The Want, Challenge, Cool Factor Method of Scenario Creation

Whether you’re mid-campaign or just starting out, consider giving this a shot: Ask each of your players to request a scenario idea built around three components of their choosing. Then follow up on their requests.

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I Steal His Pants

The title of this post comes from one of the best moments in The Gamers (which is laugh-out-loud brilliant all the way through — a must-see, if you’ve never heard of it), in which the party’s thief tries to steal someone’s pants in a bar. Why? Because he can, of course!

It’s hilarious in the movie, but in actual games actions like this can be a sign of player boredom or frustration.

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The Player Character Death Survey

At some point in your GMing career, a PC is going to die during one of your games. It’s inevitable (some might even say it’s recommended).

And depending on the style of your game, the way it happens, the player in question, how long the PC has been around and the finality of the death itself (very final in many RPGs, not so much in others), it can go very well or very poorly.

One of the best ways to learn about how to tackle this often-tricky issue is from other GMs — and that’s where this survey comes in. If a PC has ever died in one of your campaigns, how did it happen — and what was it like?

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Using Wargames for RPG Combat

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of running a MechWarrior campaign and using BattleTech for in-game mech battles. The fact that the PCs are involved would put a different spin on the wargame aspect (and vice versa), and it sounds like fun.

There are other RPG lines that also have (or had) wargames associated with them, including D&D and the D&D miniatures game, and it might also be possible to adapt unrelated wargames to some RPGs (or vice versa), even if neither the RPG or the wargame is designed for this purpose. Either way, I’m curious what this is like.

Have you run an RPG campaign that dipped into (or centered around) wargame-based combat? What’s it like? What unique GMing challenges does it present?

First Adventure Outline on the TT Wiki

Kestral has added the first adventure outline to the TT wiki’s Complete Adventures section — a fantasy scenario called “Tax Collection” (and based on two seeds from the Adventure Seeds page).

Wiki mod Scott M. has also recently categorized the wiki. Check out the Tools category to see how this works — it’s a very handy organizational approach.

Over in the forums, recent discussion topics include GM’s attention deficit disorder, a new D&D spellcasting mechanic and renewed interest in the anatomy of a social contract.

(I’m back, but apart from spam cleanup and this post I haven’t caught up on what’s happened on TT in the past ten days. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do that tonight!)

Three to Five Players: The Middle Ground

We’ve talked about solo campaigns and GMing for large groups before on TT, but what about the middle ground?

The “standard” size for a tabletop RPG group is four players. What, if anything, do you do differently with three players vs. four players vs. five players?

Lost: The RPG?

Lost is one of my favorite shows, and easily one of the best things on television. And every time I watch an episode, I think “Man, how cool would it be to play this?”

Lost puts deep, memorable characters in an unusual, high-intensity situation, and intersperses kickass character drama with bizarre occurrences, surprises and a backstory that’s still far from being clear after two seasons. It also uses flashbacks in every episode, and uses them well — they tie into the action, and they bring out new elements of whichever character they focus on.

In other words, it’s full of things that make roleplaying great — and that would be crazy-challenging to GM. So how about it — could Lost be made into an RPG? Is there already one out there that could handle all its curveballs, and not just in terms of mechanics? And am I right that it would be tough to GM?

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