Dice Deliberations

Those who read this blog know that I spend a lot of time thinking about my game world, Trinity , and how to make it both a robust and playable environment. I've decided to do some articles about the tools I use to manage this content, and what they bring to the table. These will not exactly be product reviews or comparisons, and they certainly are not exactly endorsements. Though I will say that if I'm writing about them, I find them good enough to be useful to me, and if my reasons for liking them are relatable, they may be useful to you, too. Today's essay is about World Anvil , which is an online webapp for world building. It is free to use at its most basic levels, with purchasable subscription tiers above that. The tier that I am currently at is the "Master" tier, which is around $50/year, and seems right for what I am doing. This initial article may have a follow-on at some point in the future, as I learn more. At this point, I'm definitely a novice, so ...

Life is made of experiences and memories, and today I am going to share my own new experiences of the last year, since the last time I did one of these essay marathons. Because of Covid, the list is more limited than I would like, but I think it will be an decent list. New Campaign as a Player My alternate GM, Marc, ran his first 5e campaign, for about a year, ending right around the time that Covid hit. I think our last few sessions were fully online. In that campaign, we all chose to play mercenary hobgoblins in the land of humans. None of us had spent much time with 5e at that point, aside from a 3-session trial we ran to see how it played at different levels, so it was completely unique. It was also unique because we were coming off a long campaign as champions, so it was interesting to be back to 1st level grunts--especially with 5e's "everybody's equal" at 1st level. Perhaps the most unique aspect for me was that I designed my character to be the exact opposite ...

  You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. Twilight Zone, Seasons 4 and 5 opening Today's word, portal , got me thinking about things that takes people from where they are now, to some other place. Sometimes those things are subtle: walking into the throne room of royalty or the Oval Office of the United States. These are in some ways just going through a simple door to a place that is only a few feet different...just one room over--but in context is a shift to a physical center of true power. Of course, there are portals that dramatically take let you take a non-linear jump to a different location, such as the Dimension Door spell (or the incredibly popular video game, Portal.) or which take you to entirely different planes of existence. Rather than a treatise on planar topologies, though, what to...

  Never name your horses! This was a loud and clear lesson my regular Thursday group learned in our alternate campaign. Like something out of Monte Python, we named our horses, and they were killed. So we got more, and named those, and they got killed. We eventually got a third batch, but learned our lesson and didn't name them...and they were the most long-lived horses of the campaign. One of the undersung heroes of RPGs is the trusty mount. Carrying not only your character, but most of your junk and doing so at a better speed than you could manage. They move the game along, but they are also the catalyst that lets you hear "Thank Goodness! You got here just in time" instead of "Sorry, Mario, but the princess was taken to another castle two days ago." Today's essay is dedicated to all the horses and non-horses that have graced my campaign over the years. Regular Horses Horses are a luxury at low levels. They are expensive given that you only have a few gol...

Today I'm going to talk about relationships in RPGs. My this, I mean how characters relate to each other, to the NPCs who make up their personal connections and even how those NPCs relate to each other beyond the existence of the PCs. Getting this right, and making it honest is a key element of truly successful storytelling, and is at the same time one of the hardest things to deliver realistically.  PC Connections Connections between characters are technically the easiest. The party comes together for some reason, and over the course of their adventures forms bonds, habits, quirks and irritations. This becomes easier as the character sheets become more real, and then the connections begin to form. Sometimes this manifests as "these two people tend to do tasks together" or "this person always hates the plans of the others." These are great, but what you're really looking for is the ability to know how each character feels about each of the others. In my firs...

  For literally 20 years, I've been running my games in the highly lawful meritocracy of Thorin. The campaign itself was "The Guardians" which were a group of military problem solvers who reported directly to each of the seven Dukes of Thorin, with some who reported directly to the King. The characters joined this organization because they felt a sense of duty, and because it offered opportunities for growth through success. My new campaign, the third set in this part of the world, is a totally different country within the same region. The country is called Buchar, and the players all reside in its capital city of Jadir. I mentioned in an earlier post that Jadir is a city where things work a little differently. Bribes are standard; smuggling is only questioned when people don't get their cut, and who you know is a major factor for any transactions. Key to all of this is a system of favors. The first adventure of the campaign was a 1st level warehouse guarding event: j...

  TM and © 2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC Today's word is "Strange" and while I could easily go any of several ways, I have to go with an essay on the RPG of the same name, which is one of my favorite games of all time. This is not a review. It is an essay on why this game resonates with me so strongly as a GM. Background For a bit of background:  The Strange is the second game by Monte Cook Games , and like Numenera , is based on the Cypher System Ruleset . It started off well, with a very strong Kickstarter. And what they delivered was truly exceptional: proof of this is that including the independent podcast about it, The Strange was nominated for seven ENnie Categories in 2015 and won silver awards in three of them, including best game, best setting and best interior art. It was originally conceived and largely created by Bruce Cordell, who is a longtime friend of Monte Cook. Bruce went to Monte with an idea for a novel, and Monte suggested that instead, he should come ...