April 9

Pathfinder – Changing horses midstream

I apologise for those people who may be confused with the title of this post and came looking for rules on changing horses midstream.

What I really want to discuss is the possibility of changing my current campaign from an adventure path style game to a sandbox style campaign.

My players have mentioned to me about the Elder Scrolls style games they have played and I thought it would be interesting to see what happens if I give them an open ended environment in which to play. Luckily I have plenty of resources to draw upon and can use them to populate the region they will be exploring.

I should be able to generate quests for them to undertake and slowly tie the events together into a seamless puzzle for then to solve.

The last time I gave them something like this to play with was the Legend of the Five Rings supplement Mimura; I recognise where I went wrong there was bombarding the players with too much information in one go.

If I slowly add information to the campaign Wiki  I should be able to refer them there and allow them to refresh their memories of past events.

Fingers crossed that I may have found a potentially winning game idea.

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April 6

Shackled City Adventure Path #3

I was planning on writing a different post to this one but after reading the bits of the adventure I have been researching I gave up.

I was wondering why the town watch hasn’t been investigating the missing people in the first chapter and I poured over the books looking for how many guards the town should have; the answer I found was 45. Later on in the book I discovered that rather there are 750 town watch, which is rather different from the 1% suggested.

At this point I realised that the adventure was flawed and with my upcoming holiday I would have no way of fixing it before the next session.

We decided in the end to drop this adventure and try something else instead.

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April 4

Kickstarter – Sector Commander: WWII

Back an exciting card driven WWII strategy game that plays like a wargame, card game and a board game all in one! For 2 or more players

This looks like it may break the mould in tabletop wargaming, it could be worth a punt if you like this sort of thing.  Since tabletop wargaming brings out the worst side of me, I won’t be backing this one I’m afraid and when I say worst side, I mean the really competitive part of me that hates to lose 🙂

 

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April 3

Kickstarter – GNL Mats

Modular gaming mats that fit any size or shape table, work with any marker, and are super durable.

Like many gms when D&D 3 appeared and introduced the concept of using a battle grid I had to go and purchase a couple for use.  It was then I discovered the main drawback of the maps I bought were that they didn’t fit the gaming table and would either hang over the edge or make battles a rather intimate encounter whenever I used the smaller one.

This looks like just the ticket for me, being able to lay a few down and clean them afterwards.  The only concern I have is that the international shipping is going to be a very costly proposition and may push it outside of my price bracket.

 

Category: RPG | 1 Comment on Kickstarter – GNL Mats
April 1

April 1st – The Silly Season

With the 1st of April once more upon us I had to find out what the latest practical jokes were being offered to the internet.

It seems that the rapid expansion of the world wide web has led to April 1st being used as a media circus to promote things that sound plausible enough to be real but are utter hogwash.  You would think that people would be able to search online to verify the facts being presented to them but that doesn’t often appear to be the case.

Which made me wonder, what if some of these ideas could be real?  Take any one you like from the current crop or an event from the past and present it in your game world as a truth, then you have something to expand upon your campaign.

What if spaghetti was in fact grown on trees and harvested for food?  Think of the fun you could have when the crop is threatened with a beetle that likes to eat a food staple.

What if there was a translation system for pets that enabled you to talk to the animals?

How about an army of pigeons that classify search results?

I used to purchase a popular American tabloid and I mined that for campaign ideas for Dark Conspiracy and Conspiracy X; some of the articles were very inspiring indeed.

Plenty of campaign fodder there to spice up a dull session

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March 30

Shackled City Adventure Path #2

So another session is wrapped up and the players have been meeting some of the other residents of Cauldon while disposing of the loot they have collected.

They’ve also managed to have one of the npcs arrested for being an accomplice to a crime.

Trouble is now they have done this they are questioning their motivation for continuing their exploration below the city.

I have a week to try and get them back on track with the campaign and I think I may just have the way to do it.

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March 28

Shackled City Adventure Path

After a brief hiatus I’m once more back in the saddle as gm and starting to run the Shackled City Adventure Path for my group.

I’ve debated with other gms the pros and cons of such large scale adventures before and this is going to be my first real attempt at a long term D&D campaign.

It’s also the first time I’ve had the players control multiple characters, two each just do we have the required four player party basis which became the norm for D&D 3.

I’m cheating slightly and I’m using Pathfinder as my core rules and the players seem to be happy with the rules set.

We’re only a couple of sessions in and things are going OK but there are still areas that need to be addressed; like the combat manoeuvres. Despite the design team trying to simplify them there are still questions over whether or not you would actually use grapple or disarm unless you really had to.

Before embarking on running this mighty adventure I did search the web to see if any conversion notes had been published and I didn’t find many at all; those that I did find were incomplete although there was an amazing one which I bookmarked but apart from that I’m having to convert on the fly.

While I’d love to post details of how they’re progressing I have a feeling that my players may decide to read this blog and see if I accidentally leak a spoiler or two from each session.

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