A Role Playing Games Blog
Advice
Newspaper Clippings
1I always love to use props and one of my favorite prop are newspaper clippings. Usually I used a word processor like Word or Open Office to create a mock-newspaper. But there’s an even easier way: The Newspaper Clipping Generator! Here’s a sample of what you can create in just a few seconds:
By the way I think my fellow-blogger Uncle Bear has used this generator before to create newspaper clippings for his blog. So you obviously can even use this web tool to pimp your blog! Check it out!
Roleplaying music – “The Witcher”
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Recently CDProjekt has released the Enhanced Edition of its roleplaying game “The Witcher”. The game uses a heavily modified Neverwinter Nights engine and it’s based on the novels by Andzrej Sapkowski. One part of the games re-release was the soundtrack that you can now get for free!
The download consists of a ZIP file (approx. 191 MBytes in size) that contains the official score and “Music inspired by The Witcher”.
The official score was composed by Adam Skorupa and Paweł Błaszczak. Instead of some of the other soundtracks I recommended for roleplaying purposes the music from The Witcher is not atmospheric but more melodical, making heavy use of choirs (or samples sounding like choirs) and there are pieces that sound like medieval tavern music.
“Music inspired by The Witcher” is a compilation of songs that were inspired by the computer game. It contains songs from different genres and most of the tracks weren’t exactly my cup of tea. But your mileage may vary.
If you are interested to learn more about the Witcher check out the great Witcher Wiki. By the way, there’s also a Polish roleplaying game set into the world of the Witcher novels called Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni. But as far as I know this game was never translated to English.
Roleplaying music – “Thief – Deadly Shadows”
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When “Thief – Deadly Shadows” (aka Thief III) was released, Ion Storm also made the games’ soundtrack available for download. The games’ score consist of 16 atmospheric tracks that were composed by Eric Brosius.
The soundtrack has some tracks that work good when you try to create an eerie mood, but it also works great when running a dungeon adventure.
The complete soundtrack can be downloaded here.
“Thief – Deadly Shadows” - Pavelock Prison
UPDATE: The download link should work now.
GM Advice: How to handle “GM’s block”
8GM’s block is a problem you’ve probably experienced yourself in the past. It is the inability to run or prepare roleplaying sessions due to lack of creativity or inspiration. I have had that problem several times in the past, especially when I was in stress. There are a few methods that can help you to get out of this crisis.
- Ask someone else to be GM
Ok, that’s the cop-out. But it could help to be in the players’ shoes for some while to give you new energy for running your own adventures again. But don’t stress yourself. Perhaps the new GM is enjoying his new position and wants to run a campaign. So lean back and enjoy the game!
- Use a pre-written adventure
If you don’t have any ideas of your own, don’t hesitate to pick up an adventure written by someone else. If finding ideas for your own stories is your problem, just run some else’s adventure. If there are no adventures for your game available for sale (or for free over the internet), take an adventure from another game and make it fit.
- Don’t be perfectionistic
Sometimes the problem is not that you don’t have any ideas but you have to many ideas. And on your quest to create the perfect world, campaign, adventure you just can’t stop. But sometimes you have to accept some flaws to get things done.
- Do one-shot adventures
Sometimes it’s easier to just run one-shot adventures instead of coming up with a full-blown campaign. If you start to feel overwhelmed focus on shorter adventures instead of trying to run the “epic-campaign-that-will-end-all-campaigns”.
- Change to another game/genre
You just can’t come up with another adventure for your current game? Try a different game/genre instead. Most game masters have lots of roleplaying rules and settings lying around, so why not try that Shadowrun game you picked up at the last con or the new D&D 4E you read so much about?
- Talk to your players about it
Don’t be shy and talk with your group about your problem. That’s much better than rescheduling the game “to next week” forever. Perhaps a player has an idea or ask them what they would like their characters to do next. Perhaps turning the whole campaign into a “sandbox campaign” could be the solution. Sometimes improvising during the session is much easier than planning the game beforehand (don’t ask me why), so why not concentrate on improvisation while the players drive the story?
These are some strategies that helped me overcome “GM’s block”. What do you do to fight that problem? Or is this phenomenon totally unknown to you? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Roleplaying music – Bioshock
4September 15, 2008
The award-winning computer game Bioshock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture, where the dream of scientists and artists turned into nightmare. The soundtrack of Bioshock not only featured songs form the 40s and 50s but twelve original orchestrated pieces composed by Garry Schyman. The score (without the licensed songs) has been released for free shortly after the game came out.
In my opinion the Bioshock score is perfectly suited for horror campaigns set in the first half of the 20th century. I think I will make use of it the next time we play Call of Cthulhu.
You can download the Bioshock soundtrack here (ZIP file; 21.7 MByte).
There’s also a review of the score and an interview with the composer at Tracksounds.com!
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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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“.
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