Entries are by date, starting at the earliest.
Music and Roleplaying
During the Saturday Amber game MK was playing some CDs; a symphony based off of Lord of the Rings and the soundtrack to Fellowship. I used to play themed music during games I GM'ed. It adds a feeling of mood...
Roleplaying yourself
You can't completely help it. The characters you play will always seem to have something in common with you. I think that is one of the parts of "getting in to character." The more you get in to the mind...
All stats are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
I seem to be in the mood to write about roleplaying today.... Practically all roleplaying games use stats and there are very few that seem to actually keep them balanced. Most systems seem to have just tried to make stats...
Games I want to run someday...
based on some of my favorite books listed earlier.Vurt- I ran a campaign about 7 or 8 years ago that mixed the world of R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020 with Jeff Noon's Vurt series. It was very successful and very trippy....
Gaming: Unknown Armies
My Champions group is going to be taking a break from the superhero gig again for a while starting this week. Bill has volunteered to run Unknown Armies. The system sounds really good. It's percintile based and sounds like a...
Gaming: "Mostly Diceless"
Gaming: "Mostly Diceless" We played Unknown Armies last Thursday. The game system really fits the way I've always liked to play: "Mostly Diceless." I don't mind playing with no dice and I have nothing against games where dice is rolled...
Gaming: eMail Roleplaying
I'm not a fan of playing roleplaying games by email. My few experiences with this style of roleplaying have been mediocre at best and at times terrible. I had played out scenes of ongoing face-to-face campaigns and decided from there...
Gaming: The Big Red Button
"Thinking isn't getting us anywhere!"-Tidus, Final Fantasy XGinger talks about how some people play characters that take every foolhardy action they can, constantly taking unneccesary risks and doing exactly what they were warned they shouldn't do. As an opposite scenario,...
An In Nomine Horror Story
Several years back, a friend of mine picked up the new (at the time) game of In Nomine, a game allowing players to take the roles of the angels and demons of Judeo-Christian mythology. Going with my "heart character" I...
Evil Roleplaying Games
I'm most concerned about these evil roleplaying games. It was completely natural for White Wolf to release a Demon game for the World of Darkness, but they gave the anti-rpg people a way too easy fuel....
Dark Dungeons
I found Chick's Dark Dungeons online. Your right, Ginger. Th one I posted the link to below is almost exactly the same except the one below actually managed to be even more ridiculous. Of course, I love how the Chick...
Crazy Wisdom
Hello everyone. Sorry I've been so quiet. I thought I'd share this. A friend and fellow gamer e-mailed me this: > a member of another list-serve i'm on sent this in. it's hilarious. > > Anyway... > Last night we...
Roll the Bones: Dream On!
What licensed property would you really like to see make the jump to roleplaying games? The Prisoner is the first thing to come to mind. There was an excellent GURPS supplement for the Prisoner, but I would love to see...
RPG Meme
Via Arref, via Meera This seems like a fun one, so here goes: Years roleplaying: 15 Favourite three characters? (that I've created) This changes all the time. Right now: Lilly, Anoki and Nightshadow Least favourite character? (that I've created) Lightray....
Love Conquers AllI watched some Tenchi Muyo! this morning. It's one of my favorite anime series, second only to Record of Lodoss War. One of the things it got me thinking about is the whole love-conquers-all-theme that is omnipresent...
Roleplaying Genres
This week's Role Call question is: "In what genre do you absolutely refuse to play?" While there are certain genres of movies & TV shows I've had no interent in seeing, I can only think of one game setting I've...
Gaming Meme
(Via Form Follows Function) Why do you roleplay?There are several things I get out of roleplaying. The main thing is the social interaction. It's a reason to get together with a bunch of creative friends each week and tell stories...
Role Call
What are three movies whose mood and/or situations you’d like to emulate in a roleplaying game, and why?Well, this is what I lost yesterday. So, I'm typing it up again. The Matrix OK. This one's a bit obvious for me....
Djinn's Roleplaying Questions
(Via Djinn and Arref) Djinn asks: What kind of genre do you favor in play? There are a lot of genres that I enjoy playing, but my favorite genre to GM is superheroes. The superhero genre is what I know...
GM Rules 1-4
In effort to put some content in the spanking new blog....I offer another reprint....
Gaming Resource: Cool Place Names
I've started playing the PS2 game, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. The game has a few really cool place names that have got me inspired for some new locations to use in roleplaying games: The Forest of Eternal Night- In the...
Gaming Resource: The Book of Exalted Deeds
Keeping an eye out for art I can use for my roleplaying games, one of the things I regularly check is Wizards of the Coast's D&D gallerypage. One of the reasons I bought the third edition books was the great...
The Transatlantic Tunnel
I saw a bit on the Discovery Channel last night about the plans to build a transatlantic tunnel to run a bullet train through the ocean from the US to Europe. Why am I posting this here? This seems like...
Gaming Resource: More Art!
When I linked to the D&D art below, I should have also mentioned that there is some good Modern Fantasy art in the D20 Modern book, some of which is in the gallery here. Also, I checked the other games...
Gaming Resource: Castles
Floor Plans!...
The Price of Books
Who said roleplaying was a cheap hobby? Between the Buffy game and D&D there are several books I want to buy. At first, I thought I wouldn't be wanting to buy any more books for D&D after the core books,...
Dragons
WotC has posted the gallery for Draconomicon, the new D&D book that's all about (what else?) dragons. A little while back, they put out a Magic: the Gathering expansion with a dragon theme, Scourge. They've also revealed that the theme...
U-Con
The U-Con game convention is this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. I wasn't able to affor Ambercon North or Northwest this year, so U-Con is my gaming convention fix. I'm running a Dreaming City adventure on Sunday....
A Question for the Audience
Events in the Champions game lead me to ask this of the roleplayers out there:
When is it safe to assume that information was shared between PCs in-between sessions? In other words, if PC1 knows something, what times it is safe to assume that he shared it with PC2 even if it wasn't played out in the game and what kind of plot elements are ones that you would assume would only be shared "on-screen."
Obviously, if pc1 is madly in love with pc2 and he has never told pc2 in game, the player of pc2 can not just assume that pc1 has confessed his undying love off screen, right?
What about important plot elements? Backgrounds? What's fair game for off-screen sharing?
My Champions character made a whole lot of apocalyptically bad choices recently that the other PCs had information that may have prevented him from making those choices. They assumed they shared that information "off-screen." I assumed it was never told, since they didn't share it when they had the chance "on-screen." There was a whole lot assuming. Now, for the first time in a very long time, I am getting worked up over things that happened in a game outside of the game as I feel that Chango is no longer a playable character now, not because he made the poo choices he did, but because of assumptions.
Gaming Mat
BC Products produces a modular dry-erase battle map to use with D&D. Gotta remember this when I have extra money to spend. Right now, I'm using a laminated paper map and dry-erase markers in the Connemara game. This looks like...
Gaming Horror Stories
The Ferrett shared is worst game ever story and asks to hear more so here we go....
Fan Fiction (continued)
Continuing my thought from yesterday.... Gaming in someone else's setting or with someone else's characters is basically fan fiction. Just like the people writing Buffy stories for the web, we're exploring aspects of someone else's creation that weren't explored by...
Gaming Blogs
Two more gaming blogs, one I've been meaning to add to my links section for a bit now:
Amber's Amber: http://pemberley.dyndns.org/amber/
The 20' by 20' Room: http://www.20by20room.com/
Vin Diesel, Gaming Geek
From an interview on Conan O'Brien:...
A Poll on Dice-rolling
I want to hear from you folks. When you get down to it, there are two kinds of dice rolling mechanics in roleplaying games. The first could be called the "roll and find the total", where players roll a given...
Another Game I Want
No money for it right now, but someday I want to pick up and try Universalis. From reading the reviews, it sounds like a great game for Ambercon....
Conan!
I saw the new Conan RPG the other day at the hobby shop. It looked pretty cool, but I was disappointed to see that the cover price is fifty dollars (US). It's all color interior art which helps explain the...
Paranoia Returns!
Mongoose Publishing will be releasing a new edition of the classic RPG, Paranoia! I haven't played or run Paranoia in years. I should dust the game off sometime and try and get some friends over for a one-shot. Link: http://www.costik.com/weblog/2004_02_01_blogchive.html#107719898782841523
Savage Worlds
Since the GM is going to be fairly busy with real life stuff, my Thursday night gaming group will be taking a short break from the regularly scheduled game. Storn offered to GM some games in the Forgotten Realms setting...
The Pool
The Pool is a diced roleplaying game that includes one of my favorite elements of Nobilis, the resource-based chance of success. In The Pool, as in Nobilis, a character's chance of success is determined more by how bad the player...
Gaming Resource
Shawn Brown has a bunch of excellent artistic maps in his Pen & Paper gallery. I think most GMs could find a use for at least one of these maps....
MST3000: Dark Dungeons
The classic Jack Chick tract gets a MST3000 update here: http://www.humpin.org/mst3kdd/
(Link thanks to The Ferrett.)
Quickie Reviews
For Gamers with Short Attention Spans (I haven't had much time these days to post much here. So, to try and keep somecontent here, I think I will start posting the occassional "quickie reviews." The goal for each review is...
Games I'd like to run
My Thursday night gaming group has been somewhat between games, so I proposed running a game for the group. I threw out a few ideas that didn't seem to click for them but I thought I'd post them here so...
Marvel Universe RPG: A short review
Marvel has quit supporting the Marvel Universe RPG, their diceless superhero game. I feel a bit guilty that I just recently bought it. I feel like I should have supported the chance they took on making a diceless game earlier....
1776: The Roleplaying Game
I've had this desire for some time. It has gone through several variations as I have thought about it, but it keeps coming back. Since it is the Fourth of July (a date of great significance here in the states...
Gaming Comic
This was posted recently on 20' by 20' Room, and I thought I'd share it here as well. Irregular Webcomic is a fun series of comic strips that make fun of roleplaying games and gamers and is quite funny. I...
Chaosium Monographs
Fans of the Chaosium Roleplaying Games (Call of Cthulu, Stormbringer, etc.) may be interested in this. I was looking at the Chaoisium website (since I'm currently planning a CoC one-shot that I will run for some friends this coming weekend)...
A Call of Cthulhu Adventure
The basic scenario I have for the Call of Cthulu game I will be running this weekend fora group of friends: In German-Occupied France, a group of refugees were smuggled out of Paris by the French Resistance. It was...
Tell me about your character....
Like many gamers, I usually dislike when people start talking about all of their characters. I'm also guilty of doing it myself. It happens all the time at cons. Our minds are wired on gaming and someone mentions something that...
Geek Test
I scored 1395 points of this Geek Test. How many do you score? My geekier scores on the test (that I can admit to because I'm quite comfortable in my geekiness): Been paid to paint miniatures 70 Actually a co-worker...
Gaming Resource: Egyptian Names
This site has short but useful description of Ancient Egyptian naming conventions that makes it pretty easy for a GM to create new Egyptian names that fits the character they create such as Sethotep, which means "Set is pleased."...
Doc Closes his Doors
Doc is retiring his gaming blog. I'll be sad to see him go. I know it is tough to keep enthusiasm high for blogging and with a specialized topic like gaming it is even more difficult as the topic appeals...
RPG Meme
(via Arref) 1. What is the first RPG you ever played? Heroes Unlimited (Palladium) 2. What RPG do you currently play most often? Hero 5th edition 3. What is the best system you've played? It really depends. For simple systems,...
Enthusiasm
I haven't been able to muster a whole lot of enthusiasm for gaming lately, besides the Buffy RPG game I run. I'm playing in a Champions campaign and I'm having a really good time in it but even there I'm...
We, the Robots
I was watching I, Robot the other night. It is a fun hollywood movie set in the setting of Asimov's robot novels...even though it makes no attempt to be faithful to the books, particularly the novel it is named after....
Mother Russia
Living in filth for the sake of Russia.... Lately, I've had the urge to come up with a historical RPG scenario with no science fiction, fantasy or anything unreal......just a drama....set in the past. The obvious choice for historical games...
The Last Word
Tolen Mar, a gaming blog that I just became aware of, recently posted this really neat idea for a RPG that uses Scrabble tiles (or other letter tiles) instead of dice and the players creat words with them. It sounds really good, although I can think of very few settings that this would be appropriate. Perhaps a "Literary Police" game? It seems like it could fit in a very unusual, almost abstract world where words are everything. Anyways, go check it out.
In other news, I am back from ACUS and will write up a report some time later. Link: http://www.chirographum.com/tolenmar/?p=143
Battlestar Galactica RPG thoughts
Any GM who decides to run a game set in the Battlestar Galactica universe will eventually run into a question. It's a mystery from both the original and new Battlestar Galactica shows that was never explained but once players start...
Wuthering Heights Roleplaying Game
Damn. I want to try this game sometime: http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/files/wuther.pdf
Robin Hood of Terra Fae
Received this birthday gift in my e-mail this morning. Storn illustrated my newest Champions character, Robin Hood of Terra Fae, the Robin Hood of a world where all the myths, legends and fables live. In the first adventure, Robin met...
Origins Awards
...have been announced. Here are the nominees for the RPG categories with the winners bolded: Best Role-Playing Game Nominees: (Role-Playing College) Ars Magica 5th Edition - Atlas Games (Booth 612) Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game - Wizards of the Coast...
Not much gaming going on
This journal's been pretty quiet lately. Part of it has been that I have not been gaming much recently. My Thursday night game met for a few more sessions of Terra Fae. Robin planned a swashbucking rescue operation to rescue...
Movies for Gamers
I've seen two very good action movies that I'd like to suggest to my fellow gamers out there., The Vampire Effect - A Hong Kong Kung-Fu flick about two very cute asian girls fighting vampires. From the premise alone, it...
GURPS for Dummies!?
I've been going through my GURPS books and looking at selling them on eBay or Amazon and while checking Amazon I found this!...
True D20 and the Blue Rose
I may have mentioned this before, but I'm a huge fan of Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds. It's the only reason I ever gave running D&D a try since I liked the simplicity of M&M and exptected the original d20...
Blue Rose
Even though I am in the midst of getting rid of loads of RPG books, I bought one today. I stopped in at a FLGS and found they had a copy of Blue Rose in the discount bin for 50%...
Rolling for Defense and Dungeon-Crawling Quest Games
A rambling post about dice mechanics in RPGs and how they may add to the enjoyment of a game. If you don't enjoy rolling lots of dice in a game and/or mindless dungeon-crawls, skip this post. I love RPGs with...
Game ideas
I've been having a few game ideas coming to me lately and want to get them down somewhere so I can remember them come time to submit games for ACNW:...
What am I gaming these days?
My gaming is probably the most eclectic it has even been these days. I don't get to roleplay as much as I like, but I am running a monthly Amber campaign, running a series game at Ambercons (Dreaming City), am...
Gaming Update
After I posted a few posts last time here, no one commented. I figured that no one is reading this. If someone reads this, please leave a comment here or on LJ to let me know. In one of my...