As a ten-year veteran of game mastering, I have played within several different worlds. Although many GMs are satisfied to leave the creation of these worlds to the module and box set writers, I have never been one of them. I feel even with the marvelous amount of detail that goes into these sets, I can never fully envision the cities, sewers and houses and general locales that greet the characters when they roam a game world.
Gamegrene readers, this is a portion and a shortened/condensed version of Pandora�s Journal. The journey starts at the second entry of Stone Tooth and for those who have gone through the Forge of Fury by Richard Baker, may recognize some of the story line. The reason it starts at the second entry is because this is when I decided to create the journal, and events of the first time we entered Khundrukar had long since escaped my memory. Now, even if you have not gone through this adventure, don�t worry. The journal is merely a prop for the article below and a perspective of an adventure from start to finish for your reading pleasure.
I wasn't a big fan of modules in my early days of role-playing. Being new to the RPG experience, I wanted to plant my own flag, so to speak. I wanted to make my own dungeons and use monsters I was interested in. I wanted my own story arcs, my own set of villains, and my own home-grown NPC's.Of course, I was 14, didn't have a job, and had nothing better to do with my summer vacations.
For various reasons, I've been thinking of moving all commenting on Gamegrene articles to a forum based system like phpBB. There are benefits and detriments to doing this, and I'd like to hear your opinions on it. Good idea? Bad idea? Roll a save against "not invented here" syndrome.
Imagine the adrenaline of bolting out of the bank, a gun in one hand and a bag of cash in the other only to find the police are pulling up just then. Overhead you hear a helicopter and look up to see one from the local news watching you intently, and then you are thankful you're still wearing your mask. As one of the officers steps out of the cruiser, you open up on him. You see the one cop drop in a shower of glass from the car window. His partner fires wildly but you're already on your way. Bullets rip through the air around you as you round the corner and are gone down the alleyway. You dive into the waiting car out of sight of the chopper and your buddy guns the engine. You toss your mask and the cash into the back and grab the locked and loaded M-16 on the back seat, just in case they catch up with you. Thankfully for them, they don't.
I have a little red notebook. 150 sheets, college rule. If my players could get their hands on it, they would have access to every plot hook, NPC, critter and dastardly plan I have ever plotted to place in their paths. Every week, when the players go home after a night of grimy, blood-soaked battle against the latest nasty, I stay up to catalogue the events onto our private web page so they can have a real account of the events, and so I can later compare my original scripts to what actually happened to keep the storyline cohesive. Then, I send out an email to the group confirming the next session date is still open for everyone. I do this without need for encouragement or thanks; it's in the job description (more or less.)
Many articles on this site and others, and the gaming groups I am a part of, only view gaming as a hobby or at most a dramatic art. I would like to present a new perspective because for me, gaming is a much different type of activity. For me gaming is an exercise for self improvement. What I am advocating is a meta-approach to your gaming that includes a self reflective process.
I'm a firm believer that virtually any character can work in a campaign. Lots of folks like making hard-to-kill barbarian lords, ultra brilliant mages, and rogues with outrageous amounts of dexterity. A lot of the times, players get bogged down in the stats and don't focus on the character itself. A beefed up warrior can hack his way through a dungeon, sure. But it might be more interesting to see how a quirky warrior with a common strength rating and a broken sword would approach the Caves of Doom. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. Character development is what makes the difference between roll-playing and role-playing. So one of the things I do as a GM is to try and keep guys focused on their character, not their stats. One of the methods I use to do this is through what I call sidebars.
Michael started playing dungeons and dragons in high school many years ago, and picked it back up four years ago where he introduced it to the family. We were living in the great state of Texas then, and although money was not in short supply we found our favorite pastime cost but pennies for a few sheets of paper, the initial cost of the coolest looking die and core rule books.
No I'm not talking about Scatman Crothers. I'm talking about how RPGs can exist as an art form.Have you ever asked yourself why you play RPGs? I'm sure you have. And I'm sure your garden variety of answers go something like: I play games to have fun. I play games to kill orcs. I play games as a hobby. I play games because I'm bored with watching NYPD Blue. I play games because I like to show-off how well I know the White Wolf rules set. I play games because I can't get a date. Et cetera.
