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Ninja Mountain Podcast

Collin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:57:48 +0000

Here’s a podcast that I think is quite cool. It’s a group of illustrators who mostly work in the field of fantasy and other Roleplaying Games. While I’m not an commercial artist, I do end up creating some art for Spellchrome, so I find it quite interesting to listen to each week. I’ve also commissioned a couple artists to create some work, so it’s nice to understand their mindset.

It’s nifty the times we’re living in. When I was a teenager, and possibly wanted to do this type of work, the only type of resource that existed like this was the odd book. Now lots of people have the technology to record and distribute their insights and conversations on topics that I find interesting, although I don’t kid myself that it isn’t a lot of work to produce a podcast.

Link: Types of RPG Players

Collin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:54:15 +0000

There’s a cool article over at LivingDice.com entitled Player Archetypes: What is the Best Mix For A Game Group? It’s an interesting subject, and one that I didn’t cover in the Spellchrome Core Rulebook (it’s just bit out of scope for a rulebook.)

Give it a read, if only for the different types of players out there and how they might affect your game.

Link: Considerations on Starting A New Campaign

Collin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:57:29 +0000

I was looking at roleplayingpro.com and saw a great new article entitled Stumbling Blocks to Starting a New Campaign, which you can probably guess talks about some of the thought that should go into starting a new Pen and Paper Campaign.

While I touch on some basic tips for running a Successful Gaming Session and a Successful Gaming Campaign in Chapter 9: Running the Game, Samuel’s article goes further in-depth, talking about, for example, why the group will benefit from taking an entire session to create characters, etc.

I think that it’s cool that important RPG subjects that would get omitted or a brief mention in a “Core Rulebook”, can find places to be talked about with greater depth.

So head over and give Stumbling Blocks To Starting A New Campaign a read.

Comic link, ways of GMing

Collin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:27:18 +0000

I’m lucky that I’ve had good GMs over the years, but I’ve heard stories of Game Masters not so enlightened. It’s why I went out of my way to mention what a good GM is and isn’t.

I bring this up only after reading a Penny Arcade comic entitled “The Old Ways”, which I believe speaks for itself.

Darths & Droids: A look at roleplaying

Collin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:42:09 +0000

If you’ve never played a pen and paper roleplaying game, or you have and want a laugh, take a look at this comic: Darths and Droids. Here’s the setup, as I understand it:

First imagine the Player Characters are not familiar with Starwars (the gamers live in an alternate universe, where Starwars never came out).

Second, the Game Master is taking his PCs, who normally play a Medieval Fantasy game (like DnD), and having them play in his made-up space world.

The comic really shows the difference between a film narrative and an RPG adventure (and player tendencies). “Qui-Gon: I take all the blasters!“

Make sure to look at the commentary below most of the comics. They really go on to explain the strange relationship between PCs, the GM and Adventure Plots.

The comic points out a lot of the oddities of RPGs in general. All are funny when they point them out, but some are kind of frustrating when you’re actually playing them. A good portion of writing and designing Spellchrome is born out dealing with or avoiding such oddities. For example, the comic makes a funny point about vehicular damage tables. In Spellchrome, I state that the GM should just be able to make the right call as a vehicle loses hit points. (Not that I have never been tempted to make up vehicular damage tables in the past.)

I’m really getting a kick out of reading this online comic. Funny stuff if you’re a gamer.

Link: Adventure ideas

Collin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:09:37 +0000

I came across a blog post and thought I would share it. It’s not about building the Spellchrome site, but it’s interesting all the same.

The article is entitled Springboard to Adventure, and it gives a few examples of for story based, thematic based, and character based adventures. The examples fit into a more pure medieval fantasy setting in a few places, but nothing that is unworkable.

Give it a read, see how you might use them in conjunction with Spellchrome’s Chapter 9: Running the Game. Specifically, see the sections on Adventure Basics, Adding Challenges, and Adventure Ideas.