Dice are a very important part of most role playing games. Without out a good set of dice you would not be able to roll up your character, let alone slay a dragon. They are just as important to people who play roll playing games as the story they are playing through. Some people take this very seriously. I remember reading a story some time back about a player who buried his dice in the back yard after a bad roll that resulted in the death of his character. Yet others are more than willing to share their game dice with a new player. It all depends on the person.
As important as dice are to players, the way they roll their dice is just as important. Some people give them a quick shake in the hand and let them fly. Others will spin their dice high into the air and let them drop down right in front of them. Yet, others will blow on their dice casino style before they roll. Each person is hopping that these little rituals they do with their game dice will improve the out come of what they roll. You can witness this first hand by watching Chris Perkins and the writers from robot chicken playing Dungeons & Dragons. Each person (most of which are new to roll playing and have never touched a d20 before) has their own roll style.
When I was looking at getting into Dungeons & Dragons last year I started by picking up the Dungeons & Dragons Foruth Edition RPG Starter Set. When I got home and opened the box one of the first things that poured out into my hands was my first set of dice. Up till this moment I had never owned my own set of dice. With the six multi-colored dice in my hand my mind exploded with possibilities of the other kinds of cool dice I could get. I think I spent hours that first night searching the internet for dice. That should show you how important dice are to me.
After looking though all the Steel, Bone, Hematite, Opaque, Translucent, Glitter, Speckled dice the internet had to offer I settled on a set of Green opaque dice with white numbers. Green being my favorite color and opaque making it easy to read the white numbers. Sometimes settling on the simplicity of just being able to read quickly what you have rolled is more important and time-saving then getting a crazy translucent yellow dice with elvish print that takes you way to long to read after it’s stopped rolling. That’s just my preference. Everyone has their own and that is what makes this topic so fascinating to me.
Recently my views on dice all came crashing to the ground thanks to a company called Game Science. One of the things Game Science states about their own dice is:
“My company makes polyhedral dice closer to casino specifications” (casino dice must be exact to a tolerance of .005″ – Gamescience dice have been measured with a side to side variation of .002″ to .006″)
So with a sharp edge on the Game Science Dice, your roll is truly random since their are no curvature variations. The sharp edges also allow for better stopping power.
Now, is all this true? I honestly don’t know. I think casino’s have have sharp edge dice for a reason and I think that holds some weight. Game Science has two videos on their website with the owner talking about his dice and why they are better then all other roll playing dice on the market. After watching the videos the guy lays down a pretty convincing argument. But he is such a good salesmen I also think he could sell sand to a guy living in the desert.
After watching these videos it’s hard for me to know if one brand of dice is truly better then any other brand on the market. I just don’t have enough validated facts to say one way or the other. As important as dice are to me and to roll playing games in general the biggest reason I play D&D is to have time set aside in my week to meet up with my friends and socialize. I don’t need casino grade dice to do that.
With all that said I drank the Kool-Aid and ordered a set of Lime Green Game Science dice.
You know…
So I can review them…
Category : Dungeonslayers, Freebies, News, Reviews & Culture, Other Systems, RPG
Finally the first official supplement for the Dungeonslayers game has been translated into English. Forgeworks by Christian Kennig is a 4-paged PDF containing new weapons, armor, and magic items for his free roleplaying game.
The Dungeonslayers core rules didn’t include that many items for your characters and we all know how important loot is! Aside from tables for generating random magic treasure, Forgeworks also has a small list of “named” armor like the Hide of the Healer which grants the wearer +1 to Healing spells or the Robe of Power which increases its wearer’s Mind by 1.
If you need some more loot for your DS campaign, Forgeworks surely comes in handy. The PDF can be downloaded from the official website and is – like all other Dungeonslayers books – free.
Yesterday while watching an episode of The A-Team on TV, it struck me. Wouldn’t The A-Team make a perfect model for a RPG campaign? Let’s look at the basic premise, which is summed up pretty good by the voiceover during the opening credits:
”Ten years ago , a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.”
So you have a team of military specialists (the leader, the face, the mechanic and the mad pilot), doing good deeds while hunted by the law. And when I think about it, that does sound like a cool premise for a roleplaying campaign set into almost any genre. I can easily imagine an A-Team in the time after the Thirty Years’ War, in the far future or in most fantasy settings without changing the basic premise too much. Of course you won’t have a pilot in most fantasy settings, but perhaps you can replace that position by a sailor or even a cleric.
The main problem with that kind of campaign is character motivation. What is the reason the A-Team helps people on a regular basis while being hunted by the military police? It’s definitely not the money they’re after, because in most cases they don’t even take the money offered. In my experience players usually need more motivation than just doing “the right thing”, so you probably have to think about what motivates “your” A-Team.
Another recurring element of the series is that the A-Team often creates custom vehicles to overcome their foes in a final fight. Some game systems support doing something like that. When I remember correctly Shadowrun had extensive rules for customizing vehicles for example. This aspect of the series could pose a problem especially when set into the fantasy genre especially when the technology level of the campaign is pretty low.
There’s one fantasy campaign, which suits that campaign model perfectly: Eberron. The basic Eberron campaign is set only a couple of years after the Last War and there’s a reasonably high tech level that allows the construction of weird devices and vehicles. A party could consists of veterans from the Last War, like a human warlord (as leader), an elven bard (as face), a warforged artificer (as mechanic) and perhaps a gnome wizard with some ties to House Lyrandar or Orien (for transportation). They could have been made responsible in parts for what has happened on the Day of Mourning and are now hunted. So they fled to the Sharn underground.
Of course you can’t copy the series completely. Doing basically the same story over and over again may work for a television series, but it will probably get boring for your players pretty fast. But I think the basic premise could help to create an interesting RPG campaign.
What are your thoughts? Do you think running a campaign inspired by The A-Team might work? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Some of you may have noticed that Stargazer’s World was extremely slow recently. Today it got unbearable and I decided to call the company that hosts the site. After a few minutes looking into what may cause the problem, they offered me to move my blog to another server.
The move just took a couple of minutes and as far as I can see the blog is much, much faster now. Thanks, Strato! If you guys encounter any issues with the site, let me know.
Category : Feature, Just my two cents, News, Reviews & Culture, RPG, Random musings
Hello readers, I’m going to ask your indulgence for a moment because I intend to write about something very personal, gaming in Puerto Rico.
Recently I’ve become interested in the wellbeing and growth of the role playing community in the island. In a way I feel like it’s the least I can do for a hobby that has brought so many good things to my life. I had a lot of contact with the local gaming community while I worked in comic book/hobby store, but after I graduated college back in 95 and got a full time job I lost contact with the community. I never stopped playing and have longstanding friendships with people I met at the store. Heck, half of my gaming group hails from that time! For years I played with my group and some players came and went but I had little contact with what happened beyond my group.
Then about five years ago the gaming group grew and we integrated two smaller groups into one larger group with more than one GM running games. Some of us even made the trek to GenCon and I was really fired up. But then as it often happens we had scheduling conflicts, personal situations and back in 07 the group was again six of us playing by ourselves. Then I got invited to a group in Facebook, Puerto Rico Role Players and it changed how I relate to games.
A lot can be said about social networking, good and bad, but for me the group was a blessing. I came into contact with old friends from way back when I used to work in the comic shop and made new friends from all across the island. Through the group a new player joined and I came in contact with other groups. Puerto Rico Role Players became a place to exchange information, keep in contact, share news, and little by little we began recruiting more people, even some players who had moved away but still had ties to the island.
Through contact with other fans of RPGs I formed a better idea of the state of RPGs in. I am sure there are many much role players in Puerto Rico than members of the group, but a trend becomes obvious. Most of use began playing in school or college, played extensively during that time but once we grew older real life became increasingly complicated and regular gaming became harder. Most long lasting groups usually flock around one or more regular GMs that are often the glue of the group even when there is some player turnover. A complain often voiced among members of the Puerto Rico Role Players group is the lack of GMs or at least what many of them consider “good” GMs. I realize that is a matter of taste but the adjective is often repeated.
There are no locally published role playing games, so most of us began playing with quintessential game, D&D, some players I know have been playing since the late 70’s. In the 90’s World of Darkness became the “in thing” and most players you ran into were playing in some chronicle or other. I got to play in session with 12 and 14 players. I know of may people who used to play Rifts as well. I guess while I worked in the comic shop those were the three big sellers.
Another interesting phenomenon I experienced and have seen in other groups is that groups are usually LARGE. I have had anywhere from 8 to 12 regular players, and know of similarly sized group. There are many war gamers and people playing CCGs. Thought the group I’ve become aware of LARP groups as well!
There is a death of gaming stores and they don’t always stock all the latest games, so many players rely on the big book chains or online shops these days. What few shops there are usually don’t have areas where players can gather to game. The one store I used to visit that had space to game in, sold few new items and mostly dealt in reselling minis and getting special order merchandise or collectibles. And they are no longer in business… Most people played in schools, universities or at their houses. I believe this is one of the elements that make meeting new players difficult. There are no communal gathering places where you can go to and participate in a game.
This fact as well as the obvious generation gap among gamers were issues I thought the group could help address. Our hobby shrinks everyday we don’t reach the younger generation and teach them the joys of role playing. I know of at least one parent who runs adventures for his teenage son and his friends, but there is more we all can do. In the group we came up with the idea of gathering at the small cons and trade shows that happen around the island.
At first we just got together to meet and exchange ideas. Eventually we decided to participate in a local con as a group. We set up a table, handed out literature about the group, what RPGs are, and did gaming demonstrations for various systems. One of the group’s members builds incredible models for his games and we had them on display to show many of the things that can enhance the role playing experience. We even ran a game for new players that had NEVER tried out an RPG ages 12 to 20!
We had great fun, and the pictures you see in this post are from this activity. We have many more photos in the Puerto Rico Role Players group. While the discussion is mostly in Spanish I invite you to visit us, we speak English there. If you know any Puerto Rican who doesn’t know about us, please share this information with them, even if they are no longer in the island. They are all welcome.
As a group we have many great plans for the future and I’m convinced that the group can do much more to create awareness about RPGs and share the joys of the hobby with others…
So what is gaming like where you live? What do you do to let others learn about RPG?
While developing Gears I have encountered many situations where I was not sure if the direction I am taking with the game is the right direction. While working on the combat section of the Gears rules I have the problem that the basic mechanic, which I love, is getting in the way all the time. I sometimes wished I had chosen a different base mechanic. There a moments, where I believe changing the system to something like “3d6 roll higher” or even a dice pool system, would make the game much better.
While this change would force me to come up with new solutions to problems I’ve already solved, it would make combat and perhaps even my planned powers system much, much easier to design. There are quite a few things that currently just don’t work as I hoped. The problem is that I have already put quite some work and effort into the current version and changing something basic like the dice mechanic will probably force me to start from scratch. On the other hand struggling with something I am not entirely happy with seems like a waste of time.
What would you do? Would you try to keep with the current mechanics, no matter what? Or would you change the game’s basics in order to give it a fresh start? I have to admit I am pretty much torn at the moment. One thing is sure, I want to finish that project and release a product that not only I am happy with but which will be picked up and played by at least a few other gamers.
