Monthly Archives: July 2009

RPGs

Gladiatorial Combat

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Sometimes we would get tired, or our usual DM, my brother, did not want to run a game that weekend.

We all still wanted to play, so we would have a “what if …” scenario where one player would fight another to the death, so see who was toughest. None of it had any real effect on the campaign.

That was when we still were more towards the scale of “Monty Haul” with lots of magic items, etc.

My character, Kad Staglar, was a halfling fighter/thief with a girdle of storm giant strength a +2 longsword and a ring of regeneration. When we were in a dungeon, he would just run through the lower half of doors to open them.

Another player’s character had managed to beat everyone else. I believe he was an assassin or something with a poison weapon. My halfling was doing a lot of damage, but he went down. Just as Bret was sure he had won, my halfling got back on his feet and rejoined the fight. Bret soon remembered the ring, and when Kad went down again, Brett’s character removed the ring.

Has any other player group done that?

In college we had a group that had a competition that would have characters plopped down on an island. We had a million experience points and a certain amount of gold to prepare our characters. This was still 1e AD&D. The choice was either assassin for the quick kill potential, or fighter for the ability to take a hit, but there were a few who chose M-Us. I do not remember actually playing this out. I think my choice of assassin did not last as long as I’d hoped.

RPGs

Total Chaos

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Another time I was a DM, I had an adventure planned and had 6 or 7 players. I had the obligatory, “you meet in a bar…”

Rather than joining forces, each player went off in a different direction out of town. This so totally blew me away, that I had no clue how to handle it. I just rolled for random encounters hoping something would come up.

This was so totally unexpected that I doubt a group of players could so overwhelm me into a flabbergasted state again. What I should have done was come up with something totally unexpected to draw them back together.

The thought has crossed my mind that they all went in on this, just to mess with me. I tended to be a good target for that sort of thing in high school.

This is where plot hooks fail. If the players do not take the bait, you have to be ready with a plan. Not to force them into something, but encourage them to make choices that will allow the game to be fun for all. I guess with a big enough sandbox, one could let the players run around independently. Look at it like a dungeon on a huge scale, just like when a party gets separated, they each get their own opportunity to do their own thing.

As Moltke said, “No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy.” In the realm of RPGs no module or other adventure planned by the GM plays out as planned.”

What examples of total chaos have you experienced as a player or GM?

RPGs

Sending a Bulette against a Second Level party.

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Sending a Bulete against a Second Level party was one of my first experiences as a DM. I wanted to do something new and introduce a monster we had not encountered before. Back in those early days, we took turns being DM. Needless to say people did not want me to DM for a while after that.

What is funny in retrospect is that the party actually stood their ground and tried to fight the thing. I believe it was a TPK, but a do-over was called, and all those characters were available for the next session with a different DM.

RPGs

Music To Enhance Play

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Long ago, we used music from movies and TV shows to serve as the soundtrack to our gaming sessions. We had cassette tapes we bought, and then put together our “favorite songs to game by”. Fast forward to 2009 and CDs and MP3 players and Computers make it easier to mix the songs together. Someone with more time on their hands could add the sound effects of wind, rain, lightning, charging hoards of monsters, etc. for the DM to kick off at the appropriate time.While that would be nice, to me that is just more prep time for the DM. If there was a standard “library” with an easy to use program to key it off at the right time so game play is not interrupted, it would work for me. Just setting the scene with the appropriate music and letting the group’s imagination take over works wonders.

We just set the music and let it run, as we do not want to spend time juggling tapes/CDs to interrupt the flow of the game. It is amazing how we seem to end up in a fight when the music is appropriate. Sometimes the DM picks more ominous music than the players want to listen to, so we players would have our own tapes/CDs to raise our spirits a bit.

Favorites for us then and now are many of the Star Trek songs used in the original TV series, the “Planet Eater” music was used in many of the original episodes, but it does serve to build tension. “Wrath of Khan” has a good soundtrack. “Aliens” is good too. “Star Wars”, and most things by John Williams can fit the bill. Classical music also fits the bill such as “Mars” from “The Planets” by Holst, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, “Night on Bald Mountain”, etc.

What music or other mood enhancers do you use in your games?

RPGs

Enhance Your Story With Other Fields: Biology

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Exchange of Realities has an interesting article on enhancing story with other fields, with the focus on biology. This is something we all practice by our nature, often unconsciously.

One of the best things about writing and gaming is that they take skill synergy like almost nothing else in
the world does. No matter what you do or learn, odds are that some part of it can apply to the writing desk
or the game table. Sometimes it’s direct, sometimes it’s obvious when you’re willing to think twisty, and
sometimes it’s entirely unexpected.

RPGs

Medieval Population Density

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This informative article about population density of medieval based worlds and number of cities, towns, and villages and numbers of a give occupation relative to population.

There are links to websites to run the formula and build a kingdom quickly. One can also use Excel to build the formula into a spreadsheet, of which there are links to some examples .

I recommend saving it as a PDF so that it is available for off line use.

[Edit] Corrected link to website to use current URL. 09 February 2014.

RPGs

Genealogy Programs To Generate Family Trees

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One of my non-RPG interests is genealogy. There are several free genealogy programs that can save off various styles of family trees to PDF. This could be used to generate a family tree for characters, or kings and other rulers.

Many of these can export to RTF or other formats, so that a background could be used if the PDF is only to be used online. Otherwise, get some parchment paper, and give it the rough treatment, if it is to be an ancient document. For example, tear off or burn a piece that the players will need to know for some reason.

For Windows PCs, Legacy Family Tree has a free version able to meet these needs. It also works on other OSes with Wine. For Linux, there is a GUI based program called GRAMPS, that can also run on other OSes. For those not afraid of the command line and an ncurses text interface, there is LifeLines. It was originally developed for Unix, but has been ported to Linux, Mac, Windows and others.

What programs and utilities do you use outside of your gaming life that could be used to add flavor?

RPGs

Who Killed the Men of England?

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Harvard Magazine has an interesting article that investigates the transition of Britain from Romans & Celts to Anglo-Saxons in a 400 year period.

The article is about scientific disciplines helping fill in the gaps in the written record of historical times. The findings of science are informing revised interpretations of evidence.

One example is the black earth where the towns of France were thought to have been abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire, but actually show a change in building materials from stone to organic materials such as wood and thatched roofs.

They also tie the DNA study into examples from the descendants of the former slaves in the US, and the population of Medellin, Columbia. This can add flavor to the history and sway of one’s campaign.

The article can also be saved as a PDF that has illustrations to help visualize the point. Save off the PDF in case the link goes dead in the future.

It is amazing how little things we do not expect can inform us and help add spice to a campaign.