Depends somewhat on the game, but mostly, yes, they are.
Player Characters Are Psychopaths
4
Category Archives: Roleplaying Games
Playing Around With Clichés – Inns
It might seem that way too many adventures have began in inns, and taverns. In a way this is true. It can be overused as a starting point or the place where the adventurers meet for the first time.
On the other hand, where else would these vagrants meet each other?
Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy Review
This is a book from a series of books called Popular Culture and Philosophy. Although many of those books are based on very good properties, mostly they feel like novelties and are not very compelling to me with the exception of Monty Python and Philosophy, which I haven’t read, and this one. Shouldn’t have felt that compelled, but anyhow.
The subtitle of the book is “Raiding the Temple of Wisdom”. Apparently, there wasn’t much to loot there.
HillFolk and the Distinction Between Drama and Procedural
The Guild’s annual meeting is just around the corner. Despite the experience being just a mix of intoxication and hangovers, we actually get a bunch of gaming done. Sure, it took us until about five in the morning to get five rounds of sealed MtG done last year, but still, we manage.
I plan to try HillFolk for the first time. HillFolk the book is pretty much about setting, but it does include Robin D. Laws’ DramaSystem within it. The approach of the DramaSystem has some interesting features. Mainly that it makes the distinction between dramatic and procedural scenes.
RPGs and Gaming Stores
There’s an open call by Sami Koponen to write about the Finnish RPG scene. I don’t really consider myself a part of it, or at best I’m on the fringes, but that might just be good, since that means my perspective will be different and that’s important for discussion. So, here’s my take on something for the long run I’ve been thinking about lately.
I frequent two gaming stores regularly. They are both within a few blocks of my workplace, and I play MtG in each every once in a while. Between rounds I like to browse (and sometimes buy). I like to support these places, because I like their existence. I like there to be two, because that produces competition and competition produces (hopefully) better service and more options.
However, even though I do play more MtG and at times more PC games or board games (although that’s unusual), I like to think of myself as a roleplaying gamer at heart. What do these two LGSs do for me in that regard? Not much.
Improv and RPGs, part 1: Listening to others
I’ve done improvisational theatre for two years now, and I’ve been a roleplayer (mostly the GM) for twenty years on and off. Improv has done a lot to make me a better player; and for a long while I thought roleplaying made me great at improv. Sure, I had my strengths, but this post focuses on what I sucked: listening to other people. There will be sequels.
Dungeon World versus Apocalypse World
Besides the genre differences and the setting differences implied by the genres, there’s one major difference between these two games: in Dungeon World you don’t get to use the moves against the other players. Sure you can attack them, but I don’t think that’s meant to be a key to the game. On the other hand, in Apocalypse World, the moves are written in such a way that you can clearly and freely use them against the other player characters.
The way Dungeon World handles the intra-party relationships – and thus conflicts – is actually quite elegant and definitely has its own strengths, however I do enjoy how Apocalypse World brings the intra-party conflicts to the forefront.
Competitive Magic for Roleplaying Gamers
One of the big problems with newer players, who have some experience under their belt, but not much, is that they’ve learned a certain style of play and they try to play that way whatever deck they play.
[Dungeon World] Building the first steading
At the end of our first Dungeon World session we had only encountered an enormous spider lord and had spent a moment with the characters. In any case I needed to build on that session to create the framework for our campaign and it all starts with the first steading. As I’m sure that there are players that would benefit from this kind of example I’ll dedicate this post on discussing about moving from first to second session.
[Dungeon World] Temple of the Spider Lord
Last Sunday we managed to start yet another (fantasy) campaign. This time I’ll be GMing it and the game is (not surprisingly) based on the Apocalypse World engine. Dungeon World is a marvellous game of dungeon delving in style of D&D and presents the tools for lethal combat, making interesting worlds and allowing the characters to “level up”.
The hardest part for me with starting this campaign (excluding the major case of hangover I was suffering at the first session…) was not to be prepared. I tend to overwhelm myself with plans and background when starting something new but this time all I did was announce that the whole gameworld would be covered by a forest. (Actually I also started an image blog at Tumblr to collect atmospheric images but since I do it with all of my games that does not count…)