Dice Deliberations

  I played Magic: The Gathering for a few years, but stopped because it's a very expensive hobby. I didn't care if I won, or had the best decks, but I always liked collecting the cards. I have a few other, much cheaper, games where I focused on collecting the cards more than actually playing the games. The art, the mechanics the concept decks I'd picture as I went through them. It was fun--but expensive. So how does this tie to Role Playing Games? In two ways. I will talk about my two weaknesses in RPG purchases that have to do more with collecting than playing: Kickstarter and Electronic Books. Kickstarter Kickstarters are a great idea--help indie creators get their ideas out there, and people fund the creation efforts they like, in exchange for the promised delivery of the product. In some cases, this is new creators with either pet projects or truly innovative business ideas. In other cases, there are companies who consider new product lines--and the amount of Kickstarte...

  A few years ago, I started reading the Merry Gentry series, by Laurel K. Hamilton. I really enjoyed aspects of it, and especially appreciated was that the characters were all part of the Unseelie Court of Faerie, and that the main character was an Unseelie Sidhe. I liked this because it was the first time I'd even heard of the Unseelie portrayed not as evil, per se, but dark. While there was certainly a lot of maneuvering and backstabbing, the book gave the impression that if you were there, you knew where you stood--and that there was just as much nobility and virtue there as in the Seelie Court. The Seelie Court on the other hand, was portrayed as arrogant self-important jerks who had light and beauty on their side, but were just as flawed as the Unseelie Court, and in ways that made my skin crawl. They were the "Beautiful People" clique in school, the better-than-thou religious type and/or the Old Money types. This new way of looking at the Seelie Court radically al...

I've spoken before about the divine structure, or "Cycles" of Trinity, but since the word of the day is "Shade" I'm going to delve a little bit into one of the more esoteric and (to me) interesting elements of it. Background There are 30 gods, arranged into four tiers of "Cycles" - One Cycle of One - Balance - Two Cycles of Two (e.g. Justice and Vengeance) - Three Cycles of Three (e.g. Mind/Body/Spirit) - Four Cycles of Four (e.g. the seasons, the elements, etc.) The gods are arranged in 5 houses: - White - Motivations you'd hope people have: Justice, Light, Mind, etc. - Black - Motivations people secretly have: Vengeance, Winter, Darkness, etc.  - Green - Impulse: Life, Spring, etc. - Red - Fall, Death, Spirit, etc. - Blue - Only the home of the god of Balance Priests and holy warriors and common people in Trinity can align to a specific God, or the entire house. Both are common, and you can find examples of each in any medium-sided temple. Th...

Rather than talking about RPGs specifically, I'm going to talk about my 25 year marriage to Cathy, and our experiences over the years as they relate to games, RPGs and general geekery. An Early Date When did I know I wanted to marry her? That's easy. On one of our first dates, we were driving on the highway, and chatting about something. And I said "It's worse than that he's dead, Jim (Dead, Jim. Dead, Jim.)" and without missing a beat, Cathy starts singing a falsetto "There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow. There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim." and I laughed so hard, I almost drove off the road. Maybe this wasn't grounds for marriage on its own, but I'll say that one of the boxes was checked in indelible ink. And on the off chance that someone reading this doesn't know the song reference, it's The Firm 's Star Trekkin' . GenCon and our Early Relationship When we were ...

One of the largely unexplored areas of my world is the gigantic forest to the East of the region that my games run in. When I say unexplored, I really mean unexplored by both my players and myself. It's known to be dangerous, and there are raiding dark folk and strange things that come from the forest, and countries that border it need to keep a standing military to protect the people from it. But beyond a few forays into forest-based adventures, I haven't done much to develop it over the years, and in writing this I figured out why. In fantasy, there are actually only two types of forests: Those which let you through, and those that don't. It really does seem to be that simple. There are forests with roads or paths, and if you enter at one point, and keep walking, you'll eventually come out somewhere else. It may harbor cities, camps, hideouts, caves, rivers and really powerful sentient life. It may hide lost treasures and lost civilizations. You may think it's str...

 Today's word is "Tribute" and I'm choosing to write about the relationship between deities in RPGs and those who worship them. Deities are a staple of every fantasy RPG game. To keep the fighters from dying, you need a cleric keeping their hit points up, and so you need gods that those clerics can worship. The first edition D&D rules even had very clear rules about which gods could do what. It was something like "Greater gods could grant 7th level cleric spells, lesser gods could grant 5th, and demigods could only go as high as 3rd level." So clearly, if you were in the game for the long haul, you wanted to worship a greater god to maximize your spell options. And as a cleric, one of your jobs was converting other people to the cause, because gods want to be worshiped--either for ego reasons, or it increases their power. Easy, right? Except, I have two different games I run or play in, and that model doesn't actually fit any of them. One is the Thre...

Today's word is "Vision" and I'm focusing on my love-hate relationship with divination in role playing games. Divination has three purposes in a game: It can provide the characters with a hint as to what they are supposed to know, it can give deeper insights into a situation and it can be a source of mystery to the players. But it can also be a tight line to walk...do you reveal something that might happen? How do you provide information without giving away too much? How do you avoid frustrating the players with such vagaries than the divination wasn't worth it. My favorite divination spell is Augury , a 2nd level spell. State your condition and the universe will provide you with "Weal or Woe." No answers about what will be encountered. No details about how it will occur...just a high level good idea or bad idea. As a GM, I'm usually fine with providing that information, if asked. After that, are all the detection type spells. Is there magic? thought...