Flashbacks with Alternate PCs

My group was short one player for our D&D game this weekend, and our GM, Sam, pulled out a one-shot with an awesome twist: The three of us played wildly different — and very powerful — alternate PCs.

Our regular characters are a druid, a dread necromancer and a cleric/psion; our alt-PCs were a roper fighter, a medusa/vampire thief and a beholder. So not only was the one-shot itself a nice change of pace (as one-shots in ongoing campaigns always are), getting to cut loose with crazy characters and no consequences was a lot of fun.

The adventure was set in the fairly distant past on another plane, and while it was challenging there was little chance of the beholder — the character who had to survive to be sharing the flashback with our real PCs — biting the dust.

If you ever get a chance to work something like this in your game, take it. Sam’s approach made for a great session.

How Often Would You Like to GM?

In a perfect world — one where you have as much time as you need to prep for your games, no one in your group ever has scheduling conflicts and you don’t have to worry about gaming getting in the way of work, school or other concerns — how often would you GM games?

Twice a month?

Once a week?

Five nights a week?

Back when I was a clueless GM, I ran a solo AD&D campaign for my best friend at least once a week — and sometimes two or three times in any given week. It was relaxed, stress-free and lots of fun, and while nostalgia certainly plays its part when I look back on those years, I think I’d have to say that’s my ideal: one to three times a week, worry-free.

How about you?

Weird U.S. Series for Modern Games

I picked up a copy of Weird Las Vegas and Nevada for my upcoming Mage: The Awakening Sin City chronicle, and it turned out to be a great buy. It’s full of supernatural, bizarre and otherwise offbeat stuff about Vegas and Nevada, which is perfect for a World of Darkness game.

They publish a whole series of these, too — New Jersey (two volumes — I think that’s where they started), Michigan, California and more. You can see most of the titles on the Weird U.S. site, although Vegas isn’t on there. Here in Utah, Barnes & Noble carries a good selection of them in the travel section.

At $20 a pop they’re a good buy, and the fact that they’re full of short, detail-rich writeups makes them just about perfect for adapting to gaming purposes. If you’ve got a modern game that could use this kind of color, I recommend checking them out.

GMs as Creators and Managers

TT reader, RPG freelancer and author of
 Opening Credits via PowerPoint
Walt C. emailed me about the most basic division of the GM’s roles. I thought this would be a good topic for discussion, and Walt gave me the thumbs-up on turning his email into a guest post. Thanks, Walt!
- - - - -
While there are a number of ways to parse a GM’s job into “hats,” the two critical ones are Creator and Manager.

The Creator is an adventure/campaign/world designer. He writes his own material for each session and spends a lot of time between sessions developing the game world.

The Manager actually runs the session. She takes the adventure and makes it come alive during the session.

We often lump these two together as what a “GM” does, but that’s not necessarily accurate. On alternate Sundays, I run a Freeport/Bleeding Edge campaign. All of the material was written by Green Ronin’s stable. In essence, I only manage the games. For my Friday Witchcraft game, I wear both hats. I design and run the adventures.

In the past, I didn’t consider “manager-only” GMs to be true GMs. It was the mark of a lesser GM that needed to rely on published adventures and was no good at writing his own material.

I’ve learned since that it can be just as much or even more fun running through published materials than a GM’s homebrew. Also, from a GMing standpoint, it feels less personal if the players criticize an adventure that you didn’t script.

Thinking about this division, what I wonder is this: Do people still think of a good GM as someone that can handle both, or is the managing aspect enough to mark one as an excellent GM?
- - - - -
(Other TT posts on the role of the GM include GM as Meeting Facilitator and The Game Master is the Leader of the Group.)

Chris Chinn, Backdrop Plots and Home Bases with Personality

Link roundups like this one make me feel like I’m behind…

• Deeper in the Game: Chris Chinn has been back since July, and I didn’t find out until this week! Chris wrote the now-defunct RPG theory blog Deep in the Game, as well as the TT post Social Contracts for RPG Groups.

His old blog was one of my regular reads, and Chris is a very smart guy. Like a lot of theory-oriented folks, it looks like these days he’s mostly writing about his RPG-in-progress (The Emperor’s Heart), but his dips into other stuff — like three-tiered conflict webs — look promising from an advice/ideas standpoint.

• Backdrop Plots: May You Live In Interesting Times: Ben Robbins advises GMs to use a backdrop plot to provide context, contrast and a sense of immersion for the foreground plot — the stuff that’s actually going on in your sessions. It’s an awesome idea, expressed clearly and succinctly. Why hasn’t Ben published a book of GMing advice yet?

• Now, When I SAY “Cinematic,” I Don’t Really MEAN “Cinematic”: TT reader Carolina emailed me about this article in J.D. Wiker’s LiveJournal (thanks, Carolina!) — it’s all about the difference between perception and reality when it comes to cinematic characters in RPGs.

Poking around a bit, I also like Locations with Character, which resonates well with the TT post The Hub: Home Sweet Base. I love the idea of assigning personality traits to HQs and treating them (somewhat) like NPCs.

Like GMing Screens? Go Hardback

Back when I was in high school, four-panel GMing screens — a huge improvement over three-panel screens — seemed to be pretty rare (my first was the one for Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition).

Six or seven years ago, the only way to get a hardback screen (one with panels like the covers of a hardbound book, rather than flimsy cardboard) was to buy one of White Wolf’s very sexy limited edition sets, which came with faux-leather hard screens.

I like hardback screens for the obvious reason: durability. My oldest cardboard screen (1990ish) is still kicking, but it definitely shows its age. Hard screens are also less susceptible to being blown over or knocked down, as silly as that sounds.

Best of all, these days they’re everywhere:

• White Wolf makes a four-panel hardback screen for every (or nearly every?) game line they publish. They’re well made, the fold nicely and they look great from the outside. Of the two I have (nWoD core and Mage), the Mage screen has a much more streamlined interior, but the nWoD screen has a more neutral exterior for use with other systems.

• Exile Game Studio just put out a very sexy four-panel hardback screen for Hollow Earth Expedition. I’d buy this to put my players in the mood for any pulp game, not just HEX (although HEX is a blast).

• Pinnacle Entertainment Group sells a customaizable, three-panel landscape-format screen (low, wide panels rather than tall, narrow panels). It’s made like the cover of a three-ring binder, with clear pockets on both sides to insert your own charts, artwork and info. The $27 price tag puts me off, but I love the concept.

Withdrawing from the 9rules Network

Treasure Tables joined the 9rules Network way back in November of 2005, and I’m sad to announce that as of today, I am withdrawing TT from the network.

If that makes you go, “Crap. Something bad is about to happen,” rest easy: Apart from the absence of the 9rules logo in the footer, nothing about TT will change. I love running this site, writing about GMing and interacting with the TT community.

If you’re curious about why I made this decision, read on. If not, check out today’s GMing post, Mapping Combats: A Balancing Act.

Read more

Mapping Combats: A Balancing Act

Some gamers like battles that involve battlemaps, minis and precise movement.

Other gamers prefer battles to be largely descriptive, with the GM keeping track of positions.

Many gamers fall somewhere in between — perhaps leaning towards a loose map of the combat area that isn’t used for hex-by-hex tactical movement.

So how do you balance those preferences at the gaming table?

By taking these four things into account, in this order of importance: system, necessity, your preference, your players’ preferences.

Read more

← Previous Page — Next Page →