REVERB GAMERS 2012, #6: Describe your all-time favorite character to play. What was it about him/her/it that you enjoyed so much? (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit them at www.atlas-games.com) You know how my answers to the last couple of questions have been short? Well, this one’s going to be the exact opposite of that. I’ve…
I’m getting very close to finishing the City of 10,000 Daggers map. Since the last post, I’ve added some green and trees, changed the contour lines into terrain effects with some creative beveling, cleaned up the brush-painted buildings, and added effects to the named buildings. I’m tempted to add effects to the noble villas in…
This interview originally appeared in the May 2011 issue of Bazooka Magazine. Horror and documentary film producers Chris Bower and John Holt of A Good Size Productions have just premiered their new web series, Horrorhut. The first show went online on Friday, May 27th at www.horrorbid.com, with more episodes coming soon. I recently harnessed the…
A long damn time ago, I defined the word “ficton” (it’s a contractual obligation) and told you that you could break a ficton down into 5 main components: Influences, Setting, Genre Trappings, Tone and Mood, and Dramatic Rules. Now that I’ve talked about all the rest (and procrastinated a lot), let’s talk about dramatic rules….
Some sample hooks. The thinking is you create a standard hook list on a game-by-game basis. The level of crunch for each hook depends on the game and group preferences. If you want crunch, you can have, for example, a D&D style template that spells out elven abilities. If you don’t, the GM can just…
Also Known As: Zombies, Walking Dead, Animated Dead, Walking Corpse, Brain Eaters, Fleshbags. They are also sometimes called ghouls, though this usage is technically incorrect. It is important to distinguish between the living dead and zombis or the re-animated (see “BMA Classification”). Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
According to Merriam-Webster, genre is “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” Genre trappings are mostly the things in the “content” part of that definition: people, places, and things that help define the genre. While these trappings help us recognize which genre a story belongs to,…
Since I did a table for this week’s RPG Challenge on Reddit, I’m going to cheat a little and just repost it here. The exact text of the challenge, if you’re interested: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
I’ve been running Hobomancer at conventions and have discovered that sometimes it’s hard to come up with names for the generic small towns that the characters end up in. Now I can just use this script whenever I need to know what town the characters are walking into. Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
Note: Starting next week, the regular blog day is going to be Thursday. But for now, here’s a dumb table. Has your campaign gotten sucky and boring? One way to break out of a game rut is to throw out the status quo so the players are forced into new and unexpected situations. Here’s a…
