RPGs

Kickstarter Vetting and Best Practices

June 18, 2015 admin Leave a comment

This article started as a comment to +Erik Tenkar’s post at Tenkar’s Tavern about vetting Kickstarters. That is, he is planning to look at RPG related Kickstarters and share if he sees warning signs about potential train wrecks. On the plus side, it will help highlight the ones most likely to be worth the risk.

I think that is a good idea. The RPG crowd should work together to encourage those with good ideas to be successful before they launch their Kickstaters (or other online funding drives). Proper planning and allowing for timing variables and the unexpected before jumping in. I think those who are strong in the creative aspect and have little or no planning/scheduling skills should find someone to join their team, or spend the time to learn those skills.

Erik has written a sort of things to avoid with Kickstarters in the past. Perhaps putting together a PDF of what has worked in the past, what hasn’t worked, and let the creators know these are the criteria for the vetting posts.

His Note on the Pedion Kickstarter is helpful but brief. [I don’t have miniatures, and am working to downsize stuff I don’t use. The stuff on my downsize list takes up many times what my RPG space occupies.]

I think those of us that either read Erik’s posts about Kickstarters, or who have backed Kickstarters, or both, know that miniatures as add-ons, and shwag for stretch goals can kill a project. Just as much as unrealistic timelines and not planning for shipping, taxes, and Kickstarter fees.

Perhaps a PDF linked to the right. Feedback from those who ran successful Kickstarters or links to examples of well run campaigns would be good. I liked the advice from the NTPRG panel +Richard LeBlanc, of New Big Dragon/SavevsDragon, who shared the audio yesterday.

It would be great to get poorly planed & executed Kickstarters on the right track before they start, so those with a good track record don’t get a black eye from guilt by association.

I don’t mean to discourage good ideas, or halt creativity. But good intentions aren’t enough to make a Kickstarter a success.

The old adage of under promise and over deliver is appropriate. At the bare minimum, do what you said you would do. Doing more is great, not meeting the minimum of what you said is failure.

I am sure that there are others in the RPG hobby, like me, who have dreams of publishing our own content someday. For many of us, it may only be a dream, but it we take the steps to do it or share it, we should do it in a way that adds value to the hobby; and not leave one looking like a cheating money grubber, or total incompetent.

Before I attempt even something as “simple” as a PDF on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, I know that I have a lot I need to learn, on top of writing, revision, and editing any such product. Even a free product says a lot about one’s capabilities and integrity. Rising to the level of a Kickstarter, one has to make that a job and put in a lot of time before even considering clicking the launch button. From what I have seen of Kickstarters that succeed vs. those that failed, those that put in the time and effort up front to get all their ducks in a row, tend to succeed. Simply put, those that PLAN to succeed will succeed if they are backed.

My definition of a successful Kickstarter is one that delivers in the time frame listed, or adjusted time frame clearly and timely reported to backers.

Those Kickstarters that should have been successful and weren’t tend to be the ones that add unrealistic stretch goals that they have not researched and planned as meticulously as everything else. Or to have a major player in the product wig out after leading the team to believe they were working on it this whole time, so things just get worse.

The team involved matters. If you or someone on your team has health issues, especially mental health issues, either get their part out of the way before launch, or they should be gracious enough to bow out before they screw over their team. [There is no shame in having mental health issues. However, if you know about your issues, you should be professional and courteous enough to share with your team and build that into your plan.]

Accidents happen. As someone who survived a major car accident many years ago, I know how quickly one can leave this mortal coil. {I don’t recommend sleeping and driving at the same time.] If something like that happened, what would happen to delivery? To my knowledge, there is not a situation like this, but it would not surprise me if a major actor in a funded Kickstarter dropped dead, what would that do? I think that is another argument for getting more done before clicking the launch button.

If you do a Kickstarter, you should act like it is your job, and put the required amount of effort into it. The most successful Kickstarters have the text complete, and maybe only need the final layout done. Those that put their own money into it up front to get a jump on things, which also save headaches.

Communicate any delays with your backers. Have a tool, whether a calendar, notebook, spreadsheet, or scheduling app to track where you are in the project. If your project funds on the first day, forget stretch goals and make sure the object of the Kickstarter is DONE or well on it’s way by the time the funding deadline hits and you get your funds.

The bar for someone’s first Kickstarter is very high. Some individuals have the skills to do it all on their own. If you are not one of those individuals, you need to either hire or acquire those skills to fill in the gap.

I hope that we see all the scoundrels ignored and wasting their time and soon give up, so that the true gems shine out and we can gain the benefit of the good stuff!

RPGs

Old School With New Tools

June 17, 2015 admin Leave a comment

There are two types of old school roleplayers. Those who lived it back in the day, and those who are discovering it today.

Back in the day, everything was pen, pencil, paper, and maybe an electronic calculator. Calculators were very expensive back then.

We could create entire worlds from our imagination and some notes and stats on notebook paper and a quick map on graph paper.

We could stuff sheets of graph paper into a spiral notebook and hope we didn’t lose them. Or we could get a three ring binder and organize our notes. We’d use a hole punch, to punch one hole at a time, if any paper we used didn’t have holes. Sheet protectors could be used for maps to make sure they were not damaged.

We made our own character sheets on notebook paper, using narrow ruled or college ruled paper to get more on the page. Notebooks to track a player’s character information could quickly grow to include tracking spells and items, castles and troops. I made a sheet to track spell slots that I could put in a sheet protector and write the spell for the slot in dry erase marker, or grease pencil. I then either erased it, or checked off that I used it, if I planned to use it again.

When computers were first affordable enough to have in the home, some of us made dice rolling programs to generate a thousand kobolds in a few seconds.

When word processors became more usable, we could type up our notes, and make our own character sheets, and other notes that we as players or DM could use. Does anyone remember the DOS version of WordStar? Italics and bold remind me of how to do it in HTML.

Spreadsheets, word processors, scripting languages, programmable text editors, and more all have a use. Now many of them are all online and shared storage of Google Drive, and Communities.

As new tools came along, we could put them to use too. 10 cent copies at the town library or college library, or access via a job, allowed lots of copies of our hand drawn maps to note different information. One for terrain, one for monster locations, etc.

As computers improved in performance and tools became available that we could afford, we did more with computers. The availability of free and open source software (FOSS) opened a lot of doors. A lot of FOSS has neared or equaled commercial software. We have GIMP, Scribus, Hexographer, and many others for various purposes. Such tools and scanners and cell phone cameras have enabled us to take our original old school materials and make a record of it. We can also share our original stuff with the world, or just make it available for a virtual session via the internet.

The new tools we have, allow us to do a lot of things with our old school methods and ideas. We can share them with the world, and can game with people from across the globe. In my weekly Wednesday night AD&D game our DM alternates between two states because his work is in one location and his family in another. I am in Michigan, one player is in Florida, another is in England, and we have a few more, all in various U.S. locations.

Playing over the internet has one weakness of in person play. No electricity, or no internet, or computer problems, or provider problems, and you can’t play. With in person play, just like back in the day, you don’t need electricity. You have your notes, manuals, dice, and a flashlight, candle, lantern, or camp fire, and you can game. For that aspect alone, in person play rules. In person play also rules because you can see player’s faces, and body language, and you have more time to get to know each other, than people across the planet you only interact with once a week for four hours. I feel I know them, but I wouldn’t know them if I passed them on the street. We don’t use our cameras in Google Hangouts to help minimize lag issues.

The one way online play rules, is that you can easily find a group to play with, if you know where to look. If you live in a small town and don’t know the right people, it can be hard to find a group to game with. So you have to find a FLGS or go to a local con and meet the local people. This is an issue if you are new to an area, or are new to RPG’s.

For me, if I still lived within an hour of where I grew up, I could get together frequently with many of the original gang I started with. Since I have been 13 years in Michigan, and only got serious about getting back into playing the last few years, I have found that the resources for finding local players for in person gaming, like Pen and Paper Games, and others like it, aren’t helpful if no one is interested in your version. It looks like it would work great, if you lived in or near a major city, like Detroit, or Chicago, where the numbers are there.

However, once you find people who like your style of game, you are in a circle of knowledge that lets you dig deeper to try to find a group for your own local game, whether as a player or a DM.

Or you can have kids and game with them, until their lives get complicated with their own kids, or they move out of state. Then the cycle of looking starts again….

RPGs

The Map Is Not The World

June 16, 2015 admin Leave a comment

I posted a review about two different published books of hex paper the other day. I shared the post on the RPG Blog Alliance Community, and had this comment: “But then those hexes put an artificial constraint on mapping. First map, then grid.”

I started a reply, and it just got longer and longer, so I decided it made more sense to make a post out of it.

I’ve had the title for this post for several weeks, and was gong to write about it anyway, this just seems to fit.

Each DM must do what works best for them, when it comes to mapping. If making a map and then adding hexes, squares, or whatever it is you use, works for you, great!

There are two kinds of maps – those for the player and those for the DM.

As DM I need the hexes as I plot where things are to gauge accurate distances, etc. I already have maps, the one drawn by my brother, the artist, after he saw my original map 25+ years ago, and was like, “Just, no….:. He drew it on hex paper. He chose not to see the hexes when he drew it.

The other(s) are a collection of maps I put together from zooming in, and I changed my interpretation of the original map. I goofed and need to get one consolidated map to fix stuff I was just dealing with mentally during play. That only works with the player’s in my in-person game. For my start up of an online version of the game with the same starting point as the original players, I need to fix it.

For players, I can draw it however I want, and scale and accuracy don’t matter. (Unless it’s a science fiction or modern setting where technology and accurate maps are easily available.) The players just need an idea of how things relate to each other.

For games, there are two styles of maps, accurate and properly scaled and artful maps. Some have the talent to do both at the same time on the same piece of paper/computer interface.

I don’t want to do the map in Hexographer, for example, and then give it to players, they can guess where the hexes are, and learn things before they encounter them.

My chicken scratches on hex paper is so that I know at a glance what is where. It is a tool for use in play. For hex crawl style play, this is needed. I have always played the hex crawl style, we just didn’t call it that back then. We just called it play.
The player’s won’t see this map.

My player’s will only have maps that are available to the people of my world. They also have to be able to find the maps, and try to get a peek, or beg, borrow, or steal them. I am thinking of maps in the style of ancient and medieval maps.

Maps of large scale with close to the accuracy of modern maps did not happen until accurate clocks allowed tracking and plotting position. If you have seen maps that exaggerate how big Florida is, you will get my point. It changed size drastically as more accurate measurement of time and distance occurred.

Such maps give one an impression of the world that can have interesting repercussions if you follow them literally.

Even modern maps, such as flat projections of the entire planet skew the size of Greenland, and other places, to a ridiculous degree. One has to use a very creative representation on a flat surface to get size, coastline, and distances accurate. The best way to represent a planet is with a globe. Even then, the kind with relief that indicates mountains and valleys does not have an accurate representation. I have heard people say, and read it somewhere, that if the Earth were the size of a bowling ball it would be smoother than a bowling ball. Also a bowling ball scaled up to the size of Earth would have ridiculously high mountains and deep valleys.

No matter how we try to map, we don’t have a way, that I know of, to allow a person to see a representation of the whole planet, that is accurate in all aspects and allows one to see the entire surface as with a flat map.

Unless our fantasy world is flat, we can’t make an accurate map.

We have two choices, spend a lot of time doing the math and adjustments necessary to account for distances as one moves North or South, or just fudge it.

I tend to be a detail oriented guy, but the level of calculation needed to do that and make it perfect takes a lot of time that I could be putting into more maps or other game preparation.

Even a science fiction or modern setting for an RPG with accurate map making technology and easily available copies, it is easier to hand wave certain things. If a planet hopping science fiction RPG, I won’t map every inch of a globe, if there is a known location the players are seeking. If they do a different planet for each adventure, I’m not mapping a planet and placing all the cities and towns, and then not using them again. I may not make a map to share with the players, but just have a description of the atmosphere, continents, climate zones, and tech level. If I couldn’t find an online generator, I would build a script(s) to quickly spit this out for me, or just roll like a madman, like it was back in the day.

Some people can spit out maps a lot quicker than I can. For me, it is a challenge to make them not all look alike, especially dungeons. I explain some sameness as a cultural thing of the builders. Does anyone design a dungeon and then add the grid? I don’t know of anyone back in the day who did it that way. We all grabbed the graph paper we could find, whether 4 or 5 hexes to the inch. My group favored 5 squares to the inch. I use both sizes now. My aging eyes have a preference for the slightly larger 4 squares to the inch.

No matter what form of map we use to represent a solar system, planet, continent, country, city, village, dungeon, tomb, etc. It is not an accurate representation. Using the grid of squares or hexes to make an accurate plot, it only a two dimensional representation, height it missing. With no grid and whether hand drawn and scanned and further manipulated or drawn directly to computer via mouse or stylus and tablet, and made into a thing of beauty, neither is an accurate representation. Each only gives some of the information that is further conveyed by our descriptions of what our players see.

With theater of the mind, we can use a few apt descriptions and make those of us with less than fantastic map skills allow each player to construct the world in their own mind.

If we could generate directly from the mind what each of us “sees” for a certain world, I suspect that there would be very few parts of them match up exactly.

There is also another aspect to mapping. Use at the table for one’s own group, and publishing a product, be it a module, or a setting. For just a playable item, I can easily do it myself. For a map in a published product, I would either spend the time to get really good at making maps, or I would hire someone to do it.

The audience for the map tells a lot about the requirements for the map. I can have a few scribbles on paper, and I can run a game. If I want to take that idea and attempt to market it, I have to put a LOT more into it.

For me to take my world, or one of the adventures of my players, and make a publishable product out of it that stands a chance of selling, will take a lot of development to make happen. The few notes one can use to DM with quickly grows if one starts writing out what must be known to let someone else DM the same scenario. Even all that extra work to let others into my world, in whole, or in part, cannot begin to capture the way I see it in my mind. There was an infamous Kickstarter for a megadungeon that, from what I have read online, illustrates this point. What works for the creator to run his creation, is often insufficient for another to pick up and do the same.

RPGs

GM’s Beliefs and Their Influence on The Game World

June 15, 2015 admin Leave a comment

+Alex Schroeder had an interesting post in response to another’s blog article.

I commented in this G+ thread, and he asked if I had an article. I did not, but it got me to thinking and I quickly knew the answer, and decided to write my own post.

The biggest issue I have found is that I am not good at having the bad guys do certain things in game. It is probably not obvious to the players, but if they thought about it, they would wonder about the absence of some things.

Having monsters do what monsters do is not hard. Having the evil humans and demi-humans screw over the players is hard to do and make it seem natural to the game. At least from my perspective.

It’s not that I am personally incapable of doing bad things. I have done things I am not proud of, but I have lived and live a mostly boring and virtuous life. I know many would describe it that way.

In some ways, I think I have a natural aversion to cheating and hurting others, because of how much I don’t like when it happens to me. I have a philosophical/ethical/moral/religious point of view that informs my actions. I won’t go into specifics here, as that is not the purpose of this blog.

I replied to Alex’s thread: “I don’t think a GM can help but reflect part of themselves and their beliefs into a world.
If they try to avoid putting their way of viewing the world into their game world, it could still be evident from the lack of certain things.”

I think this is borne out in some things in my game.

My players like and enjoy playing in my campaign, so they are not missing what has or has not happened. They have been mangled, and a couple of them have come very close to death. I allow -10 HP before death, in AD&D.

I believe in following the rules, fair play, etc. If I get called out for breaking a rule, I expect the same level of enforcement on all breaking a rule/social convention/law.

However, the challenge of RPG’s is to be someone different than we are in real life. I have played characters that are mean and cruel. It is not quite the same for me somehow when running a whole world. I have plots and things of the big bad the player’s don’t know about. There are kidnappings, murders, raids, and other violence and mischief perpetrated by the monsters and NPC’s in my game, some of it is just not as blatant or over the top, as some DM’s might present it.

When I was young – a boy up into my late teens, I had a temper. I never inflicted it on strangers or friends, but I did get in fights with my brothers. It is only OK for us to fight each other. If someone else wants to fight one of us, they have to deal with all of us. That was very true when we were little.

Now, I have a long fuse, and if I do lose my temper, it is a verbal volcano of emotion that makes its recipients sink into their chair sort of thing. I have to be very tired and under a lot of stress for that to happen. The last time that happened was about 5 years ago when my father died and my marriage dissolved at the same time.

We all have a dark side, for most of us, it is in our thoughts, and never or rarely mentioned aloud. I don’t think we need to let the darkness out to play, in all its gory details. We can indicate that the orcs did not nice things to the women of a village, i.e. rape, without going into explicit detail about it.

A prime example of implied actions are the episode of Star Trek where KIrk is in his quarters and pulling on his boot while sitting on his bunk with a woman in his room. As an adolescent male watching that episode, I KNEW what happened. You don’t need to have a intricately choreographed sex scene. You can let the audience know there was sex and have more time to flesh out and advance the story. I don’t mind looking at boobs, but sometimes there is so much on screen “sex” that the rest of the TV Show or movie seems rushed, flat, or missing something. [I think some might mention Game of Thrones. I have never watched it or read the books, but I know the meme.]

I like what Alfred Hitchcock did in Psycho, in the shower scene. He did not show anything directly, and had people convinced they saw a woman actually get stabbed in the shower. A good storyteller can make people see things without saying, you see a nipple, or a penis.

RPG’s are theater of the mind. The collaborative effort to tell the story/play the game does not require dwelling on minutia of details on every single action, item, location, etc. The DM has to find the right details to mention, so that special things are obvious when they need to be, and red herrings are obvious when they need to be. The challenge is in making all descriptions seem equally important or unimportant. Just like the way we go through life. If we aren’t focused on the task at hand, like watching where we’re going, we can step on a nail.

RPGs

Transportation Inspiration

June 14, 2015 admin 1 Comment

The second Saturday in June is the annual old car festival in the village where I live. The village is about 2,500 people and thousands pack downtown to view all the cars and trucks of various ages, makes, and models.

This is all just a short distance from my house, so I walk the lines of cars and take pictures to add to my collection. I can afford to collect lots of cars via photograph/cell phone.

The big anniversaries of the Model T, Edsel, Mustang, and others are fun each year to see all the cool cars.

I remember a show from when I was a kid, called Bearcats!, starring Rod Taylor, about a couple of guys going around doing good in a Stutz Bearcat. I have always wanted one since I saw that show. I have not seen the show in re-runs, but some scenes are stuck in my mind. They had one at the car show a few years ago. It was look, don’t touch. I can’t help but think of this model of car when the car show comes to town.

I don’t recall if it was last year, or the year before, but one guy saw me admiring an old car of a different variety, and he let me sit behind the wheel and took my picture on my cell phone for me.

I have seen all kinds of vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Some give ideas for spy RPGs, like Top Secret, or Victorian era/steam punk, military or science fiction RPGs.

If you think about it, nearly anything you see, do, and read can have an impact on how you GM or play a character. Many things influence us that we are not even aware of.

I wrote the above on Friday. Now that I am back from walking around the show today, here’s a few pictures and an interesting discovery.

The area Corvette club has a strong presence each year.

Google photos made a panorama for me. Interesting.

The streets were not packed, due to the rain in the morning and the potential of more rain this afternoon.

Don't touch the car or you'll have to fight this guy. — UNDEAD! – Don’t touch the car or you’ll have to fight this guy.

I like old jeeps.

Someone relatively new in the neighborhood has this.

My dog, Lucy, and I were almost home, when I noticed a harpist on the corner of my street. An older couple stopped by as I was listening to her play. The man asked if she built her harp, and she said yes! I guess that is a common thing. How many bards build their own instruments?

I picked up one of her cards, after making a donation. He card advertises herself as the Barefoot Harpist, and she does weddings, special events, and gives lessons. I mentioned that I didn’t expect to have a harpist on my street, and she asked which house was mine, she lives at the end of my street! Small world! She just graduated high school and is the same year as my youngest son. He moved out of state to live with his mom, but I know they know each other. I just didn’t recognize her. She is going to take a year off from school and go backpacking in Ireland. She took lessons in New Zealand and some other country before that. Very cool!

What community events do you have that give you ideas for games, such as undead guarding cars, or harpists on the corner who make their own harps?

RPGs

Hex Paper For Mapping

June 13, 2015 admin 5 Comments

Finding a good and affordable source for hex paper for mapping is a challenge. I am old school because I still have a few of the TSR hex paper sheets that I won’t use, because I can’t easily get more. One package served my brother, Robert and I well for many years, but I need more to do the kind of mapping I want to do.

I can scan the folded sheets and print out, or go to a copy store and make more expensive copies.

To add to my collection of pads of graph paper, I ordered two softcover books of hex paper, one with .5 inch hexes, and the other with .25 inch hexes.

The .5 inch hexes are a book called Hexagonal Graph Paper, by Paul Fleury, c. 2014. It has 100 pages, i.e. 50 double-sided sheets. There is an approximate half inch border all the way around. The lines are dark/bold black. This makes them show up well, and they would be clear if a map were colored with colored pencils, and perhaps felt tip pens. The printing on both sides of the page are lined up, so there is no offset hexes when held up to the light.

The one drawback is that the pages are not perforated. Separating the sheets risks tearing the part of the page you want to keep. You could get an X-acto knife to cut out each sheet, or cut off the edge with the glue and separate all the pages. However, that would defeat the handy package of having it all in a book.

Since the hexes are such dark lines, I don’t know how easy it would be to clean them up/remove them if a map was scanned for use online.

The other book of hex paper is Technical Sketchbook: Hexagonal Graph Paper 1/4 Inch by Joe Dolan, c. 2010. It does not say how many pages, but I guess it is 100 since it is the same thickness of the other book I did buy this knowing from Amazon reviews that there is an imperfection on every page on the right side of the page. One hex has a stray diagonal line in it. Due to the lightness of the ink, it is hard to catch at a glance, but is easy to find if you look for it.

The ink is more of a light gray, so heavy coloring could obscure the hexes. Scanning might not pick up the hexes. There is about a half inch of border along the top and bottom, but the sides is about a quarter inch. The margin on the right side widens, and the one on the left side narrows as you advance through the book. Unlike the other book of half inch hexes, this one has a border around the hexes that “cuts off” the hexes on the edge. There is also a line across the top of each page. I suppose it is there for a place to write a title for each page.

Just like the other book, the pages are not perforated. The shrinking inside margin makes removal even more tricky than the other. The hexes are “jagged”. That is, the lines look somewhat like they were printed with a dot matrix printer. These stippled lines are rough/pixelated on the diagonals of the hexes. Scanning would exacerbate this, for the parts of the lines it might pick up.

From just looking at the sheets in each book, I think they will be fine for drawing maps. If the idea is to use maps at the table, they will get fingerprints, oil and sweat from fingers, drips and spills from drinks, crumbs from food, etc. If you are looking for fancy paper to do award winning art, these are probably not for you. If you are looking for a not too expensive source for hex paper for making maps that you will use, these will do.

From my experience with hex map making from back in the day, the 1/4 inch hexes are good for the general idea of what is in an area on a large scale map. The 1/2 inch hexes are good for the greater detail when zoomed into the local area, for 5 or 6 mile hexes, or perhaps smaller.

Once I start making some maps with them, I will scan some samples and post in a future article.

RPGs

Checklist For Gearing Up For An Online Campaign

June 12, 2015 admin 1 Comment

I keep fiddling around here and there with ideas for getting my real life AD&D campaign world in shape and organized to run as a successful online campaign.

The last few weeks I have realized that I do more talking/blogging about getting ready than getting ready. I collect neat ideas that I want to remember that I want to have ready for possible use in my campaign. Rather than just talk and haphazard idea collecting, I have resolved to actually do it.

To make sure that my actual preparation is on track, I will make a checklist of things to do and principles to guide my efforts. Since these are things I feel I need to do for me to run an online campaign, I through that I would share the list, in case others find it helpful. Better yet, you might have suggestions that I can use.

My list should be generic enough that even though I mention some specifics of AD&D/OSRIC, it can easily be modified for any genre. I also have interest in running campaigns for Metamorphosis Alpha and White Star, so the same steps, except there is no preexisting campaign to draw from, would apply. Finding the time to run one online campaign, let alone make preparations to do three won’t happen overnight. I could do one shots or once a month sessions for the other potential campaigns. I will get the AD&D/OSRIC campaign off the ground and running before starting another one.

First, what are the principles/guidelines for my online campaign.

RULES/GENRE: First Edition AD&D/OSRIC Fantasy with house rules, If players don’t have access to the Player’s Handbook, point them to the PDF and available print options for OSRIC.

STYLE: Sandbox & Theater of The Mind

TECHNOLOGY: Go with what I know and have experience.

Roll 20 & Google Hangouts for play. (Free option, can pay to avoid ads.)
A G+ Community to gather campaign information. (free)
A Google drive location for shared documents. (free)

CAMPAIGN: My existing campaign with the clock rolled back to the starting point of the in-person players. This gives me all the ideas I have already used and avoids having to re-stock all the locations that were cleared out. It also allows me to incorporate things that happened in prior play, especially polishing off the rough edges and filling in gaps that prior play revealed.

An added benefit of this is that all the work I do in preparation for an online campaign and actual play will add something to the in person campaign.

Second, the to do list needed to get ready. Remember the KISS method!

New DM map. My existing hand drawn map sections don’t line up right, and I just fudged it at the table. The PDF’s I found online with a section with hexes and an area to make notes were not quite right the way I filled them out.
1. Note on all maps – they don’t have to be fantastic works of art, just good enough to get the point across.
Player’s Map. I haven’t worried too much about a player’s map in live play. I do have a rough map of the town where they have made their base. If the players online want to buy a map, I will need something in electronic format to give them. I will need the town map in electronic format.
Campaign Introduction. Short document to give a sense of the world and the current situation in the campaign the characters will enter.
1. Have a TL;DR section at the top with bullet points.
2. Race and Class specific notes. For example, magic users & illusionists would have knowledge of certain things that other classes would not know. There is a campaign situation reason that a starting player can’t be a half-orc in my game.
House Rules Document. Make it clear how I do things and what rules I use, don’t use, ignore, add, modify, etc.
1. Have a TL;DR section at the top with bullet points.
2. For example, I don’t hold to the level limits. I also don’t use weapon speed.
3. I only use the classes in the Player’s Handbook.
4. Only some mundane items from the Unearthed Arcana, Wilderness Survival Guide, and Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide.
5. Meta-gaming and out of character outbursts have a way of becoming reality….
6. Silver standard
  1. Price Sheet with silver standard
7. XP for session summaries and writing up people and places.
Review campaign notes.
1. Town – Electronic map, place things that need placing, add businesses and NPC’s as needed.
  1. Both Player & DM version.
2. Revised area map – Make it match what I envision in my head and not how it ended up on 4 or 5 different sheets of hex/note paper.
  1. 1. Both Player & DM version.
3. Perhaps a map of the known world that might be available to the players.
4. NPC’s – Organize list of NPC’s for online play. Add or modify NPC’s as needed.
5. Add classed NPC’s for every class present in my game to save time. Ideas in my mind need to be written down and clarified.
6. Add NPC’s for each race present in my game. Ideas in my mind need to be written down and clarified.
7. Review existing dungeons, lairs, scenarios, etc. to make them fit my revise area map.
8. Review encounter tables – Tweak as needed.
9. Method to track notes and ides generated by player outbursts, fears, ramblings, kidding around, and actual stated goals/desires of players.
  1. This will probably be as simple as a next session note pad. Perhaps even a separate pad or side of the page for future session ideas. A stenographer’s note pad had the line down the middle, so that might be simplest.
10. Timeline/events – Stick to the major events that were pre-generated or that developed from the live campaign. Modify them as the players interact with the world. It will be possible for player activity to speed up, slow down, or stop pre-generated events.
11. Make a note of anything that I think of as I go through and organize my notes so I don’t forget anything.
12. Don’t mention any possibilities to players that I am not prepared to back up with preparation for the players to go in that direction.
13. Longer list of rumors/rumor table.
14. Generate more names to be ready to name NPC’s.
15. Re-use weather events and other happenings.
Configure dice and other macros and documents in Roll 20.
1. Have a document or links to tips for Roll 20 and how to do macros, etc. in case there are players new to Roll 20.
Write up description, etc. for Roll 20 campaign page.
Build G+ Community for campaign. Description, categories, etc.
Locate a good source of images to use for setting the tone for the site and each adventure. I really like how the DM to my weekly online AD&D game does this.
Invite Players & set time for the campaign to begin.
Schedule Time With Each Player to create a character and a backup character. Determine date and frequency of play. Day of week, and weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.
Prepare a better space for holding he materials – maps, notes, manuals, and a place to roll dice and take notes.
Technical – Get a cable so I can run two monitors.
Last minute stuff prior to first session.
First session.

Any other ideas or suggestions are welcome!

RPGs

May Mythoard Review

June 11, 2015 admin Leave a comment

I received my May Mythoard on Saturday, but have been very busy. My weekend was full of lawn care and gardening, and this week has been crazy busy with work. I got pictures when I opened it, but haven’t written it up until now.

Work greatly slowed down today, so my energy level and general enthusiasm to concentrate on anything is still here. My last post in my scheduled posts ran out yesterday, so the timing is perfect!

A monster token of a Lich, I think. These aren’t my thing, but the art is cool and it’s a magnet. You’re not supposed to be able to see the surface of your refrigerator, right?

The Wombat Notepad is tiny! It is two inches by two and a half inches, with 16 pages. I like the cool skull and crossbones graphic. I am not sure how practical such a small pad would be. It is well made but is just not my thing. If a tiny notebook is what you’re after, then this is it.

Ideas for doors. I don’t know that I would have bought this if I saw it at my FLGS. It has some interesting ideas. It has cards for doors, traps, and special. Of course, it says that it requires the Pathfinder RPG to use the cards. I take it that Pathfinder has very specific rules for doors. One can easily take the ideas in this deck and use it for any game. I’ll go through this in detail later, but I am sure it will add some variety to the doors placed in different location in my games.

How did they know I didn’t have enough dice! I like the color. My mom would approve, red was her favorite color. After the recent video about testing the balance of dice, I wonder….

The Blessed Alehouse Tavern is a continuation in the series of the Mythoard setting. This half-page stiff card stock has a description, 3 NPC’s and a d12 rumor table on one side and a map of the tavern on the other. Unlike the last two Mythoard’s this one is not hole punched. The tavern map would be marred if it were punched since the art goes all the way to the edges. Without the holes, one has to have a notebook with pockets or other means to carry it securely.

This is a cool tavern that would work in any small village, and is a good example for others to come up with ideas for their own taverns in other locations.

+Jame’s Spahn’s White Box Omnibus softcover. I won a PDF of this on an RPG podcast for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.

I wrote a favorable review of the PDF and find that the book is well made and easily a handy resource for the table. Real old school is being able to game without electricity. 😉

I am really liking these old school magazines! This issue has 408 Elven names and their meanings from The Silmarillion. I like lists like this. My brother, Robert, made a handwritten list of his own from various books by Tolkien so players could make up their Elven and Helf-Elven character’s names. It was also used for him to generate NPC’s. I think I typed up a copy myself. If I can find that copy, I will compare it to this list.

This month’s Mythoard had more things that I am likely to use in a real game, or to give me ideas to use in a real game, than some of the stuff from last month.

RPGs

Old Characters As NPC’s

June 10, 2015 admin Leave a comment

You might be thinking of your characters get to a certain level in the game and retire to become famous NPC’s for future players and characters to encounter or hear tales of them.

However, what I want to think about for a bit, it using YOUR old characters as the NPC’s in YOUR campaign/world. How many of us have had perfectly good characters that you roll up and get to playing and maybe get to play in only 1 or two sessions before the group falls apart? Perhaps you manage to play in a lot of sessions and only gain a few levels. I have several of my more well-liked character’s sheets.

I have long thought of using them in my game. Some of them could make a cameo appearance, as their personalities would make for an interesting encounter in a town, dungeon, or other odd situation. Others might be NPC’s that have information the players can use, or might take advantage of or rob the characters.

Some of them could be thrown across the dimensions and just make a quick appearance as window dressing or a maguffin/red herring.

Some of my past characters did not have well-defined qualities, or only certain qualities that can still be useful for NPC’s. Why not take the creative energy you used to create those characters and use them to bring in whole cloth a new NPC, or borrow bits and pieces to make similar NPC’s. It can’t hurt to borrow NPC’s from all the DM’s you’ve ever experienced. I know I borrow the way my brother portrays hill giants. “Aw’rite, what ya got, we’e here ta loot ya.” As they menacingly tap a hug club in their hand.

Being a good DM/GM is taking ideas from all your experiences from TV, movies, books, and the rest of life to add a sense of life to the game. Why not include your past characters in the mix?

RPGs

Getting Ready To Play, Or Not

June 9, 2015 admin Leave a comment

I just get disgusted that I don’t get things where I can run a game. I started the process of getting my ducks in a row to run a campaign on Roll 20 about 16 months ago, but never got the campaign ready. Now that it is warm here in Michigan, I want to spend time outside, so I am not sure when I will make it ready. It doesn’t help that I have ideas for other genres of RPG’s in addition to my original plan of an online AD&D campaign.

I have my campaign world for AD&D that my sons and others play in. My idea is to roll back the clock for the online game to use the scenarios I put my face to face players through. I require a certain level of preparation to make me comfortable for the players to go off the “rails”. I can ad lib quite well, so the issue for online play is that it is easier, in my mind to have some things defined that I don’t have to worry about with in person play. As I write this, I find that my inability to describe what it is that I feel a need to do to get ready, makes me even wonder what I’m waiting for.

Part of the problem is that the map in my head has diverged in play from the map I started with and it gets confusing trying to mesh the two, so I need to re-do my map for the starting area. I have a lot of stuff defined, and plenty of ideas for other things, so the sandbox won’t need re-stocking for a long while. Re-setting the clock to the start of the original campaign gives me a lot of things to use, and I learned what worked and what didn’t from the first time through some things, that I could make them better. That is better in quality and my presentation to the players.

I think the only other thing I’m really waiting for is having the details of Roll20 ready to go, and decide how to proceed. Base on the weekly game I am in, the DM had an hour one on one with each player to generate two characters, a primary, and a backup for the inevitable death, so that it would not delay things to get back into play. I think I just need to decide to do it, clear the decks set a time, and advertise for players.

My other ideas for online games are for Metamorphosis Alpha, and now also White Star. I think I need to get one up and running and get all the kinks worked out on how using Roll 20 works best for me. I’m good at the player side of things with Roll 20, but I don’t use the DM tools regularly. I have scripts for rolling all the dice to speed up my play, so I built those same scripts into my Roll 20 campaign.

So, I guess that I am out of excuses. Nice weather to be outside should be the only exception. If I end up getting stuck inside due to storms I will work to get my notes and map(s) revised.

It may not be the best time to start a game, but I will see what I can do to get one up and running by the end of the month. I think that Friday nights or sometime Saturday would be the best time for me. By that, I mean best so that I am not rushed and tired by the end of the session and am a zombie for work the next day. If I ran a game during the week, it would need to be done earlier than my Wednesday night game. I guess this is an announcement that I’ll have more fodder for posts. That’s a good thing! (I remind myself.)

Follow Me And Die!

Kickstarter Vetting and Best Practices

Old School With New Tools

The Map Is Not The World

GM’s Beliefs and Their Influence on The Game World

Transportation Inspiration

Hex Paper For Mapping

Checklist For Gearing Up For An Online Campaign

May Mythoard Review

Old Characters As NPC’s

Getting Ready To Play, Or Not

Ramblings of an Old Gamer