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The Main Event is an alumni of Dickinson College and The University of Miami Law School. He writes dungeon mastering advice in his Pain of Campaigning series. Now a practicing attorney in Maryland specializing in Wills, Trusts, and Estates, The Main Event is an aspiring author and always looking for new clients or avenues of publication. Email him or follow him on Twitter.
Hold Your Breath Wheel of Time Fans
Universal Pictures has acquired film rights to the late Robert Jordan’s bestselling “The Wheel of Time” novel series in a seven-figure deal.
Now, I may have some complaints about the series, but it sure does do a lot of things right. I liked the idea of a mini series more, but maybe a movie done right will chop out all the extraneous bits and tangents. Good luck keeping the franchise alive for about a dozen movies!
Pain of Campaigning VI: Give Your Villains Some Panache!
Well, it had to happen. The Main Event has begun to plan his first 4E game (and speak in third person!) So now, with a campaign fresh on the brain, I’ll continue my last villains article and talk about how to make your villain(s), regardless of type, formidable, awesome and dastardly.
They Have a Plan: Make sure your main villains are every bit as logical as your heroes. As much as Prince Lotor from Voltron made me chuckle, his ‘evil for the sake of evil’ bit always struck me as strange. Sure, it is evil to bring about the death of all sentient life, but maybe Mr. Villain thinks he can fix life and make it better, or that it would result in less suffering and he has a logical way of doing that. Keep in mind, logic in this context can include magic and other zaniness.
Trademark: Give your villain some tick, some symbol, some catchphrase, some thing that announces his presence. Make the PCs’ blood boil when they realize a seemingly tangential side quest was in actuality a clever ruse by the villain or that was actually part of his master plan. [Read the rest of this article]
Pain of Campaigning V: Suitable Villains
So, let’s see, you have pre-planned your campaign, started it out with a bang, managed to balance a bunch of squabbling players interests in the game and even dared to put politics into it. Sounds like a great game, huh? Job’s over?
Wrong.
A recurring villain is one of the simplest ways to increase the excitement of a game and give it lasting consequences. There’s a lot of thought that can go into choosing a proper villain and this article is going to focus on that: making a villain that works for your PCs. In the future, I will discuss dos and don’ts for making the villain you selected into a formidable, challenging adversary without burning the PCs out. First thing, however, is selecting what kind of villain to use. [Read the rest of this article]
Raimi's First Rule
Terry Goodkind’s book series turned television show finds its leads.
Marvel Movieverse!
Can Marvel keep a high quality line and connected universe up and running? (Hint: Use Paul Dini’s animated DCU [Diniverse] as a solid model!)
Review: Iron Man
General: Iron Man is a faithful fun-filled adaptation of one the most flawed heroes in comicdom. Tony Stark is a womanizing, irresponsible, hard-partying, smug son of a bitch, but he’s super-cool. His ascendancy into superherodom doesn’t necessarily change that, it just gives him a sense of obligations and duty. His origins remain true in spirit, but updated to a more modern context.
Plot: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is the wunderkind industrialist inventor arms dealer that keeps America safe with the help of his dedicated personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). He and his military liaison Jim Rhodes (Terrance Howard) head to Afghanistan for an arms test. During that foray, his assumptions about his arms and their role in America’s defense are sorely tested. Tony then vows to make a difference, with the help of his own genius and Stark technology. Along the way, his dubiously moral business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) seemingly works to balance Tony’s newfound conscience and the Stark bottom line.
[Read the rest of this article]
Jeez, Just Wait 'til you Get to Liberty City…
Obviously, Joe and Hill-rod are correct about video games!
A Sword of Truth done Xena Style?
So, news is floating around that Sam Raimi is going to a fantasy syndication of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.
I have decidedly ambivalent feelings about this. The first book was really great, but it included… mature… themes such as man-boy rape, sado-masochistic torture-magic-sex, and satanic summoning (no joke). That being said, the series definately got extremely didactic and bad as it went on, and I’ve yet to finish the last two books. On the other hand, the core story about a woodsman turned super-wizard-king-of-the-world-hero-of-destiny and his lovely mate traveling about righting wrongs may work great in syndication. Thoughts?
The Pain of Campaigning III: The Plot Thickens
So, assuming you’ve considered pre-campaign decisions and successfully started your game its now time to keep running a campaign. Not just treading water, but also have it be interesting, engaging, and fun. Maintaining interest, engagement, and enjoyment from all players and a DM can be incredibly difficult, but here are some of the most common problems that can interfere with these positive aspects.
Character Involvement in the Story
There is something going on in your campaign, whether it’s the first part of a 13 part epic or your PCs have cleared out a goblin warren or an orc encampment, but the question is how much do these events continue impacting PCs. Most players enjoy the feeling that their characters actions send out reverberations through the campaign world. So, even if your planned arch-nemesis twin brother is at least five adventures from even being alluded to, maybe that disgraced mayor that slunk away should become the righteous paladin’s rival for the time being. On the other side of the spectrum, maybe you just plan on running another module out of the Forgotten Realms, but a pesky goblin shaman actually rolled a stabilization check in the last encounter. Rather than just forgot about the little guy, even if the PCs groan when he makes himself an annoyance again, the continued co-evolution of the campaign world and the PCs makes the players interested in considering the repercussions of their actions and makes for a more engaging set of decisions. Ultimately, whether your story is fast, loose, and barely planned or methodical and plotted your campaign will benefit from having the PCs characters see consequences from their previous actions. [Read the rest of this article]
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