A Role Playing Games Blog
Archive for May, 2009
Ad Astra character sheet
2Yesterday we finally started my Ad Astra campaign. In order to make things easier for my players and me, I created a couple of record sheets for characters and space ships. Today I made some minor adjustments to the sheet and decided to share it with my readers.
The character sheet was created with the PDQ system in mind, so if you want to play Ad Astra with any other system, you’ll need to create your own sheets. You can download the characters sheet as a PDF document here.
Mercator-style maps in Photoshop
5At Cartographer’s Guild I discovered a tutorial that shows you step-by-step how to create an antique-looking world map for your fantasy campaign.
Yesterday I even started to create my own Mercator-style map for my Asecia reboot. I am not quite done, but perhaps you’re interested in the result:
Please note, that you have to sign up at the Cartographer’s Guild forum to see the embedded images there. But luckily someone already created a PDF version of the tutorial that I decided to mirror here for your convenience.
Review: Into the Grey
0May 28, 2009
The German band Erdenstern is known for their “Fantastic music for the adventure in your mind”. Their albums were mainly created with the use at the game table in mind. Five of their albums “Into the Green”, “Into the Red”, “Into the Dark”, “Into the Blue” and “Into the Gold” are perfectly suited as background music for your fantasy game and I even used parts of “Into the Dark” while running a Call of Cthulhu game. But their last two albums strayed from that path. The “Elyrion Soundtrack” was composed as soundtrack to the German RPG Elyrion which combines elements of Steampunk and Fantasy. Finally their latest CD “Into the Grey” adds Cyberpunk and SF themes to their “Library of fantastic music”.
And in my opinion “Into the Grey” is their best album so far. The 80-min CD features a lot of strong tracks that are almost to “strong” to be played in the background. But that’s not really a bad thing. Some of their pieces reminded me of Vangelis’ excellent “Blade Runner” soundtrack. And especially fans of near future and cyberpunk campaign will be able to put a lot of the music on this CD to good use during their gaming sessions.
While the first few tracks have a cyberpunk theme, the later tracks of “Into the Grey” take the listener to a more distant future. Especially “Mothership” sounds much like the intro theme of a Star Trek series. I even believe the composers were inspired by the intro theme of the fictional SF series “Galaxy Quest” that appeared in the SF parody of the same name. The leitmotif of “Mothership” also appears in a few other tracks like “Leaving Space Dock”.
As with all Erdenstern albums “Into the Grey” comes with a booklet that give the GM tags for each track that should help him to find the right music for any given situation. The 19th track “Orbit” for example is tagged as gigantic, dangerous, dramatic, while the aforementioned “Mothership” is described as confident, hopeful, solemn. Each of the 21 tracks also has a subtitle to describe further what the music is meant to be about. One of my favorite track “Downtown Blues” has the subtitle “And Another One For My Friend Here”. This should make finding the right music for the job even easier.
All in all I enjoyed “Into the Grey” very much. In my opinion it’s Erdenstern’s best album so far and I will probably make heavy use of their music in my upcoming gaming sessions. Alas their CDs are not yet available digitally but you can order it directly from the Erdenstern website. “Into the Grey” has 21 tracks (playtime about 80 mins) and will set you back 20$ (or €14.99) plus shipping from Germany.
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(Into the Grey Medley, 5:00 min)
Face Your Manga
4Ok, this post is not really RPG related but it might be interesting to all you bloggers, forum users and in fact everyone who needs a digital representation of him- or herself aka an avatar.
Although I am quite happy with my current avatar, I am always looking for free avatar creators all over the net. Some time ago I stumbled upon a couple of avatars that I liked but I couldn’t find out which service was used to create them. Then I finally found the site I have been looking for: FaceYourManga.com!
So, what is your favorite avatar creation service? Or do you prefer “handcrafted” avatars? Please share your thoughts.
Random musings
0May 25, 2009
The last few days I spent some quality time with my girlfriend, played a couple of computer games I had been lying around for a long time and watched a couple of movies. Having a few days off with no care in the world are sometimes necessary and I was glad that the long weekend allowed me to wind down…
Thoughts on Asecia
But as my girlfriend and I are avid roleplayers we couldn’t avoid talking about roleplaying and my blog completely and the day before yesterday we discussed my campaign setting Asecia and what could be done to give it a proper “reboot”. You probably remember Asecia from my Dungeoncraft articles. I never quite finished my work on the campaign and although I like a lot about the world I am not happy on how it turned out in the end. Some parts of the setting still feel a bit “off” and I believe a major overhaul is what is necessary.
The main problem with the setting is that the technology/steampunk aspect of the world feels tacked on and not like an integral part of the world. On the weekend we were throwing around a couple of ideas how this could be fixed. My favorite idea so far is that both magic and technology are remnants of a fallen civilization whose ruins can be found all over Asecia. This civilization was destroyed when the Three Sisters (Chaos) and the Great Architect (Order) fought for supremacy. In the end it was St. Michael who ended the fight and restored peace and balance to the world. Probably I will also merge the campaign setting I created for my Dungeonslayers campaign with Asecia. I don’t think it makes much sense to create two steampunk/magipunk settings at the same time.
Per Aspera Ad Astra
That brings me to “Ad Astra”. Alas I have no idea how many people already downloaded the primer PDF but the feedback I’ve got so far was positive. I am currently working on an updated version of the primer that will contain some rendered artwork from our fellow blogger Greywulf (thanks again!) and probably stats and rules for space ships and vehicles for the PDQ system. Alas we had to call off our last two sessions, so I wasn’t able to playtest those rules yet, but when everything works out as planned, we will be able to put rules and setting to the test this weekend. One thing I will probably change are the Esper qualities. A single quality for all esper abilities are probably a bit too unbalanced. As soon as I have settled for a better system, I will post about it, promised!
Ok, that’s it for now. Tomorrow I will probably return to my normal posting schedule, so pleasy stay tuned! And if you want to share your thoughts on my musings, feel free to post in the comments section!
Stargazer’s Irregulars forums
0You probably remember when QuestingDM and I created an “Unofficial RPG Bloggers Network” behind the back of the powers-that-be. I still had that forum software running on my server, so I decided to put it to a new use. I rebranded it to “Stargazer’s Irregulars” and installed a pretty new theme.
It currently features only a few boards but I intend to add a few in the coming days. One thing I would like to add is a PDQ board since I haven’t found any PDQ-related communities but the S7S Yahoo group. If you have interested in such a discussion board, just let me know.
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