Dressing for Success (The Details make the encounter area)

Hey Game Fans, we’re being a little too clever for our own good today, and we’re going to talk a little about how you describe your adventure locations and what you can do with some clever words and descriptive details. This is also a bit of advice for reskinning adventure locations and how to turn things on their head to modify an existing dungeon/encounter location/region to meet your needs. Buckle in, we’re going for a ride in the Rambler.

Lakeport Campaign Outline Part 1

So today i am going to take a few minutes and jot down the outline of a starter campaign for Lakeport. This outline will detail some of the major players that the characters will interact with along their journey and should give you an easy campaign arc (session count will depend on how far out you want to stretch things) that gets characters to around 5th or 6th level. The Story starts out in Lakeport proper, and if you want to refresh yourself on that, check it out here. The adventure starts out, as all adventures in Lakeport do, on the first day of summer.

Plot Traps: Bad Guys Part 4 (Lieutenants)

Hey Game Fans, we’re going to keep on keeping on with our discussion of Antagonists and how to get the most use of them in your adventure writing.  Every Antagonist has a specific role to play in the narrative you’re putting together. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of them gives you a leg up in finding the spot to put them and how to utilize them to maximum effect.  Last week we talked about the minions that make up the rank and file of the bad guys, today we’re going to take a look at the Lieutenants that carry out the Antagonist's plans.  Remember the Pyramid example we talked about last week.  These antagonists are the next level up, and perform a specific task for the Antagonist directly.  Let’s dig into that idea and see what we can come up with.

 

Plot Traps: Bad Guys Part 3 (Specialists)

Hey Game Fans, we’re going to keep on keeping on with our discussion of Antagonists and how to get the most use of them in your adventure writing.  Every Antagonist has a specific role to play in the narrative you’re putting together. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of them gives you a leg up in finding the spot to put them and how to utilize them to maximum effect.  Last week we talked about the minions that make up the rank and file of the bad guys, today we’re going to take a look at the Specialists that are basically a tier up from the minions.  Remember the Pyramid example we talked about last week.  These antagonists are the next level up, and perform a specific task in the Antagonist hierarchy.  Let’s dig into that idea and see what we can come up with.

 

The Unmitigated Joys of Not Knowing Where You Are Going (RPG Editiorial)

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with a bit of an editorial on a gaming topic that we find personally enjoyable.  From the earliest days of playing the game (back in the 80s for us, some of you may go back a little further, some of you got a bit of a later start), one of the things that i really enjoyed was gathering my supplies and traipsing off into the wilderness.  We may have had a destination in mind, like an adventure site, or not.  Really at the time i didn’t matter to me.  One of the most interesting ideas i found as a kid playing games like this was the ability to pick a direction and go, and not necessarily having the foggiest idea of what was along the way, and where we’d end up.  The journey was the aspect that i found fascinating.  

Plot Point 12 The Bad Guys (Part 2)

’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming.  I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect.  Today’s volume is a little different because we’re not going to be looking at a specific instance or idea of a plot trap, but a larger concept that is overarching throughout the fantasy RPG genre and beyond.  When you’re designing an encounter, an adventure, a story arc, or even a campaign, your villains are an essential part of what you’re designing, and you can put a lot of thought into all of the aspects of team “bad guy.” What we’re going to do is take a look at some types of bad guys and how they can scale up to deal with your player characters in interesting interactions throughout the encounter, adventure or potential campaign.  Let’s take a closer look.  

Plot Point 11 The Bad Guys (Part 1)

I’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming.  I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect.  Today’s volume is a little different because we’re not going to be looking at a specific instance or idea of a plot trap, but a larger concept that is overarching throughout the fantasy RPG genre and beyond.  There’s a conceit that runs through most of the RPGs published that their are default “Bad Guy” races that want nothing more to pillage and destroy or subvert the world to their own ends.  It’s a very unsubtle way of looking at the world, and it’s overly simplistic. Let’s dive into a different way of looking at antagonists in fantasy role-playing (over several parts) and see if we can’t look at this in a more nuanced fashion.  

Plot Traps Volume 3

I’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming.  I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect.  Today’s volume is going to feature the Sacred Maguffin of Power phenomenon.  There are a variety of ways this idea can be used to great effect in a fantasy rpg.  Let’s take a look at how that can work.

Plot Traps Volume 2

I’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming.  I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect.  Today’s volume is going to feature the Evil Mastermind phenomenon.  There are a variety of ways this idea can be used to great effect in a fantasy rpg.  Let’s take a look at how that can work.

Plot Traps Volume 1

I’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming.  I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect.  Today’s volume is going to feature the Evil Twin phenomenon.  There are a variety of ways this idea can be used to great effect in a fantasy rpg.  Let’s take a look at how that can work.

Putting Together an Adventure (Some Key Terms)

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another one of these articles about the processes and the ideas that make up the structure of Role-Playing Games.  If you’re familiar with these terms, wonderful, you’ve got a good foundation for building your own games and putting together your sessions, but if these are new, then buckle in and we’ll try to give you some words to work with, and hopefully a process to help you put together your own adventures, encounters, and campaigns.  Let’s dive in.

 

So we’ve got some key terms to look at.  If you’ve seen these before but weren’t quite sure what they meant, we’ve got your back.  Let’s take a look at Encounter, Adventure, Campaign and Session.

 

Treasure Hunt Outline

Those of you that have been keeping up with the random things that fall out of my head might know that I'm working on constructing a fairly large scale adventure is a project.  This is my rough outline of the adventure, broken down into key parts and then encounters.  I use the word encounter as a placeholder for any significant event in the story, whether it's a travel sequence, a set piece battle, a dungeon to explore.  As you can see each part has 7 encounters to play with, and this outline features a background, a prepping your adventuring hooks, and then the follow up, and what happens next.  Finally, there are three appendices listed so far, and I will likely add a 4th to include any and all monster statistics needed to run this adventure.  See what you think, see what's interesting, and i'll starting fleshing out the stems of this outline.   Happy Gaming

Monster Mash (Thought processes for Adventure Building)

Hey Game Fans, Some of you might have seen me posting some thoughts and ideas about an adventure i am working on, and part of the process i go through when writing an adventure is to basically whiteboard up a list of monsters that i think i am going to use for the adventure.  Most of the time, this starts with me just tossing up a list of all the monsters and then pruning them down as i move through the ones that i don’t think i’m going to end up using.  So i’m going to share some of my whiteboarding and put up a broad list of monster ideas that i think would be fun to drop on unsuspecting players.