RPG tools

May 20 2011

Pathfinder RPG Goodies: Venture Captain

As a confessed Pathfinderite (I don’t see that moniker catching on!) I am always on the lookout for new tools, ideas and goodies for my favorite fantasy RPG. Today while casually reading the tweet feed I discovered Venture Captain. It’s a site containing online tools for the Pathfinder RPG. The banner tells you right away it’s a beta version of the site, and besides links Pathfinder resources, the only tool there right now is just a Character Generator…

Wait! What did I say? I should not say “just”, man there is an online CHARACTER GENERATOR for Pathfinder in the webpage. Great!

I’ve become a great fan of online tools that can speed up my game in any way, from the SRD to spell cards and generators! I own Hero Lab and love it but realize not everybody wants to (or can) invest in software for their games. The Venture Captain Standard Character Generator includes all the basic races and classes from the core rulebook, it’s easy and intuitive to use and you can save the result to a PDF. This is obviously a labor of love and the creator is still working on it (here is his stated roadmap for the development) but so far so good.

I love the generator and look forward to the any features added in the future. So be sure to drop by, give it a whirl and thank the creator for this awesome tool! Enjoy…

By • Freebies, Just my two cents, News & Reviews, Other Systems, Pathfinder, Reviews & First Looks, RPG, RPG tools • 7

May 10 2011

Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition Gamemaster’s Kit Unboxing

This was a great weekend when my wife came home from a trip to the postoffice with my Green Ronin‘s Mutants & Masterminds (M&M) 3rd Edition Gamemaster’s Kit. I ordered this thing so long ago that I had all but forgotten about it. I pulled out my camera and took some quick photos of the items enclosed in the box. As you can see, true to form Green Ronin has made sure that this produced was packaged with care just like all of the products I have ordered from them.

M&M’s Gamemaster’s Kit came with two items. A black and white paperback QuickStart Character Generator and a full color Gamemaster’s Screen.

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By • Mutants & Masterminds, News & Reviews, Reviews & First Looks, RPG, RPG tools • 3 • Tags: , , ,

Apr 13 2011

Campaign Primer Ideas! Part 2

Now that I’ve started writing about this I can’t stop. Here is the thing, on a previous post I was musing about the “campaign primer”, the way to introduce your campaign to your prospective players, inspired by Shinobicow’s excellent series on World Building.

In his series, specifically Part 8 he talks about this and touches upon the elevator speech, or elevator pitch, call it what you may. And I think this is particularly appropriate, the idea is to communicate the “value proposition”, in layman’s terms, why this campaign is right for you! Having worked in sales I can understand the value of this type of communication. Precise, succinct, to the point, and there is something to be said for getting your point across in a distilled form. It forces you to take a hard look at the campaign and reduce it to its salient features.

Of course, being creative types who have (probably) worked on this campaign for hours upon hours, you want to share every exciting detail with the players. My advice, be patient, there will be time for this. If you indulge my digression here for a moment, patience is also a valuable skill for a Game Master. In our modern “instant gratification” culture we want all the excitement and we want it right now, but if you pace yourself, set up plots and introduce information little by little not only will you have the satisfaction when it all comes together down the line, but you will keep your players engrossed and interested, coming back to your game for more.

But back to the task at hand, how do we apply this to the campaign primer. Ok let me recapitulate from the last post and give some structure to this:

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By • Advice, Fluff/Inspiration, Improve Your Game, Music, Other Systems, Pathfinder, Props, Random musings, RPG, RPG tools • 1

Apr 11 2011

Campaign Primer Ideas! Part 1

Fellow poster, and all around nice guy, Shinobicow (who also has a really cool nick, but I digress) wrote an excellent series of posts on World Building that he shared here on the blog. They are full of useful advice to get your campaign creation juices flowing.  One in particular caught my attention, Part 8, on actually getting your campaign started, touched up on a point near and dear to my heart, a campaign primer.

A way to introduce your setting to you players, giving them an idea of what the game they are about to embark upon is about. Shinobicow lists the ideas of handing out print copies, what he calls the drive-in method (jumping right in) and the elevator speech. Good stuff, go and read it. I have been pondering about this topic since reading the original post.

First about how to go about it… I used to create my campaigns by myself. Come up with concepts and ideas and then share that with players. Over the years I’ve become convinced that the more you involve your players in the process the more they are invested in the game. Not every player wants to create a campaign, that’s why YOU are the GM, but they may want to contribute depending on their interests. Some may want to create a city, a planet or an NPC; others may want to contribute some rules. Even something as simple as a campaign questionnaire can help you in this process.

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By • Advice, Fluff/Inspiration, Improve Your Game, Legacy D&D, Random musings, RPG, RPG tools • 4

Mar 15 2011

Interview with Green Ronin’s Jon Leitheusser

Jon Leitheusser

Jon Leitheusser

Anyone who is a fan of Mutants & Masterminds or DC ADVENTURES has probably seen the Threat Reports that Green Ronin has been putting out lately. Threat Reports are 99 cent downloadable PDFs for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition. They contain a quick little story about a bad guy and their stats allowing GMs to use them in their M&M games. I recently got the chance to interview one of the creative minds behind the Threat Reports, Jon Leitheusser and ask him where the idea behind Threat Reports came from. I also got to ask question about what it’s like to work with Green Ronin and what future projects he is working on.


Youseph Tanha: I want to thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview with me. It seems like there are never enough interviews like this in my opinion and I really appreciate you making the time.

Jon Leitheusser: You bet!

Youseph: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Where you grew up?

Jon: Well, I grew up in Burlington Wisconsin. Which is sort of on the South Eastern corner of the state not far from the Illinois border. Actually its ten miles away from lake Geneva which is where D&D was created. I went to school there (Burlington) and high school there. I went to college in Madison and the UW. I ended up spending 14 years there. Not in school, in Madison.

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By • Interview, Mutants & Masterminds, Other Systems, RPG, RPG tools • 2 • Tags:

Mar 4 2011

All Wrapped Up: My World Building Wrap-Up Post

Dog Wrapped UPSo, since my world building series has now wrapped up, it seems appropriate to put together a little article linking to all of the posts in this series and provide you some links to these articles.  The series was a long time running, but I think there is a lot more to be said and there is a lot of other advice out there on world building that you can find out there on the web.  I encourage you to look around.  It has been a lot of fun to write and it also really helped me to focus on my world building style and get ahead on my current campaign setting.  I hope you were able to get at least a few nuggets out of this, but if not, I apologize and I offer, in exchange, some links at the end of this article to some sites that will actually help you manage and build your campaign setting.  Check ‘em out!

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By • Advice, Game Design, Improve Your Game, RPG, RPG tools • 1

Feb 25 2011

Free Stuff Friday: Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: Save Versus Death‘s Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich

I love materials that can provide inspiration for my own home brew campaign. Save Versus Death‘s Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich is just that. An adventure that has provided me with great inspiration for my own personal game. Just keep in mind this is not your normal everday run of the mill adventure. Save Versus Death set out to create an adventure that was designed to kill your party. It truly is something to be taken very seriously if used.

On Save Versus Death’s website they wrote this stuff up: Saturday Night Delves are a series of fourthcore dungeon adventures designed to be played in a single 4-hour session. Published quarterly, Saturday Night Delves feature extremely difficult encounters, a variety of challenges ranging from combat to puzzles, and evocative adventure sites that are both memorable and sinister.

Packaged with a complete suite of materials for DMs and players, SNDs are a great way to throw down an evening of high-energy, high-stakes, tournament-style Dungeons & Dragons.

So what are you waiting for! Head on over to Save Versus Death’s website and download the first (of what I am sure will be meny) Saturday Night Delves! Just make sure you take a moment to thank Save Versus Death for all their free stuff!

By • Advice, D&D4e, Freebies, RPG, RPG tools • 1

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