Hirsute Halfling Haberdashers: Theme Parties

“We’re all gnome barbarians!”

“Secret agents by night, janitors by day — that’s us.”

“All of our characters are part of the same family.”

Theme parties offer several advantages, including automatic background connections between PCs, a reason to be adventuring together and a memorable approach — and they encourage group character generation, which is always a good thing.

What else is good about theme parties? Are there any downsides? If you’ve played in one or run a game centered around one, how did it go?

DM of the Rings: Full of GMing Insights (and Hilarious)

I recently stumbled across Twenty Sided Tale, a blog by Shamus Young, and found his series of comics entitled The DM of the Rings. It starts here, with DM of the Rings I, and fair warning: I nearly peed myself around number IX or so.

On top of being freaking hilarious, though, Shamus’s comics are full of truisms about GMing. No, seriously. Like, “No matter how difficult or absurd you make a puzzle, your players will find an even more impossible and preposterous way of solving it,” and “The DM will do a lot of talking, but if he’s not rolling the dice then what he’s saying is probably not important.”

Who hasn’t felt that way at one point or another, on either side of the screen?

Lenses: A Great Underused GMing Device

Lenses are an idea I first saw put into practice in the Amber Diceless RPG, which presents several versions of each of the major canon NPCs. This allows the GM to choose which lens to view Corwin through (just how much of a bastard is he?), for example — and just like taking off or putting on a pair of glasses changes what you see, which Corwin the GM uses makes a big difference in the game.

This same idea is used throughout GURPS Illuminati, which offers up different big picture explanations for every major conspiracy. Is the Priory protecting the bloodline of Christ, or aliens who are secretly living among us? It depends on which lens the GM chooses, which is awesome for keeping your players on their toes.

More games should use lenses. In fact, I’d argue that every RPG that features a central storyline of any sort should offer a variety of ways to approach the major elements of that story.

But is this concept useful in home games, too? Twisting it around a bit, I can see presenting multiple views about a major NPC (through in-game events and other NPCs) and letting the PCs decide how to approach them — but that’s not precisely the same thing. What do you think?

Meta-Support Between Players

Play Constructively: Pass the Ball is an excellent post on ars ludi that addresses players supporting fellow players at the gaming table. For example, if someone else is playing a spooky necromancer, passing the ball would involve having your PC always act like their PC is, in fact, a spooky necromancer — even if the other player isn’t selling it all that well.

I’d add one more item to the list, along the lines of number three: Push their buttons. Not to the level of being an irritant, but if another player has included angst, issues, phobias or other bad stuff on their character sheet, it’s because they want to see it come up in play. Help that happen.

Squeeze Out Tasty Adventure Icing

Courtesy of an email from Jeff Rients (thanks, Jeff!) comes this link to a post by Dr. Rotwang: The Adventure Funnel.

It’s a method of scenario creation that revolves around successive steps of brainstorming, each of which refines the previous step. It reminded me not only of a funnel, but also of those funnel-shaped bags you use to squeeze out icing for cakes.

At the end of the adventure funnel process, you’re left with delicious adventure icing, blended from the best elements of your brainstorming. It looks like a sound approach — check it out.

Rats and Giant Bugs: Booooring

So I’m working my way through Oblivion, which is an incredibly rich game, and I was mildly disappointed that the first thing I got to fight was giant rats. You know, just like every other fantasy RPG, whether video game or tabletop.

Sure, that won’t spoil what I expect to be a great game — and it won’t spoil what your players expect to be a great campaign. But even though it can be a bit of a challenge to get out of this somewhat comfortable rut, it’s worth it.

Every genre has its own stock, straight-off-the shelf weenie monsters: rats, giant bugs and skeletons in fantasy games, human cultists in Call of Cthulhu, street punks in a cyberpunk game, etc. Next time you’re sketching out an adventure for new PCs, or running a published scenario, spend half an hour adding some zip to the baddies — and if possible, avoid the giant rats entirely.

GMs, Always Do Your Own Mapping

I touched on this briefly in TT’s first PDF (Player Tips: Everyone Likes a Three-Way; 273kb PDF), but it’s worth bringing out into its own post.

When you’re running a game and someone needs to draw a map, that someone should always be you, the GM.

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GMing a Licensed Property RPG

From Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly to Conan, Lord of the Rings and (shudder) Diablo, there are tons of RPGs out there based on licensed properties.

My experience running licensed games is close to zero, although I’ve played in my share of them. From a player’s standpoint, the approaches I’ve seen most often are playing in the setting with minimal interaction with canon storylines, and having a moderate amount of interaction with canon (major NPCs are present, for example) — but there are plenty of other ways to approach licensed games.

If you have run or are running a campaign based on a licensed property, what are some of the unique challenges you’ve had to face? How about common pitfalls?

(If you have tons of experience in this area, I’d love to see a guest post or two on this topic. Don’t let that stop you from commenting, but please drop me a line if that appeals to you!)

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