Author Archives: Lauri Maijala

[Door of Shadows] Timey Wimey Off-Road

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11011000_1017491551614136_8276613320657869187_nAs discussed earlier I have granted the players a lot of narrative power in our current the Door of Shadows-campaign. One of the more surprising twists that I certainly wasn’t prepared for was that the characters decided to take part on an expedition to Egypt.

Though this post will be mostly about describing the events of an actual gaming session(s) it includes a couple of (more) interesting points about GMing – even if you are not into reading about other peoples sessions. I must also add that this post is a bit lengthy.

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Permission to Change the World

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One of the favorite things my gaming group brings up are the “Legacy Tokens” that allow the players to take part in the narrative “legacies” of the gaming world. I stole this idea from a (fan-made?) addition to old Deadlands but it still has evolved from those beginnings. In the following I will high-light how we have used those chips to give the players major power to reshape the narrative.

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[Door of Shadows] Creating the Campaign Setup

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The Pull

Randomizing the characters

We started a new campaign at the beginning of the year (as discussed in my previous post).

This campaign is linked to the Wayward Sons-campaign I ran last year though it takes place 40 years earlier. And even though I jump started this “discussion” about the campaign with the experiments I have had with a Mythos Tome I decided that our first session also deserves to shared.

As first sessions go it wasn’t an actual playing session in a traditional sense but more like a conversation of what we were going to play. Vincent Baker‘s Apocalypse World advices you to do something similar but we took it a bit further.

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Experimenting on Mythos Tomes

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We have been playing my AWengine hack for a few months now. There is a lot to talk about this game but I make my return to blogging by discussing the use of Mythos Tomes in roleplaying games.

A Mythos Tome is most likely found in horror games but should by no means to be limited to them. Mythos Tomes are ancient books filled with most eldritch secrets no man was ever to know. Or at least that is the main assumption. Continue reading →

Killing Player Characters

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Death and the act of killing a player character in roleplaying games is a controversial subject. The players are quite rightfully protective about their characters but even when not considering about their opinions about the death of a PC the hardest part of such an event is in the hands of the GM.

In my past I have shied away from killing the characters. As a teenager I tended to make all of my rolls in secrecy so I could always fudge the result to keep a character just barely alive. Later on I made the decision of making my rolls open so that the dice would decide wether the character survives or not. But lately (once again thanks to the AWengine) I have had to scrutinise my thinking.  Continue reading →

X-Ray Down

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IMG_8851Our gaming Guild apparently now has something of a regular random gaming night at the beginning of each month. This time it was my turn to be the GM (actually I just announced that I wanted to) and my weapon of choice was The Regiment by John Harper. As we had had some experience with the Apocalypse World hack I decided that this time I would tackle one of my RPG goals – running a game of X-COM.

For this particular session I decided to do a little something extra and went through the playbook templates for The Regiment – Colonial Marines (they were provided by Harper at the AWforum) changing most of the names to correspond the newest instalment of the X-COM franchise. While doing this I ended up into the deep end and found myself hacking the whole hack to suit my needs. Continue reading →

[Dungeon World] Building Dungeons on the Fly

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The first draft of tunnel to the Fernkeep

The first draft of tunnel to the Fernkeep

Forewarning – Though I labeled this post as to be used with Dungeon World it should still be very suitable for most games.

I’m not exactly sure how Dungeon World wants to approach the subject of dungeons. On the other hand you should “play to find out” and on the other hand the use a ready dungeons seems to be the way to go. As the correct answer of “how I should do it” is always “however you feel most comfortable with” I’d like to discuss the topic of not using pre-made dungeons. Continue reading →

Häme Medieval Faire

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After a couple of years of trying I finally managed to make a short visit to Häme Medieval Faire (held at Hämeenlinna during last August). Since I have no recollection of visiting this event ever before (this might be false since I was born in Hämeenlinna) I had no expectations for the event. And it blew my mind.

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Strongest Writer on the Blog

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I’m quite sure that Aki had no intention of ever bringing this up. During this year’s Ropecon we decided to sumo wrestle for the title of the Strongest Writer on the Blog. It might have started out as a minor gag but it turned into an epic battle of mensweat and curses.

At the end of this challenge only one warrior stood on the hot tatami shouting praises to Crom and Thor. Lauri was the champion of this blog.

For your (well, mostly mine) entertainment here is the video of the final match!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9DMQYYsvYI

(Actually this post serves to notify those interested that I just opened a YouTube account for the blog and thus also happened created a Google+ page for us.)

Trying out: Dread

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dread2This post is almost two months late. I rely on the notes I made and the vague memories that still haunt me of the one of the most successful horror scenarios I have ever participated.

For during Saturday of this year’s Ropecon I was lucky enough to get a seat in a game I have been itching for ages to try out – Dread.

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