Musings

Ok, so as a player in ravenpolars marvel game, i am enjoying it a lot, considering this is my first experience of playing a game without dice.

a momentary lapse of play led myself to a rather rash decision in the previous game which i believe took away some of the spirit of the game, i do of course fully apologise for said actions and will of course try and make sure that my play is better at all times!!

right that out of the way, i am running a game which i think is going well, and im enjoying running, but im not sure how to keep my players interested! im new to the gm scene so please any ideas please henceforth and throw them at me!!

Friday Night Link Madness 2

This week......GMing


http://www.plotstorming.com/
Writting plots, campaigns or worlds. Some good advice here for all.


http://forum.rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?f=11
RPG.net's game design & development forum


http://www.treasuretables.org/
Daily advice for GM's

Jeff's Gameblog: Times, they are a-changin'

One of the best RPG blogs around seems to be holiday for a bit....

Jeff's Gameblog: Times, they are a-changin'

Friday Night Link Madness 1

In an effort to make sure that this blog gets more updates, more regularly, i'm going to start a series of posts where a bunch of links around a subject get posted. Kinda like Jeff's Gameblog has every so often.... So here's part 1

Mapping

http://www.zombienirvana.com/
Zombie Nirvana - great blog with video's on mapping in Photoshop, just follow the instructions and Photoshop becomes a lot easier.

http://www.enworld.org:80/forums/showthread.php?t=109865
Great fourm thread on EN-World thats a tutorial on mapping in Photoshop.

http://home.paonline.com:80/zaikoski/ak/TOOLS.HTM
Hex mapper - great for the old style feeling, very simple program.... and its FREE!!!!

http://www.dungeoncrafter3.com/
Dungeon crafter 3 - great tile based mapping and again its free!

http://www.vterrain.org:80/Packages/Artificial/index.html
List of terrain tools and packages and what they can do

http://www.cartographersguild.com:80/
And finally the Cartographer guild - nice site to show off, get help and discuss mapping

Enjoy

Top 10 Campaigns

So I just found a post on Treasure Tables (http://www.treasuretables.org/2007/11/ranking-your-favorite-campaigns-what-makes-you-tick-2006#more-910) about ranking your 10 best campaign games, itself a repost of a post on another blog http://www.abuliasavant.com/?p=171

Well..... Here goes



System - Game - (GM) - Date

1. Vampire - Gary by Night - (Ed) - Early 90's


2. Werewolf - Rage across the world -(Me) - Early 90's


3. Marvel Super Heroes Saga - State of Love and Trust - (Me) - 2007


4. Pendragon - [Pelaine] - (Ed) - 80's


5. Stargate - SG18 - (Me) - 2005


6. Feng Shui - Hong Kong Era - (Owen) - 2001??


7. Shadowrun - Various - (Ed) - 80's


8. Twlight 2000 - Polish hunters - (Danny) - 80's


9. Sla Industries - Karma Kills - (Ed) - 2000


10. TMNT - Otherside - (Me) - Late 80's

So thats my list, written in under 10 minutes without much analysis while putting names down.

So analysis, what does it show?

Im not at all surprised that 8 of the games were run by me or a great mate of mine called Ed. I enjoy GMing and Ed has been a gaming buddy since I was 14 and he runs some damn good games, especially when he puts in the prep time.

And again no surprise that Ed's Vampire game ranked highest, it was a truely amazing game that ran from the release of the original Vampire RPG for several years. It also may have helped that my character, Lukas, ended up as Prince of Gary, but hey what do you expect :)

I'm not surprised that D20 systems have very little showing, only my own Stargate game is on the list and I guess this is due to the fall out I had with the D20 system. Its just too much pain after hitting level 10 or so. Fiddly mechanics and trying to track 101 feats just feels like accounting, not roleplaying.

Surprising is that the Marvel game im currently running is up there. This is a very new game with only 2 sessions gone so far and yet im enjoying it immensely.

So what are your top ten?

WoAdWriMo

So the last post I did was about NaNoWriMo which a write a novel in a month competition where people try and complete a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of Novemeber. Kinda tough going, but fun for those that manage it.

In a simular vein there is WoAdWriMo, Worldwide adventure writing month. Basically write an RPG adventure in a month... in the case of 2007, the month of June. I was lucky enough to get my entry in 3 days into the start and handed in my finished article just within the final deadline.
It was tough going but so much fun to actually get something out of it. It really does give you an idea of the pressures that professional writers face day to day, from initial ideas to finished page.
If you ever get the chance try one of the one-month-writeathons... you won't regret it.

If your interested the final adventures from this years WoAdWriMo are posted here... http://www.treasuretables.org/woadwrimo-adventure-downloads
Mine is called "SkyFell" and is based upon the campaign world that I am in the process of writing