Dungeon Magazine Index on Intwischa.com

Intwischa.com has gone live with a beta version of their Dungeon Magazine index, and Charlie, who created the index, has done a bang-up job.

The beta version is searchable, can be filtered by level and setting (so if you need a 5th level module for Greyhawk, you can find one), includes a blurb describing each adventure’s contents (very handy!) and even shows you the cover of each issue.

This index grew out of a post here on TT (Resurrecting the Dungeon Index?), and Charlie has run with the idea and produced a very cool resource for GMs. Not just GMs who run D&D, either — with a bit of tweaking, Dungeon adventures can be used for other RPGs, too.

The Intwischa.com forums are open for feedback — head on over and show your support!

Approaches to Character Creation: A List

Josh, who comments here as longcoat000, emailed me with a great question: “how many different kinds of character creation are there?”

Not kinds in the sense of rolling 3d6 vs. assigning points, but in the sense of meta-approaches — individual vs. group character creation, background first vs. numbers first, etc.

I didn’t have a ready answer, so I decided to think it through by creating a list. Here’s what I came up with.

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XP by GM Fiat

One of the thing’s my group’s Stargate SG-4 GM, Don, does that I really like is handwave XP. Instead of awarding XP, he just tells us when we level up.

He has a keen sense for pacing, and we usually go up a level every couple of adventures (each adventure being one session). This pace is satisfying for us, and fits well with the tone of the game.

This approach is formalized in Green Ronin’s True 20 system (and I mentioned quite liking in my True 20 review), and it saves a lot of bookkeeping for everyone. It won’t work for every RPG or every group, but when it does work it’s a great approach.

Edit: One essential ingredient, at least for me, is that Don also awards Action Points (which, in d20 Modern, let you break the rules a bit) during sessions. This really makes the XP-by-fiat approach hum — see the comments below for details.

Make the Bugs Scary: Little Touches for Horror RPGs

This guest post by Patrick Benson (AKA VV_GM) is the third in our new Genre Advice for GMs series. In this post, Patrick reminds us that little things can be scary, too.
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Horror in RPGs is a lot like horror in the movies. The first time you set up a good horror scenario it is scary, the second time it might be scary, and by the third time the formula is boring.

Go past three times with the same gimmick and your players will begin joking about how silly the whole scenario is.

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Props for Everyone!

Random GMing idea #276: Ask each of your players to bring a game-related prop to the next session.

The prop could be anything that enhances the game for the whole group — a plastic sword, a hand-drawn map of the team’s HQ, a bag of plastic Pieces of Eight, a mix CD of background music, etc.

You’d have to mention upfront that it doesn’t need to be a complex prop, and I’d recommend awarding bonus XP or offering some other in-game incentive. Plus, of course, bringing a prop or two yourself! But if it worked, wouldn’t this be neat?

Modern and Post-Apoc Photo Essay

An Abandoned City is a nifty photo essay about an unnamed city in Russia that was put out to pasture after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The pictures are eerie and bleak, and best of all from a GMing perspective, almost entirely devoid of era-specific details.

If you enjoy GMing with pictures, you could easily use them in a WWII, modern or post-apocalyptic game. They’d also go nicely with the (slightly more horror-themed) abandoned urban site photos we’ve linked to in the past. (Via Boing Boing.)

Why is It So Hard to Find Players?

My group is having a devil of a time finding new players, and I’m curious if it’s just us, or if lots of groups have the same problem. I’d like to frame that discussion around a quick tongue-in-cheek anecdote.

I moved to Utah two years ago, and met my current group right away. Since then, we’ve only found two players who became friends and long-term members of our group (Jaben and Sam, I’m looking at you!). During the same two years, I met the love of my life, who I’m lucky enough to be marrying this month.

Which one would you expect to be harder: Finding your future spouse, or finding new players?

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Three Tips for Running Memorable Supers Games

This guest post by Patrick Benson (AKA VV_GM) is the second in our Genre Advice for GMs series. In this post, Patrick tackles three ways to make your supers game shine.
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Roleplaying games and comic books go together like bacon and eggs, Elvis and Cadillacs, Super Bowls and Sundays, thirty-sided dice and… Okay, for the record a thirty-sided die doesn’t go with anything, despite the best efforts of many a gaming geek.

Anyhow, a good supers RPG is one of the true delicacies of the gaming world. You can throw in an element from any other gaming genre and it will fit right in to your supers game. The PCs may fight an evil wizard, or team up with androids from the future, or even travel to a dimension where the era of the Wild West never ended.

Very few genres are as open to possibilities as the supers genre, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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