September 13

September 2014 Blog Carnival RPGBA Blog Carnival: The RPG Blogging Community

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In the beginning…..

This months carnival host is the Dice Monkey and they want to talk about the blogging community; something I’m proud  of.

I started an attempt at blogging a little over five years ago with an abortive blog on the blogger platform to chart our progress through the Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign and for one reason or another my blog never materialised.

Then I sort of fell out of favour with writing, I guess I got a bit disillusioned with it.

Fast forward a few years and the creative urge hit me again so I revived the idea of a gaming blog and decided to write once again.

Thats when I realised that once I had written something I needed an audience, someone to read my writing and I looked at ways I could publicise it.  The web had moved on from the early days of webrings and free hosting but networks were becoming popular and I could see that once you had joined a network you could become a part of that community.

The RPGBA was the first network I applied to and I’m glad they took me aboard.  Not only did I like the fact that I was part of something bigger than myself, the blog carnival meant I could collaborate with other network members on similar topics, like this one. Back in May I hosted my first carnival article about Star Wars.

It seems that I got more traffic via the network than I do through search engines and that makes me somewhat happier.

So if you like this article, please comment on it and let me know what you think.

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August 28

August 2014 Blog Carnival – Devious Dungeons

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This months carnival is being hosted by Mind Weave Role-Playing Platform and they want to know about dungeons.

A confession.

In all my years of gaming the groups I have played in haven’t really done much in the way of dungeon crawling, our fantasy adventures tend to be wilderness or urban themed with the usual mixture of combat, problem solving, barge burning  and diplomacy.  That’s not to say we haven’t done them, they’re just a rarity.

The one dungeon that I do love more than all the others is the first one I ever ran in module B1: In Search of the Unknown; the Caverns of Quasqueton .

The great thing about the dungeon is that is had advice for a novice DM as well as letting you stock it yourself from the charts and tables in the back of the book.  These charts had treasures; both magical and mundane plus monsters appropriate to the level of the characters.  This ensured that although the general layout remained the same, you could never be sure what lurked in the next room.  On top of this there are several unexplained events so that the dungeon retains a magical quantity.

I found it the ideal starter dungeon and this is why I will come back to it time and again for the nostalgia and the happy memories of me running it.

 

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June 20

June 2014 Blog Carnival – What’s in the hole?

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June 2014 Blog Carnival – What’s in the hole?

For the month of June Moebius Adventures are hosting the blog carnival and want to know What’s in the hole?

I think that holes are fascinating things; empty voids where something used to be, be it earth or in the case of Pompeii voids where bodies used to be.  I always wanted to know how many could fill the Albert Hall?

Currently in my hole is Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, how they got there I don’t know but its a fair bet that magic item the portable hole was probably based upon that animated film featuring the Beatles;  an inspiration that resonates into TV today, like the series Fringe where a portable hole making device was used to break into bank vaults.

It is therefore a useful item for people wishing to gain entry to a locked or guarded facility, just slip it onto the wall and in you go!  Used in this way they item can allow the players to get away with all sorts of tricks without repercussions, what if there was a darker side to this strange item.  What if it displaced the matter somewhere else or perhaps once attached to a wall the enchantment only last for a number of minutes which allows the group in one way before it seals up and drops off the side of the wall it was applied to.

Then you come intro the tricky ground of how would you store it since it is a potentially deadly device and not the sort of thing you slip into your pocket as it would probably adhere to the wall and make all the items spill out over the floor.  I guess you could create it to be triggered by a command word as this may make it safer to handle and you wouldn’t worry about it dropping onto the floor and creating a tunnel all the way to the core of the Earth; allowing all sorts of dinosaurs to flee hotly pursued by Doug McClure and Peter Cushing.

You could expand this item yet further with the portal-able hole, consisting of two  holes of different colours; say for arguments sake one blue and one orange.  To make use of the item you would have to affix both holes to different surfaces before you could create an entrance or exit.  Its  up to you to determine whether or not the holes obey the laws of gravity but I feel  it would break the sense of disbelief if it didn’t.

There are thousands of potential applications for such a simple concept and very often the simplest ideas are often the best.

Have fun and may your dice always roll true.

 

 

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May 31

May 2014 Blog Carnival: Star Wars – That’s a wrap!

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May 2014 Blog Carnival: Star Wars – That’s a wrap!

I can’t believe that the month is almost over and the blog carnival I volunteered to host has drawn such a diverse selection of entries.  I asked the question “What does Star Wars mean to you” and received a totally unexpected response.

My contribution was a somewhat rambling post mainly based upon the d6 edition of the system and a very brief look at the D20 versions.

Bill Heron of http://www.themandragora.com/star-wars-rpg-d6/ wrote quite a detailed look at the d6 edition of Star Wars, the first of the licensed games and its very apparent the love he has for that system in that attention to detail in that post.

While Bob of Ancient Faith in the Far Future wrote about using Traveller to create an Empire for him to play in.  I also agree with him about the prequel films being a bit uncalled for and he gets some extra Kudos for mentioning Blakes 7 🙂

The final entry came from James Introcaso and his worldbuilding blog I take my hat off to him for doing something unexpected by taking an interesting concept and reworking it for his own world.  I will never look at a pit trap in the same light.

In conclusion

Just because someone says Star Wars, it may not mean the same thing to you that it does to them.  Some people cling to the film and abhor anything that isn’t their definition of canon while others enjoy the grand toolbox that the universe of Star Wars has to offer.

Whatever it is, I think its fair to say that despite its supposed flaws the films do offer a shared canvas upon which to paint your own stories and while they may not be tales of destroying the Death Star, just being able to rub shoulders with some of the wretched scum and villainy can lead to some fun times in a collaborative story.

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May 15

May 2014 Blog Carnival: Star Wars

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May 2014 Blog Carnival: Star Wars

Welcome to my first hosted blog carnival and its about a subject dear to my heart; Star Wars.

I could rattle on about the whole background but I’ll save that for my post, suffice to say I want to hear what Star Wars means to you; whether it is a particular rules set or maybe even something funny that happened at the table.

So please feel free to contribute to this months carnival in the usual way by writing a blog post, link back to this page before dropping a note in the comments below.

At the end of the month I’ll do a final wrap-up post.

So, without further ado “May the force be with you” 🙂

Category: RPG | 6 Comments on May 2014 Blog Carnival: Star Wars
April 24

April 2014 Blog Carnival: The Game Master’s Binder

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This is my contribution to Aprils RPG Carnival, The Game Master’s Binder.

This month Scot Newbury of the Of Dice and Dragon blog is hosting the blog carnival and wants to know whats in our Gamesmaster’s binder.

I never really had what you’d call a traditional game master’s binder.  If you ever found yourself stuck and rolled on one of those random book description tables and ended up with a result of “a loose sheaf of leaves tied together” that would pretty much sum up all of my binders or collection of unsorted notes.

Being British I never really had the traditional three ring punched binder that I understand that my colonial cousins use, here a binder is a two ring binder with the holes close to the centre of the document.

When I started game mastering I used to use reporters notebooks to keep track of my campaigns and since I am a proliferate note taker I used to fill them up at a rapid pace.  I then turned to A4 pads to retain my notes; being a superstitious sort each new campaign got a brand new pad and also a new set of dice 🙂 .  Being loose leaf I started to use foolscap folders to hold everything in place and certain colour folders represented important parts of my filing system.

When I moved onto the epic Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer I moved on to using an expanding document wallet, all the pockets gave me plenty of space to hold all my notes, blank character sheets, maps, calendars which also included lunar phases and handouts.

Now I’ve moved into the Information Age and my iPad is my binder.  I use the notepad app to keep my notes before I upload them somewhere else like Obsidian Portal where  I keep track of my current campaign.    I mentioned before that Obsidian Portal is a structured Wiki and collaborative space where I can give my players access to things that they should now and important npcs they have encountered.

I did try using NBOS software The Keep for a little while and although it keeps everything in a relational database being a PC only package means I can’t always keep it with me.  Having access to information in a relational database is light years ahead of trying to find a sticky note or random piece of paper that you may have lost.  The other downside is that unless you’re willing to create new database files it tends to lump everything into one database which can become problematic.  However the software does have access to their integrated table rolling tool which is a useful addition to the package.

I’m also testing the waters with Lone Wolf Development Realmworks to see if I can use this to track all my important notes on say for example new factions yet to be discovered or other characters yet to be found.  It’s also a relational database with some extra knobs on and each campaign gets its own database or Realm to use their terminology.  Realmworks does look good but it requires me to be at my PC whereas my iPad doesn’t 🙂

So far that’s described my filing system but what did my binders contain?  Apart from blank character sheets, maps and handouts I would also ensure that I would have some random names to hand for that moment when someone asks “So whets his name then?” I’d also have lists of moon phases and even weather descriptions for the next few days; although the early days of using the tables in the books did lead for some interesting weather conditions 🙂  I even used to have the odd random menu for a tavern in case someone asked for it and a floor plan of said tavern.

I used to explain that the coaching inns in the Warhammer universe were built almost identically.  I live in an area that used to be used as a coaching stop into London there is numerous old pubs around here that were once coaching inns and they all share similar features.

My Forgotten Realms campaign binder also used to contain lists of all the deities and their holy days, which almost filled it!  I also included various maps that I printed out from the Forgotten Realms Atlas including a players one and one just for my usage.

I hope you’ve found this somewhat rambling discourse entertaining and let me know what you think in the comments below.

 

 

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