A Role Playing Games Blog
Random musings
Christmas in July!
0July 28, 2011
I just wanted to remind all our readers that the Christmas in July sale at DriveThruRPG is still underway. Until the end of the month you have the chance to get hundreds of PDFs for a reduced price!
So now it’s your chance to get some of the PDFs you always wanted to buy for 25% off!
Puerco papers for better gaming!
8July 28, 2011
This post needs a preamble. As I was finishing my weekly game in the wee hours of the night (more accurately really early in the morning) I was asking among my players for possible topics they might be interested in reading about. Although some ideas were thrown about I ended up writing the Superhero games are hard! post. After I was done writing I noticed a message from my player and good friend Sara suggesting the topic for this post. Big thanks to her for the inspiration!
Imagine this… “The table is abuzz with excitement. The players are about to make a pivotal decisions that could change the game. They are throwing ideas back and forth and suddenly someone notices the note quietly being passed by one of their own to the nemesis behind the screen… FOUL cry the other players. A puerco paper has been unleashed on the game!”
Call it what you may, secret communication between the players and the Game Master can be a contentious issue. At our table we call them puerco papers, puerco literally means pig, and well paper you get. So it’s meant as a disparaging, and somewhat tongue in cheek, remark on the player writing the note. I don’t exactly recall exactly how the term came about, but I seem to remember my friend Sammy coining it at his table and cross pollinating to ours through mutual players, even before Sammy played with us. It’s part of the unique lexicon, like “Tempus be praised”, “anchorchas” or “chiclán”, that develops among a gaming group.
Players are not the sole perpetrators of puerco papers, Game Masters often find the need to pass along secret information to a player or players, by either passing a note or pulling them aside from the table for a few moments. So it can be either a puerco paper or a puerco meeting, even a puerco session if the GM meets with a group of players outside of the regular gaming session. With current technology the communication can happen via text message, in or outside a session, e-mails, social media, you name it. In my experience players are more forgiving when the GM does it, but when a player passes a long a note it can be the seed of discord and distrust.
Superhero games are hard!
4July 27, 2011
If you’ve read any of my posts in the recent past you probably know I am currently running a Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition game. After fantasy, which is my favorite RPG genre, Superheroes are my second favorite. I have started more supers campaigns that any other genre besides fantasy. Off the top of my head I can think of eight, and about two dozen more that were planned but never executed. Of those I considered one really successful, well until this one.
My current Dawn of a New Age campaign has become the favorite supers game I have run. Before that it used to be a Heroes Unlimited games that we played for a few months. I don’t recall exactly how long that other game ran (this was in 1992) but I think this one has surpassed it. Last night we played our 30th session, over seven and a half months of weekly games. I think the success is based on many factors. First and foremost a group of players interested and committed in the game.
Secondly preparation and I’m not talking about the weekly kind, but campaign prep. I did a survey to gather information on just what the players were interested and not interested in to use as a guide when preparing the campaign and possible adventures. Discussed their characters, went over expectations, so we all started knowing what to expect.
But you know what they say about best laid plans. As it is inevitable the plan has needed revisions. Players have changed characters, despite discussing expectations they were varied and sometimes contradictory and trying to mesh them all has not always been successful. Overall I think we have stuck to it and every so often there is something of interest to everyone. As will al role playing games not every session an highlight all the different plots for every character but there should be something for everyone to do.
Starblazer Adventures meets the Mass Effect Universe
6July 26, 2011
Some time ago I wrote about my plans to run a Starblazer Adventures game. As always things didn’t went as planned and I had to reschedule. But at least our RPG pub meeting on Thursday was a huge success. I introduced the regulars to the FATE roleplaying game system in general and Starblazer Adventures in particular, and two more players decided they want to give it a try.
So my group grew from 3 to 5 players and when talking about what kind of campaign setting they wanted to play in, we finally settled on a Mass Effect campaign. In my opinion Mass Effect fits SBA’s style perfectly. The only thing I have to do is add some rules for Mass Effect’s tech and biotics powers. But I am sure I can come up with a couple of skills and stunts during this week, so we can finally start with character creation next week or so.
Twitter and me!
2
I was not keen on Twitter at first. Some may say I am not big on change, but let’s just say I did not close my MySpace page until last month! I was not quick to migrate to Facebook when it came along, so when I began blogging and discovered how the RPG blogging community was active on Twitter I reluctantly joined. It took some time for me to get used to Twitter, I still use Facebook and remain very active, out Puerto Rico Role Players group main form of contact is there. I use Facebook for my games all the time, and it’s worked better that most other online tools I’ve tried, it has to do with the service’s pervasiveness, I am well aware of that.
So little by little I have balanced my use of Twitter and Facebook. These days most updates I do on Twitter and they appear on Facebook. Oftentimes I will post in English in Twitter, where the majority of my followers are English speakers, and do my occasional update in Spanish in Facebook, where I have a LOT of Spanish speaking friends.
One thing I had NEVER done was participate in a large scale real time discussion with lots of other people. I get hashtags; I had just never tried it. Some time ago I had seen the #RPGchat discussions and lurked, fascinated by all the ideas floating about. So last week I saw they were discussing Gen Con this week and decided to join in. I used my iPhone with the Twitter app and was able to follow and participate so easily.
The people participating in the discussion where friendly, helpful and so much fun and I won a prize they were giving away! It was the most fun I’ve had in Twitter. Shout out to all the fine folk there, it was a pleasure to meet you. I will definitely be joining them again.
I did embrace Google+ early one so worry not I’m keeping up to day.
Just in case, if you are interested, in Facebook you can find me as sunglar@hotmail.com, in Google+ as sunglar@gmail.com (you can see a pattern emerging here) and in Twitter as @Sunglar. I’d love to get to know you all better!
Trust issues
15July 20, 2011
Over the years I have talked with a lot of roleplaying game players about rules-light games. The older I get the more I gravitate towards rules-light systems, because I feel they suit my style of playing and running games more than the more crunchy rulesets. One of the arguments I heard against these systems was that in rules-light systems a lot relies on GM fiat. When you have a game like D&D 4th Edition for example where almost every situation is covered by rules, GM fiat plays only a minor role. This is definitely an advantage when you deal with an inexperienced DM or if the players have some trust issues when it comes to the GM.
What about Kobold Quarterly #18? A review…
2July 19, 2011
Ah the change of seasons, the passing of time. Maddening heat and unending rain have descended upon my tropical island paradise, but there is another sign that summer is here. The new issue of Kobold Quarterly is out. Michael posted about this here, and the publishers were so kind as to provide the blog with a review copy. Since he knows I love fantasy, and I’m in a very bad need of a fix since I’ve been playing supers for over six months now (and I love it, but I miss my wizards and dragons), he let me review it… Happy blogger!
I review a lot of Open Design books, and I make no qualms about admitting how much I enjoy their products. I am a Pathfinder fan true and true, and well they simply publish so many awesome books for my favorite fantasy RPG I can’t help myself. The 18th issue of Kobold Quarterly does not disappoint. This issue weights in at 100 pages with content not only for the Pathfinder RPG but to the other two big players in the fantasy RPG field, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Ed and the newcomer AGE system from Green Ronin. I am a fan of AGE as well and I am happy to see more options for fantasy RPG lovers out there and I applaud Open Design for supporting it. It’s chock full of goodies…
Want to learn more? Read on…
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