Read on as I discover the true meaning of Christmas. Does it involve amputation? Setting aside one’s humanity to gain unlimited power? Spinach? Only Santa knows for sure.
Beyond Labels: How Each RPG Serves and Rewards Specific Needs
In which Chatty muses about the relative uselessness of the overused art of labelling RPGs. He then explores the importance of matching one’s needs and motivations as a RPG gamer to the proper game that was designed to cater to them.
The Architect DM: Abandonment & Re-population
As a DM that runs a tabletop RPG, it is your right and privilege to strike towns, lands, and whole continents with whatever form of catastrophe or disaster that strikes your fancy. Whether it is a terrible plague, massive tidal wave, or vicious invading army that sweeps through the area and all but wipes out the native inhabitants it is up to you to determine what happens with that location once the initial catastrophe has passed. These events could have happened hundreds of years before the characters were born or they could be the climatic event that finishes off a chapter of your game and opens up a new one. No matter when it happens, it is up to you as the DM to figure out how these events will effect your game world and how the players will experience the event and the aftermath.
A Very Gamma Christmas
“‘Twas the night before Christmas” / (or so the book said) / not an Ancient was stirring / (because they’re long dead)
“Leverage” RPG: The Misidentified Dolphin Job
The Miami Crew helps out a disgraced football player by reversing a lookalike brother con into a Kansas City Shuffle within a Xanatos Gambit.
The Roleplay’s the Thing (Wherein I’ll Catch the Conscience of the Gamer)
As the days fly by and we get closer to The Most Interesting Roleplayer in the World tournament at DDXP 2011, I have been doing a great deal of thinking about the concept of roleplaying, particularly within the concept of a tabletop RPG. Topics on this aspect of the hobby come up on the various forums and discussion lists more frequently than cable news arguments about which politician or pundit is or is not Hitler.
From Here to There: Finally Here!
In which Chatty announces that his 4e Adventure is FINALLY out, steals from the publisher to describe the product as a whole and shares his designer notes and the dark secrets behind the adventure he wrote.
On Writing
More than a few folks have asked me for advice on writing. I don’t know why. I have edited and written, with mixed success at both, for publication and pleasure. Like I said, that doesn’t prove anything. What I can say is that writing isn’t easy. It takes courage and skill and patience, and a good editor always helps.
The Architect DM: World Building By Process
If you think about the world around us and how it came to be the way it is, most things you’ll look at are the result of a process. Villages were created out of a need for shelter and then grew into towns and some eventually grew into cities, while natural formations like mountain ranges rise and fall due to the workings of plate tectonics. When we set out to create a world for an RPG, or even for videogames and fiction, we are attempting to create a world that is the result of a process that has never actually happened. Some worlds can certainly have mountains that don’t line up along a range and aren’t even created by plates of earth shifting and colliding, but my personal belief is that if you are creating a world the best foundation you can use is that of the real world that we see all around us.
Fiasco Friday: Chatty’s Tale of Suburbia, Act 2 and Aftermath
In which Chatty concludes his tale of drugs, meaningless sex and violence in an unnamed American suburb. Reader discretion is advised.
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