A Role Playing Games Blog
Archive for September, 2008
Roleplaying music – Five essential soundtrack albums
20In my column “Roleplaying music” I want to write about the usage of music in tabletop roleplaying. If you start using music in your gaming sessions, there are five albums you should consider buying (if you don’t own them already).
Conan the Barbarian (composed by Basil Poledouris)
Conan the Barbarian is one of my favorite fantasy movies and this is partly because of the great soundtrack. The music is very epic sometimes even bombastic, but there are also quiet, melodic parts. It’s an full orchestral soundtrack, so no synthie sounds here. It’s highly recommended for any fantasy roleplaying game. But you should try to get your hands on the Varese Sarabande CD, since other versions like the CD from Milan miss a few tracks. From what I’ve heard the CD versions are quite hard to find, but you can get it on iTunes for around 6€. So what are you waiting for?
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“Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition” Review
2September 5, 2008
Savage Worlds is a multi-genre roleplaying game created by Pinnacle Entertainment. So it’s no coincidence that the Savage Worlds rules have some similarities with the classic Deadlands rules. But other than Deadlands which comes with an original background, the Savage World rules are suited for any campaign. And if you don’t want to create your own campaign there are quite a few SW campaign settings available at your FLGS and you can get dozens of “one-sheet adventures” at the official PegInc site for free!
The “Explorer’s Edition”
The SWEE is the newest edition of the SW rules. It’s a 160 pages paperback book and of smaller size than usual roleplaying game rules. The advantage is that you can easily carry the book around and check out the rules with ease instead of hauling around a whole library of books. And in most cases you don’t need anything more than this book, your campaign, dice, and a deck of poker cards to play or run SW.
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Canned Monstrosities
0While checking some websites this morning I stumbled upon some great tutorials for Halloween props. These props could make excellent props for use at the gaming table especially when you run some horror or mystery campaign. Check out that great prop for example:
The tutorials can be found at Imakeprojects.com. And when this is not creepy enough, check out the great “Jarhead“.
Roleplaying music – “WoW: Taverns of Azeroth”
6September 3, 2008
Recently Blizzard Entertainment has released a new game soundtrack album over Apple’s iTunes Store: “World of Warcraft: Taverns of Azeroth” composed by David Arkenstone, who has composed several great albums with Celtic music. I don’t provide a iTunes Store link here, because they are country-specific. So, if you want to check out the album or even buy it, open up your iTunes and use the search function.
The album features 19 tracks of tavern music from the MMORPG “World of Warcraft”. From the (in)famous “Lion’s Pride”, that was the only tavern music for Alliance taverns before “Burning Crusade”, to the serene “Temple of the Moon” you get a nice compilation of songs, that are probably perfectly suited for listening to during roleplaying sessions.
The complete album sets you back €9.99 and comes as an iTunes Plus album (that is higher quality and without DRM).
By the way, Blizzard has also released several other albums on iTunes Store including the soundtracks from Diablo II, StarCraft and World of Warcraft.
Superhero campaigns
8September 2, 2008
Although I am no avid fan I like superhero comics, movies and computer games. I also own “Mutants & Masterminds“, the superhero RPG by Green Ronin. But I’ve never actually played in or even run a superhero campaign. Especially after watching “Dr. Horrible” I would like to run a short superheroes campaign perhaps using Savage Worlds or the beforementioned M&M. But I am still unsure how I should pull it off.
- Homebrew setting or an already existing universe?
Shall I create my own setting or shall I go with some preexisting world like the Marvel Universe? The problem with the latter is that shall the players play their favorite heroes from the comics or original characters? - Silly or serious?
I mentioned “Dr. Horrible” before. The “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” was a superhero musical in three episodes by Joss Whedon (you’ve probably seen it). “Dr. Horrible” is great comedy. Creating a campaign following the “Dr. Horrible” route would probably allow funny characters and a lot of laughs. But you also could take the genre more serious and create something like the recent Batman movies. I always had some trouble with running “funny” campaigns, so I would probably run a darker campaign.
What are your thoughts on superhero roleplaying campaigns? Please share your experiences in the comments. I would love to read your ideas on the subject!
EuRoSoc
5September 1, 2008
When Wizards of the Coast started Gleemax I was hoping for something just like Facebook but for gamers. I don’t think I have to tell what a major disappointment this site was. So when I lost hope, I thought about starting my own network. Hehe, it was a really megalomaniac idea and in the end I setup the “European Roleplayers Society” as a network on Ning.com. Ning is a free service that allows you to create your own social networks and from what I’ve seen so far it works pretty well. In order to get my network started I invited all my gaming friends, my WoW guild, wrote some blog entries, created several groups, uploaded some music and videos. But from all the people invited only a few registered and even less became active.
I now try to reinvigorate EuRoSoc by asking my fellow RPG bloggers for help. If you think that something like that could be a fun idea or just an interesting experiment, sign up and perhaps even join the groups, discussions et cetera. And if you like what you see, ask your friends to join. And don’t feel left out when you are not from Europe. I called it European Roleplayers Society because I thought it would be easier to attract people from the same continent as I live in. But if you hail from any other place, feel free to join us.
Dungeoncraft: The map
4September 1, 2008
I am still working on my next episode of “Dungeoncraft” but I wanted to give you a small gift that should make waiting easier: the original map! It’s a photo I made with my iPhone, so don’t expect to many details. You get a bigger version of the map by clicking onto the thumbnail below.
Some of the names are probably a bit strange and you may notice a lot of dwarven clans in the north. When I started this project years ago I was still planning to include several races like elves and dwarves into the campaign. And actually after thinking about it for a while elves and dwarves could actually make a comeback. But I don’t think they should be playable as characters races. But more on that later…
By the way, does anyone recognize the program that map was done with? I only have faint memories and I remember that it was pretty easy to use but I just don’t have any idea how the mapping tool was called. Can anyone give me a hint?
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