It's another lovely Insert-Name-Of-Weekday-Here night, and your favorite gaming group has gathered for another session of your campaign of choice. You, the GM, have been looking forward to this session for weeks. The players have spent hours of game time following your carefully-laid-out plot toward a single goal. Finally, after overcoming all the obstacles you've set before them, they find themselves approaching the final challenge that will put a heart-pounding climax on your lovingly constructed plot arc. You know this session will be the one where they finally charge forward and accomplish what they've set out to do.
Kerek drained his mug and stood. As much as he liked the food, atmosphere, and company in The Frothing Otter, he could not laze about the tavern all day. His slender fingers reached into his belt pouch to fetch a silver crown for the tab, and maybe another for buxom Lucinda behind the bar. But all his hand encountered was hard leather. He scrabbled in the pouch, not believing his senses. Where were his fat gold crowns? Where had all his silver gone? Had he not even a filthy copper penny to his name, for all love?
When I started role playing, the very first character I ever played was a fighter, no doubt. But the very second character I ever played was a thief. I enjoyed the idea of a character who could sneak into a rich noble's house, full of treasure, just waiting for me to plunder. Having no levels to speak of, but lost of ideas, I set out with my little thief, staking out the target house, using disguises and bribes to get any information about the security of the place I could.
Everyone who has run a game has had them, and most of you have read about them. Yes, I refer to the problem players. Those people who make you wonder why you're doing it. There are plenty of articles about them, but we've read about those player types so much that we have it memorized. I've got three new types, and some of you at least have dealt with one or more of them.
The day feels oppressively hot, the sun baking all of L'Trel as the heat wave continues for at least one more day in the northern port-city. You hear a cry from nearby, and a rumbling far away. You turn to see, and you observe a cloud of flame rise and reach for the sky, as a mushroom from the wet, spring soil. People young and old alike cry out in unison around you, just now you hear the first of many wails of disbelief and screams of terror, and people begin to run for their lives from this flaming menace. You look ahead of you, and you see a woman trapped under the wheel of a now-abandoned wagon, and just then, as you move to help, it begins to rain. This rain brings no relief however, as it is not water but fire falling from the emerald and azure summer sky.
Theophenes sat on the stool and ordered a keg of wine."A whole keg?" the barkeep said, raising his eye at the large figure.
All of your players are seated around you waiting for you to do something. They've just walked into a small inn, the only one in town. Ted, the leader of the group, looks at you and says, "My player walks up to the innkeeper and says hello."
Have you ever been DM'ing a 3rd edition campaign and thought you had this really great challenge in store for your players (after all they are 4th level and it is a CR 7)? Then low and behold they defeat it in one round? You are not alone.
Despite the Declaration of Independence, not all people are created equal. Some people are smart, some are dumb; some are strong, some are weak; some are charming, and some are just plain annoying. Under most systems of character creation, though, characters really are created equal. Everyone gets the same number of character points, or at least pretty close to it. Stupid characters can be correspondingly stronger, while charming characters may be correspondingly less tough. It all evens out.
tri*age n.: sorting and allocating need on the basis of need for or likely benefit from medical treatment.Welcome to GURPS Triage, a game of high stress and drama in a medical environment. You may be asking yourself: "Why a medical drama as an RPG?" Well, my only response to that is, because I thought it might be neat, that's why.
