Last November I stumbled on Miska Fredman‘s Instagram account and noticed he was drawing maps with #Mapvember. I got hooked. I even draw some maps myself too and Aki wrote about automated map generation.
Since then Miska has gone on Patreon and is drawing maps in addition to his job as the founder of Ironspine (Finnish rpg publisher). It seems like his map drawing has really paid off. At the end of August he published a neat booklet called A Dozen Dungeons (link to DriveThruRPG).
A classic discussion on player types includes stuff like Power Gamer, Butt-Kicker, Tactician, Specialist, Method Actor, Storyteller, and Casual Gamer (the types used by Robin D. Laws in his booklet on GMing). Maybe this isn’t enough. I’m not talking about finding more types, but rather a totally different typing based on different personality traits.
As a child I couldn’t watch movies where dogs died. I watched First Blood, I watched Omen II, I watched Robocop (heavily cut); I did feel sympathy for those in pain, but nothing terrified me more than the thought of a dog dying.
A game of Yövuoro (The Night Shift).
Again, there was a short-form scenario contest at Ropecon. I managed to play in six of them, including all three that received a prize. I gave some feedback to the designers on individual games, but now that I can see the bigger picture, I’d like to point on some commonalities and offer critique that I hope will lead to more fun for everyone in the future. Continue reading
In mere three hours, we created our group of scoundrels and planned and executed an assassination. John Harper’s roleplaying game Blades in the Dark, dear readers, is awesome. This is my experience of our first session. Note that this is not a review nor an analysis of the design, just a description of a subjective experience. Continue reading
Back in the day I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for years. It was “my D&D” (since I never really played that). I have a lot of memories about that game, I have made quite a few fan supplements for it, heck, I was even the other admin for long forgotten HAMMERZEIT (web site for WFRP3) and have been running the Daily Empire apparently for seven years…
Every now and then I have tried to get back into the game that really sold roleplaying for me but having been spoiled by Apocalypse World it has never really worked out.
Back while I was really active “some dude” got an idea of remaking the 2nd edition game. Since I really (REALLY) loved the 2nd edition I was immediately on board on this. Then time passed. Games Workshop decided it was better to just destroy the Old World (with Age of Suckmar). I even played a little D&D! But yesterday “that dude” finally did it.
“That dude” is naturally Daniel Fox and his Grim & Perilous Studios. And the game is called ZWEIHÄNDER.
There’s two things at work here.
First, the Guild has an annual (sort of) tradition, where during our annual (mostly) meeting we have a quiz on roleplaying games. Its generally played in two person teams and whichever team wins the quiz, gets to or has to do it next year. This year Lauri and I won.
Second, in order to become an MtG judge, you need to do practice tests before taking the real one. The questions in these practice tests are the questions that weren’t good enough to make it into the real test.
So, based on that, here’s some questions I made that I didn’t think I really wanted to use in the final quiz. I’m way ahead on schedule on this and the real quiz will happen next may (probably), but I was inspired to do these quite early, so you’ll get to enjoy these now. Maybe (if I remember) you’ll get the real quiz to ponder over.
To be precise, I’m not talking about long-term plans. I’m talking about planning a heist, an assault, a defense. Something more tangible than becoming a king some day or something similar.
That time of the year, although at this point, I’m actually pretty late with this post. I’ve been busy despite being unemployed (actually time management seems to be a skill I quickly forgot), so I’m doing this pretty much at the last possible hour.
Summer is almost here and traditionally it’s time for new games and campaigns. I’m actually going to start two new campaigns during this month. So I decided it might be interesting to discuss about how I do it. I’m not saying my way is the best but since it works for me I have no doubt it could work for others.