Jouer aux JdR en Français
I apologize to my English readers (i.e 85+% of you), this is a one-shot French post to discuss how I play RPGs in that language and to check how many of my readers read French. Time to brush up on your high school/college French or to fire up an online translator.
J’écris très peu en français. Premièrement parce que la partie écrite de mon travail (qui est très importante) est en anglais. Deuxièmement parce que, bien que c’est ma langue maternelle, je la maitrise beaucoup moins bien que la langue de Shakespeare.
Ceci étant dit, à mesure que ma notoriété en tant que bloggeur progresse sur cette petite boule de boue qu’est la Terre, je me rend bien compte que des rôlistes francophones me lisent de plus en plus.
En plus, Sarko viens de nous faire toute une série de discours bien sentis (dont lui seul à la formule) dans le cadre du sommet de la Francophonie qui a eu lieu le weekend passé à Québec. Faut bien profiter de l’occasion pour faire un texte dans cette langue, non?
Donc je me suis dit qu’il serait temps pour un article du DM Bavard sur le jeux de rôles en français!
Je joue a différents jeux depuis près de 25 ans. Étant québécois, je joue en français bien sur, bien que tous les livres de règles que j’ai utilisés étaient en anglais.
Pourquoi je n’utilise pas de règles traduite ou des jeux écrit en français? Bof, principalement parce que dans les années 80, la traduction de D&D était tellement à chier que j’ai préféré apprendre l’anglais que de les utiliser. (Oui, oui, je suis voué à l’exagération et à l’hyperbole… c’est ça être écrivain).
Deuxièmement à cause du différentiel de prix, la version originale anglaise d’un jeu de rôles est beaucoup moins dispendieuse. Finalement parce que, pour être brutalement honnête, je ne pense pas pouvoir nommer plus de 2 jeu de rôles originaux publié par la France . Je me rappelle que In Nomine est un jeu Français et c’est à peu près tout.
L’Oeil Noir ne compte pas, c’est un jeu allemand.
Je blâme mon inculture sur la distance géographique du marché de l’Hexagone et la proximité du marché Américan.
Donc, on a joué a A D&D, Gurps, Paranoia, Marvel Super Heroes, D&D 3.x et 4e en Français.
Mais, le français du Québec étant ce qu’il est, un interlocuteur unilingue de Paris serait bien en mal d’établir la langue dans laquelle nos parties sont joués.
“All right, les Gnoll vous attaquent, l’un d’eux utilise sont Encounter power…
“J’lui pitche une fireball sur la gueule, c’est quoi son Reflex defense? j’ai un attack bonus de +8″
“Un 20 naturel! Critical Hit! Woot!”
En fait, lorsque je joue des aventures publiées. je dois avouer que j’ai des moment de faiblesse créative et je me mets a lire, en anglais, les cases descriptives…
Remarquez, comme dans tous les groupes de JdR, les joueurs ne m’écoutent pas plus, que je parle dans une langue ou dans l’autre.
Et vous, comment jouez-vous en français? Quel type d’anglicismes se sont glissés dans vos parties?
Y’a-t-il au moins une personne aujourd’hui qui a compris ce que j’ai écris? 
Allez y en français dans les commentaires, on verra comment les Américains, Australiens, Britanniques et Allemands se débrouillent pour nous décoder, où s’ils vont tenter leur chance!
(I will award a secret bacon prize to one of the non-native French speaker who try to tackle a comment in French).
D&D Starter Set Released
The new D&D Starter Set has been released, providing a simple entry into the world of D&D for new or lapsed player, and coincidentally, making a great gift in time for the holidays. (If I had young relatives who were interested in D&D, I’d definitely get one of these for them.)
According to the Previews column, the set contains:
- A 16-page Quick Start Rules booklet
- A 64-page Dungeon Master’s Book
- 3 sheets of double-sided Dungeon Tiles
- 50 tokens, to represent characters and monsters
- And of course, a set of 6-dice
The DM’s book contains not only quick start rules for a new Dungeon Master to get up and running, but also stats for a suite of monsters appropriate to lower-level play, as well as the short adventure: Beneath the Village of Harken. [Read the rest of this article]
Pain of Campaigning VII: The Finale (Part I: What You Want the Adventure to be)
Well, if you’re reading this with a finale on the horizon, first, let me say: Congratulations! I can honestly say that amongst the best DMs I know that the prospect of actually having a campaign reaching a conclusion, rather than dying out, is no greater than 50%… and that’s a generous estimate. Personally, my latest endeavor (online) died after a single adventure due to lack of player availability (sniff, sniff). Even so, the lows of failed campaigns ought to be used to crystallize in your mind the potential awesomeness of a good finale. So, without further adieu, we dive right in! [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's Question: Gaming S.O.?
This post was inspired by this one.
Okay, I spent all evening prepping for tomorrow’s game, which is on with 4 players.
So I thought now was as good a time to ask you one of my patented question to blatantly bait for comments and entertain me.
Do you have a Significant Other? If so, is he/she a gamer like you? Do they play in your RPG Session? How does that go? Do you, for instance, succeed in separating in game issues from couples ones?
In my 25 years of RPging, the subject of having a Significant Other gaming with our group has come up a few times. I vividly recall having my high school girlfriend playing Gurps, Car Wars and other games with us, with limited damage to our gaming group (but then again, I have a strong reality filter when it suits me).
However, I do recall inviting some girls I had a strong interest for in my games (especially during my college years as officer of the McGill Gaming club).
(Yeah, it worked at least once, but the cost ended up being high)
Fast forward a few years…
My heavenly geeky wife (we’ve been together 12 years, married 9) has some gamer genes (Munchkins, Settlers of Catan, Gang of Four, etc) but no taste for the time commitment of RPGs. She remains, thank all the gods, a gamer friendly S.O. and I bless every morning that I wake up and find her still at my side.
What about you? I’m curious, how do you mix your love life with your tabletop RPG one.
Gimme some crunch people!
Have a great weekend, I’ll chime in with my game report over the weekend.
Credits: Wallyg (Picture, Creative Commons)
Review: "Medieval Bestiary: Anthropophagi" and "Feudal Characters: Noble"
Overview: Both Medieval Bestiary: Anthropophagi (MB: A) and Feudal Characters: Noble (FC: N) are PDF supplements for 4e, released under the GSL. MB:A details a new kind of monster, with 3 different versions plus racial traits for making an NPC. FC: N details a multiclass-only class called the Noble, complete with everything needed to supplement the class.
Available from: Medieval Bestiary: Anthropophagi is $1.95, 5 page full-color PDF (3 pages of content) and Feudal Characters: Noble is $2.95, 16 page full-color PDF (14 pages of content). This review is based on free copies received from the publisher, Alea Publishing Group.
Medieval Bestiary: Anthropophagi In-Depth: As we’re told right away, “Anthropophagi have no heads.” There is some description of the monster, its origins, and the standard Lore roll used in the Monster Manual. What follows are three different kinds of Anthropophagi, whose signature ability is a minor action attack that can only be done with combat advantage. There’s everything you expect to see in a 4e monster description, including encounter groups, and all formatted similarly to how the Monster Manual does it. There’s an adventure seed involving the creatures, and then racial traits for making an NPC. As it suggests, while it’s similar to the races in the back of the MM, it’s probably too powerful to be a PC race: a minor action attack is going to get out of control, especially if playing a Rogue. [Read the rest of this article]
Adventure Prep: Pirate Dragons, Ninja Apes and Hot Fighter-Librarian Chick
This is part of a very long running series where I share how I go at prepping my D&D games a few days before our bi-monthly game night.
I might not have a game Friday, my roll call so far confirms 2 missing players (Cleric and Wizard) and unless all remaining four confirm, the game might be canceled. I’m eagerly awaiting for the last player to chime in.
Also, next game would fall on Halloween, which is not a good night to game on when you have kids (more than half the group have children).
So if we game this week, this is going to be the only session for a month.
Such is the life of adult gamers.
All right, let’s just assume for arguments sake that I DO have a game Friday.
I have a published adventure to finish (this one).
In my last campaign log, I mentioned that I was caught wildly unprepared for the last parts of the adventure and fast forwarded the group through a free form Lost City section (potentially the adventure’s best part) and brought the PCs to the adventure’s climax, a meeting with Dreaded Dragora, supposed concubine of Moringlar the Green Dragon.
I’m not going to Ret Con this. As hinted at in the log, I will ‘salvage’ the finale by doing what the adventure author suggests to do: weave the adventure in the continuity of my own campaign.
Thing is, since I decided to adopt a ‘mini-campaign’ approach to this campaign, I had not actually thought of what was supposed to happen next, the adventure was supposed to be the whole campaign!
Since the only ‘bad guys’ that have been identified so far in the campaign have been human pirates, it was natural that I made Dragora into a pirate coming from the clans that raid the coast of the PC’s slice of the known world.
Also, the story the players worked together during our first session was how they managed to foil a pirate raid on one of their Halfling Patron’s Venture Forts.
So here’s what I worked out (yes I’m aware my players will read it… I’m leaving a few details out for them to figure out):
Dragora, a Pirate of the Dreaded Crimson Fleet (the scourge of the Southern Seas) was out exploring the ruins for the lost magic of the Enchanters of the Underground city (Hot semi-naked Librarian-warrior? Check). She, along her exploring partner and Transportation Moringlar (Pirate Dragon? Check!) found a lot more than lost ruins and magic! Slave Fighter Mage Ninja Apes (Check, Check Check!!)
Now Dragora is also linked somehow to the pirates the PCs defeated and has a score to settle. Since she has a Scrying Pool, she was able to track them and engineer that little cavalcade that brough the heroes 4 days walk from their now defenseless liege lord (Mastermind plan? Check!) .
So I have a story to finish the adventure and a plan for the rest:
Something happened back in Hobble Port (The Halfing Coastal City sitting by the crater of the long vanished Spire City of Ptolus) while the PCs were away, and Dragora will gladly share this with the PCs.
So what I’ll be doing tomorrow for the actual prep is to prepare the module’s final scene, work out the possible way this may end (PC’s defeated, Bad guys defeated, Bad Guys run away) and then plan the adventure’s Epilogue.
Then I’ll shift the adventure to something entirely my own. Something about going back after the pirates once and for all and nullifying their threat over the region.
I’ll have to design the following over the next few sessions:
- The treasures for completing the adventure
- The Pirate’s HQ (An area and a tactical map)
- A Free form scene where the players are encouraged to create new setting elements to help them find the HQ and reach it (natural stopping point of the adventure)
- Infiltrating/storming the HQ
- Hopefully have a finale with explosives, pirates and ninjas! (Natural Ending of the campaign)
I think this may be promising.
What say you?
Credits: RC Pirate-Ninja (Image)
The State of Chatty: Fall Edition
I’ll try real hard not to make this post into yet another tortured artist Emo crap. I seem to do one every three months or so… please bear with me, it’s quite therapeutic.
As I mentioned earlier this year, I’m one of those blessed creatively hyperactive personalities. The downside of which is that I often get my enthusiasm for the latest nerd project to completely derail me from my current path of geek bliss.
I’m also, like many of you, subjected to seasonal depression. While I can see February’s blues from a few weeks away and slow down before I get affected too badly, fall hits me hard every year and I never see it coming.
The main effect that seasonal depression has on me is to erode my brazen self-confidence and cockiness, letting my very own inner demons finally get to me.
I also have slight bipolar tendencies, like any longtime reader can surmise from the cycle of frenetic high quality post followed by less numerous, not so stellar posts. I have learned to live with them up to a point. While I’ve stopped taking life-altering decisions when I’m in a down period, I have yet to stop myself from embracing new projects I don’t have time for when I’m in my high energy cycle.
I am the tortured artist type… I’m learning to live with that!
So yes, I’m currently in ‘swamped with projects’ mode. Here’s the current list.
This Blog:
…is my love and what brought me the most satisfaction. I want to focus more on it but, being my oldest online Nerd project, I find that I tend to neglect it for other shinier ones.
I am currently not satisfied with the current ‘programming’ of this blog. Apart from my Gaming with Kids series, I find my recent posts somewhat stale and lacking in the spark that I know I can infuse in my writing.
And it shows as growth has stalled ever since I came back from Gen Con.
That’s why I’d like to bring the blog back up to its former position in my list of priorities.
Along those lines, I have a few new features I want to start writing about and I also want to revisit old favorites I have neglected for too long.
My D&D 4e game
…is very promising, and I want to focus my efforts in keeping it cool for both my friends and myself. That’s why I’ll re-start doing my adventure prep posts where I share some of my game prep secrets before I play. Thus I can apply my free time on both the blog and my game at once.
That’s also why posting on game weeks will be scarcer. So I can actually prep.
The RPG Bloggers network
You may not know this but I am one of the founders and people behind this very cool project. Things are going along fine (we now have close if not more than 100 members along) but this project still needs a few hours per month to manage. While most of it is done by my good friend Dave: The Game, I also want to do my part.
Chatty Studios
That’s where I post my work on the Kobold Love project. A project that I love dearly although it turns out to be a lot harder than I initially thought.
In the last few weeks, I came to the realization that I didn’t have to race to finish this project. I don’t need to let it become a stress inducer.
So while I will see it through, I will keep my involvement in it to about once a week post (give or take, according to my inspiration of the moment). I therefore won’t predict when it will be completed, just that it will be.
After Kobold Love, I’ll decide what I do with the Studios. I’m not yet sure I want to start churning adventures and get into a ransom/patron model if that means adding more stress (which my day job provides plenty of) on things I consider my main hobby and source of fun.
One of the reason why I’d like to make money with my RPG work is that I want to pay for the Conventions I will attend. We’ll see what other ideas I come up with.
By the way, I started posting about playtesting it at a gaming con. Have a look.
Writing RPG adventures for publishers
This is where I’m asking myself the most questions about. While I’m waiting for news from the places where I submitted ideas, I’m currently challenging myself about my true desire to do this.
Anyway, this also is a wait and see. Should I go forward with one or both contracts, I will need to reorganize my time spent on all previous projects and maybe shelve a few of them while I work through all this.
Online D&D game
…is something exciting that came up in the last few weeks. It is the latest shiny project I latched on to. I approached a group of bloggers and a Wizards of the Coast employee with a proposition to DM an online game of D&D 4e using the currently available tools.
This will therfore become a new series on the blog, injecting fresh content into it. It does mean spending time prepping for it, but since I’ll blog about it, the synergy will be welcome.
The idea behind the project, apart from nerding out, is that when Wizard’s game tool become accessible to the larger public, we’ll be able to compare them to the currently available ones and comment on them.
This, I look forward to.
The Suburban Overlord
…is the little webcomic I started a month ago. That one is shelved until further notice. I may post a comic here and there when I need an outlet for that particular type of creation, but I consider this nerd project complete. While it was a low impact use of my time, each hour spent on it is one less I spend gaming or blogging.
Reviews
I have recently been approached to start making RPG reviews for a yet to be named website. While I must say the idea intrigued me, and would give me more free stuff, I’m going to turn it down.
Chatty, yes… but what kind?
I am a foremost a Chatty DM, not a Chatty Designer, nor a Chatty Reviewer. I’m a writer, true, but I shine when I’m highly enthusiastic about something. My strengths lie in making and telling stories about things I live in the now.
I also excel at building communities and encourage people to do crazy cool things. I also love to DMing a mean game, be it for my close friends or new ones I make at Cons .
That’s what I want to focus on. That’s what I will focus on.
Thanks for being there!
Epic Laundry Basket: D&D is to Fantasy what Pornography is to Sex
God what a title! Pity I didn’t write the article .
A few minutes ago, Wally, a non-RPG blogging fan sent me an article he wrote.
The insights he brings are troubling and somewhat accurate. Be warned about the explicit use of sexual language.
Although, I must confess, I just can’t bear to imagine my Friday night game, surrounded by a bunch of married guys, being construed as Tabletop Pornography.
See for yourself and please, go wild in the comments. Wally is a good writer.
85 words.
(P.S: I apologize if you get the Increase your Penis size google ads, I need to ajust the adsense filter)
D&D Insider Now Available for Purchase (and New EULA)
Those of you who want to buy D&D Insider now have your chance to subscribe and get access to Dragon, Dungeon, bonus tools, and the Compendium (which I had more opportunities to work with over the weekend, and discovered a few issues in the content.) I’ll be purchasing mine later on in the evening, partially so we can continue to bring you coverage of 4e, and mostly because I want it.
However, the page does contain the magic acronym EULA (end-user license agreement) that you have to agree to for access to D&DI. Just glancing through quickly, I found some of the still-onerous language that upset many when Gleemax was launched. Additionally, there are still references to Gleemax in the text itself, making it a document that will likely change again.
I’ve included the entire text of the EULA below the jump, for easy reference and picking apart. The one that immediately jumps out at me as worrisome:
Wizards reserves the right to charge fees for the Service, or any part thereof, and to change its fees from time to time in its discretion.
YouTube Tuesday: Fear and Loathing in the Mushroom Kingdom Edition
A grim and gritty take on… Smash Brothers. Split into two parts here, but collectively making up the first episode of what looks to be an epic series called “There Will Be Brawl.” Check out the homepage of the project for more information. [Read the rest of this article]
Loading ...
