I don't know about anyone else, but I have always felt a strong desire to live inside of a Mickey Spillane novel. I love the idea of sitting in an office with one of those frosted glass windows. Of course, I want a clothes tree to be next to the door with my trusty trench coat and fedora hanging there for me. In the right bottom drawer of my desk is where the bottle of 150 proof "medicine" would be found. Taped to the bottom of the middle drawer would be a .38, another one would be in the top left drawer (you just never know when you're going to need two). I could sit there, in the dim light of a desk lamp smoking a Pall Mall or a Lucky Strike waiting for a dame with a problem to walk through the door.
New computer game companies are appearing and disappearing faster than ever before. I personally have to clean out my browser "favourites" at least once a month, to eliminate useless links. Even well respected sites are often riddled with lost URLs. I have heard many complicated theories to explain the chaos of the business. Marketers speculate a move into the maturity phase of the product life cycle, and Economists figure substitutions have made the demand curve too elastic. Experts can blame oligopolies or equilibrium till the cows come home, there is always an exception to the rule.
As Halloween fast approaches, our minds delve into the unholy shadows of our imagination. Fed by mortal fear, we recklessly abandon the cultural mores and amuse our most tainted desires with thoughts of evil. As the lust for darkness sends bitter chills throughout our veins, we are seduced by the calling of the bone-pale moon. Gamers assemble. It is time to play with cannibals.
Most of the previous "weekly noun" articles at Gamegrene have focused on things that your characters might have but which players and GMs don't always include for whatever reason. Mine, however, is a little different. It looks at a background element that every character, by definition, must have, but that for whatever reason gets forgotten more than one would think. It's family.
The great gamers who bear the title Gamemaster are responsible for the constant flow of the adventure. They must make sure the players get every opportunity to succeed and ensure the game is consistent. For some, this means tossing dice until someone dies. For others, it involves tossing the rulebook out the window. In the end, we strive to run a smooth and exciting adventure for all who sit before us.
I picked this up on a whim. All of the other d20 books I had bought were based upon franchises I was familiar with. I have to say I am happy with my purchase. I've found a game that mixes my sci-fi with my fantasy and shoots out Drow Elves in jackboots carrying laser weapons and working as a sort of Imperial Gestapo. What more could a gamer ask for in a setting?
Most fantasy LARPs are meant to be good-against-evil constructs. There is probably room for not-especially-good characters, and even outright dishonest ones. But actually evil characters, well, that's a whole other kettle of fish. If you play evil, the cards will be stacked against you.
Sometimes we GMs need a break. Perhaps you've been running your game week after week for a year now, or perhaps the well of ideas has gone temporarily dry. If so, then a one-shot game may be just the thing for you. But hey, if you are going to run another game for just one weekend why not make it interesting? Halloween is fast approaching, and will be the perfect opportunity for a one-shot adventure.
I've been a Dungeon Master (DM) for a long time. In this time, I've seen several kinds of people take to the dice in the search of adventure. During character creation the choice of character class usually ends up with a fighter, a cleric, a magic-user/wizard, or a thief/rogue. These are the more common selections, the premier group. The process of stratification continues from the most to the least favored with the latter group including the ranger, the druid, and the illusionist.
Since the late 1950�s, changes in social attitudes saw the first uses of the word �adult� to be used euphemistically for being sexually explicit, graphically violent or generally not for the eyes of children. Yet, gaming is a form of play and play is one of the more acceptable forms of education. Whilst cynics may point to the greatest number of gamers being male and adolescent, others may find that there are an increasing number of gamers sticking with the hobby into their 30s, 40s and beyond.
