A Role Playing Games Blog
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Diseases in roleplaying games
2February 10, 2012
Earlier that week I have been coping with a nasty cold. My head felt like someone smashed it with a sledgehammer, I was freezing all the time, overall I felt awful. And don’t get me started on the coughing, sneezing and my running nose. When I got a bit better, it actually got me thinking about diseases in roleplaying games.
But much like poisons, diseases don’t usually have a big impact on roleplaying games. In most high fantasy games everything that doesn’t kill you immediately is just a minor nuisance. D&D for example knows a couple of spells that can easily heal any disease and even resurrecting the dead is just a question of how much you can pay.
But in other settings diseases can actually be used to make things much more interesting. Even infecting the player characters with some nasty bug can add to the game if done well. Of course this only works when the disease doesn’t render the characters totally helpless and if there’s some chance to get healed.
In my opinion your fantasy world gets much more interesting when you add some more realism to it. In medieval times people lived in pretty bad conditions. Hygiene was often an alien concept, people lived extremely close together and diseases that are easily cured in our modern world, have been real killers back then. But in most quasi-medieval fantasy worlds everything is clean, people don’t seem to get sick and even if they do, the village priest knows a spell to fix everything.
Game Mastering Conundrums… Limiting player choices!
2February 7, 2012
For those wondering why there was no post yesterday, the Stargazer is sick! Doesn’t seem to be anything life threatening (sorry guys we are not inheriting the blog just yet!). With our fearless leader sick it falls upon us minions… I mean other contributors, to pick up the slack. So here we go!
Recently I posted about my interest in running a Vampire the Masquerade game. I’m reading the 20th anniversary book and all sorts of idea are percolating in my head. One of them is how to bring all the characters together. Games such as Vampire where characters have so many built in conflicts it can be particularly difficult, but this consideration is important for any game. Unless all you adventures begin with “You are all together in a bar…”
Learning is good for you! And gaming too…
1December 14, 2011
To say that role-playing games have been good for me is an understatement. Besides the countless hours of fun they’ve provided, the lasting friendships that have been forged and the way it has opened my eyes to a global community I am thankful to belong to, gaming has had other benefits in my life.
Let’s look at the most obvious ones. I read a whole lot more because of gaming. I was already an avid reader before discovering rpgs, but the games introduced me to all sorts of different authors and influences I might not have discovered where it not for the game. I became a better storyteller and developed both my oral and written communication skills due to the game, during face to face interactions as part of the game or when I sat down to write a handout or other game related document.
I can’t say I learned English because of games, I already had a pretty decent grasp of the language, but I know many friends who improved their language skills thanks to gaming. On a recent discussion in the Puerto Rico Role Players group we were talking about how being a good Game Master had much in common with being a good teacher and how that has helped me in my line of work. I really believe that my interpersonal skills, something I rely on daily in my line of work, are better because of the game.
Then there is the ongoing learning… I find myself researching ideas and concepts for my writing (game related and otherwise) all the time. My creative endeavors (and role-playing games is a big chunk of that) mean I am constantly searching for ways to learn more, and more effectively. Readying articles on Wikipedia still seems odd to some people (probably the same ones who thought it was odd to read the encyclopedia for fun!), but recently I have been using the Kahn Academy more and more.
The Kahn Academy is a non-for profit that has existed for a while now (and you can read all about it on this Wikipedia page), and while I knew about it, I had not really used it that much. Then I ended up going to it to look at the Brain Teasers videos thinking I could use some of them for my games, but ended up watching many more videos, and it the process learning about many new things, some I had little interest before.
There are a lot of math and science videos, but even those can be useful for a gamer, specially if you are working on a sci-fi game, I particularly like their History section, great for giving context for historical games for your history-challenged player who might know the timeline of Krynn but might not know if the Wall Street Crash of 1929 happened before or after the Vietnam War. And that anecdotes my friends really happened!
So that’s a recent tool I’ve used to brush up my knowledge, much being applied to my current and future campaigns, such as the Cosmology and Astronomy area for my upcoming sci-fi game. What tools do you use for research when you game?
Unfinished business
0December 2, 2011
I think as a whole we human beings are completists. We want to complete what we began; we want the whole story. We crave to know the conclusion, and when we don’t get closure we often resent it. From famous court cases to cancelled TV series, we just don’t like it when we don’t know the end of the story.
No wonder hardcore fan-folk (and I use the term meaning no disrespect) often take this to the next level when it comes to the things they are passionate about. Be it the TV series they were really invested in and the networked axed, or the endless novel series whose author passed away before completing it. There can be righteous indignation in such occasions.
Puerto Rico Role Players GM Workshop
2October 12, 2011
I often write about these things after the fact… maybe I should write about them before and more people will find out about it. Food for thought!
This past Sunday Puerto Rico Role Players held its very first GM Workshop. We’ve had some other activities before, Geeknics, miniature painting workshops, model building, but a friend and fellow member suggested we needed to do something to help Game Masters. So new people get excited about running games, newer GMs can learn from others that have been at it for a longer time, and even those that have GMed for some time learn from others. Thus the GM Workshop was born.
We had to reschedule it once (mea culpa!) but we eventually made it to a local burger joint in the Guaynabo area called John Doe’s, had some burgers, some sodas, some beer, and talked about games. About 26 people made it out to the workshop and we had a semi- formal plan with a group of GMs chiming in about topics such as how to put together a group, whether to use pre-packaged settings or creating your own, and even round robin GMing.
We had a nice mix, a younger newer GM, some old farts; I mean experienced GMs, and everything in between. I hope we get more newbies next time; the more GMs there are the more groups get created and the game community keeps growing. And now you know my nefarious plan!
I was amazed at all the good ideas; I shared some of my experiences and was really excited about all the new strategies and tools I heard about. Some I will use in my game tonight! I would like to thank all the friends, old and new, that made it. The group keeps growing, we are at over 350 members already, and I look forward to future activities together. We have more activities planned, the next Geeknic, a possible Christmas dinner, and people have suggested another minis paining activity, maybe even a terrain building seminar. So many games so little time!
I encourage you to try it in your neck of the woods, get together, exchange ideas and help other GMs become better at what they do. I know I certainly will be thanks to all my fellow GMs who participated in the GM workshop.
Converting the Spouse: An Ongoing Quest – Part 3
2August 15, 2011
When last we left our valiant adventurers, they had climbed Mt. Doom and were about to toss the Ring into the giant Volcano… wait… think that is a different story. Ah yes! Now I remember, last time, in the Quest to Turn My Wife into a Roleplayer we had finished character creation and I pondered what kind of game we were actually going to be playing. I decided that I wanted to start up the game before my wife forgot what kind of character she was actually playing (in case you may have forgotten, she is a Hare Clan Smith trained by the Oriole Clan; interest include money, sweets, men, and she is afraid of bugs).
I only did some very light prep for the session, most of which actually entailed me writing out her character sheet in very big color-coded numbers so that she would be able to quickly remember where the numbers she needed were. I didn’t include stuff like Wounds on the sheet, since that probably wasn’t really going to be an issue. In fact, the sheet really became a very boiled down version of the game, primarily limited to just Rings, Traits, and Skills accompanied by Advantages, Disadvantages, and School related benefits. I also just jotted down for her the damage on her Katana and her armor (just in case I decided to endanger her life).
(more…)
Converting the Spouse: An Ongoing Quest – Part 2
4August 9, 2011
I was really, really surprised and excited to see the great response behind my first post in this series. I’m really happy to see everyone chiming in to comment and relate. It’s good to see that I’m not entirely alone on this issue; I am however going to continue in my conversion endeavor and for that reason, I have come back again to relate my never ending journey of turning my wife into a gamer.
Last time, I talked about my plans for using L5R as our game system of choice, due to its relatively easy rules and also thematically easy to relate to premise. I also decided that we are going to be going a bit away from a purely murder, death, kill, loot style of gaming. But, when last we parted, I wasn’t exactly sure about what I would be doing with the game; this week, the game type gets narrowed down, and we move into the realm of character creation. Good stuff.
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