when it comes to magic weapons. I feel a magic weapon should be reasonably unique, reasonably powerful, and possibly dangerous to the wielder. They should be strange, wondrous, and have some kind of backstory. I dislike the sort of throwaway magic items that proliferate in D&D these days. It turns a powerful arcane force into a trinket to be sold when not in use. There is little to no personal attachment to a specific weapon or set of armor, no lofty ideal of contributing to the legend crafted by a enscorcelled blade, no sign that these supposedly powerful artifacts are anything other than flashy glitz you might find in a local department store. In here, somewhere, are seven +1 swords, eight Wands of Levitation, and a dozen Boots of Fleetness. So when I create magic items, I try to imbue them with a sense of purpose and history, perhaps even a seed for a plot or two. What follows are three different ...

I don't buy a whole lot of new games every year, at least not in printed form, but PDFs are another story. For me, dropping ten bucks on a game I may or may not enjoy is a heck of a lot better than doing the same thing on a forty-dollar and up scale. So Drive Thru RPG is one of the big stops on my digital shopping sprees. I've picked up good and bad alike from there, but thankfully it seems that the cream rises to the top. Cheap little adventures, supplements, and even game systems. Especially older systems that still play beautifully (I'll save a rundown on some of the best, and worst, PDF purchases for a later date). Being a cheapskate New Englander, I also like free. Free is good. Often, a free game is just a little afternoon time waster, good with beer and pretzels, but not much else. And then there are the quality games that exist in a free form. The well-known Risus (the rules-litest game ever?), Labyrinth Lord , Basic Fantasy , OSRIC , and Swords and Wizardry . Thes...

When I was a kid, my favorite toys were the simplest. You could have handed mini-Joe an action figure and a toy gun and he would have spent hours, if not days, coming up with elaborate and increasingly violent hallucinatory adventures. So I suppose it's little surprise that I have grown to love generic gaming systems now that I'm older (we won't delve into the ludicrous possibility of being wiser). By generic system, I am referring to a system largely devoid of setting or fluff material. A system I could use to play in any number of fictional universes that fit in the mold of the genre; from Tolkeinesque fantasy, to Star Trek style sci-fi. The system and the setting are separate things in my mind. I compartmentalize to the point where playing a Forgotton Realms game using Hackmaster or even D6 Fantasy sounds interesting. But there are games where the line between setting and system are hopelessly blurred, to the point of being inseparable. 4th Edition D&D is a good exam...

 A little horror themed Saturday sorcery this week. I have a notebook dedicated to write ups for all the various undead monsters that lurk in the dark corners of my campaign world. The following is gathered from the notes I had on ghouls, or more precisely notes on how one becomes a ghoul. Ghouls - The eaters of the dead A ghoul is perhaps the most hideous of all the undead. In life this person was obsessed with death, usually exhibiting abnormal perversions such as the desire to drink blood, collecting corpses of animals or the recently deceased, and possibly necrophilia. When their unwholesome and unholy obsession finally reaches fevered pitch their desires can only be satiated by killing. At first it will just be simple murder, but this soon graduates to cannibalism, and finally to necrotic cannibalism. Now the dark powers start to beckon, whispering terrible secrets in their deranged ear. The downward spiral into hellish oblivion is almost complete. At some point the person...

In a recent article , C.D. talked about some of the best games he's never played. We all have them, of course. Those games we wish we could play but, for one reason or another, do not. I have a large pile of them sitting either in PDFs or on my desk, but the one that has bothered me the most deserves a mention today. The game is Traveller . I've always been a Star Trek fan. There's something about the Space Opera genre that I love, even more so than fantasy, and finding a truly good system to use for those kinds of star-spanning adventures isn't nearly so easy as it is to find one of the billions of fantasy-based systems. So when I finally broke down and got the classic Traveller rules from Drive Thru RPG, I was pleasantly surprised to find that here was the ultimate set of Space Opera roleplaying rules. Everything, all in one self-contained little package of awesome. Truthfully, I probably ought to have splurged and got the Mongoose edition, as I hear it's basicall...

Today, I will briefly continue my ruminations on Megadungeons, specifically three of the distinct advantages I've found they have. #1: A smaller, more localized area. A Megadungeon rarely, if ever, requires that the heroes travel far afield, and this makes it more easy to GM, as you won't need to consider every single faction, nation, and locale when you build your game. Even when using a purchased campaign setting, you'll find it can be a lot of work to enjoyably maintain all the various towns, cities, and NPCs you'll need, if you want to create a deep and compelling game. With a Megadungeon campaign, you can focus on one or two principalities, developing greater detail for the NPCs, and even having an easier time of managing a more living world. Even when using the dungeon itself as a living world, with numerous factions and groups, it is a contained world, subject to easier laws than the round (or flat, your choice) world your characters inhabit. It's hard to rem...

The Megadungeon. A dungeon so vast and epic, players were expected to spend their entire lives plumbing its murky depths. A dungeon that might easily top 20 or 30 levels of sheer madness. Feared by some, adored by others, and quickly becoming a relic of an older age of gaming. Now, sprawling epics that take the players from land to land, environment to environment, are more popular with both players and publishers. And who can blame them? Did the Fellowship of the Ring spend their lives exploring one damp, lonely old dungeon? No. Did Conan drop into the same fetid pit time after time, seeking to delve ever deeper? No. Heck, even Lara Croft, the world's most famous tomb raider, sought new locales after a hard day's plundering! So why would gamers want to spend their entire campaign in some Kafka-esque hell that never really ends? And yet, when done well, a Megadungeon (yes, I like to capitalize it to show off its awesomeness) can be extremely entertaining. Of course, I am...

Bear with me. I don't normally try to do a whole post of links, but today I'm already running a little late. For the past four days all of my off time has been spent shoveling out snow amid wind, occasional rain, and general discomfort. No, don't worry, I'm not going to turn this into a whining rant against Mother Nature and her sick sense of humor. No, this is going to be a short topic on some of the tools one can use to help speed up your RPG planning when life starts getting hectic. I've got to run this weekend's game for my group and, thanks to my schedule, haven't had much time to plan out any kind of plot advancement after they completed the last major plotline. I can, of course, just wing it, but that could be trouble if I don't mentally prepare myself. I could also just run a one-shot, but that's not my usual purview. So what do I do? I take to the Internet and use some (or all) of these handy free tools to make my job just a little eas...