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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Making Success Interesting, Part I
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Wednesday, January 1, 2014. Making Success Interesting, Part I. I had the chance to play Dungeon World over the holiday break. The game went well, even if we did mar it with our typical propensity to turn any RPG into the plot of a Marx brothers movie. In my experience, making failure interesting is fairly easy once you understand why to do it. It doesn't even come into play in some campaign styles. Gives you directions to the cultist's hideout, but you miss the clue that po...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: February 2010
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Sunday, February 28, 2010. A Tale of Two House Rules. Delta's Target 20 system was nearly flawless for use in combat. I'll use it whenever I play AD&D or OD&D. It kept things moving quickly, especially once I had the player's ACs memorized. In contrast, I didn't bother with the initiative rules. At least, not yet. I think there was a grand total of one spell cast in combat ( bless,. Oddly enough, after years of running iterative initiative having everyone roll each round was...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: October 2010
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Sunday, October 24, 2010. Originally posted on EN World, but re-posted here since people on that site seemed to like it.). I think you can learn a lot about a game by listening to how people describe it after they play it. It shows you how they interact with, see, and process the game. It did, and the session ended with the characters entered the ruler's audience chamber to find the "wandering tracker" they had harassed standing at his side. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). The S...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Prepping for Success
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Monday, January 6, 2014. Last week, I wrote about working with success. By leaning into the players' success, you make your campaign more engaging and exciting. When you put your game on rails, you undermine the players' choices and shut down some of the chaos and unpredictability that make RPGs fun. What does the cult do to those who defeat its most powerful figures? By thinking in generalities, you can ensure that you can quickly adapt your ideas to suit the specific situa...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Making Success Interesting, Part II
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Wednesday, January 1, 2014. Making Success Interesting, Part II. They've got us surrounded, the poor bastards.". Last time, I wrote about avoiding the urge to counter a player's success. If the game takes a sudden, dramatic turn in the players' favor, take a moment to collect your thoughts and think things over. It's easy to make a snap judgment that simply denies the players their victory. Hang some long-term consequences on to a great victory and make it all the more memor...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: May 2010
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Sunday, May 23, 2010. What You Know, Who You Know. There was a thread on EN World a few months back about the role of sages in D&D. In AD&D, there was a fair amount of material in the DMG. About the services offered by experts in various fields. If the characters needed to learn the history of the Forgotten City of Thar, they could plunk down some cash and hire the services of an expert. On the other hand, sages provided a few nice benefits. They are a great way to give ...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: March 2010
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Wednesday, March 17, 2010. How Hammerfast Got a Hex Map. A few reviewers and forumites have noticed that Hammerfast, a book I wrote that just released this month, has a hex map in it. The hex map details the area around Hammerfast. Some folks might think that the hex map is there as a call out to old school gaming. The truth is actually far more sinister, far more intriguing, and far more shocking. So, that's why there's a hex map in Hammerfast. And when the characters d...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Making Success Interesting, Part III
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Friday, January 3, 2014. Making Success Interesting, Part III. The last two posts touched on making success interesting. The first one did the obligatory introduction and advised you to take a break and think, rather than panic, when faced with a character's sudden, dramatic success. Now we're going to talk about a dark and treacherous path. You've decided to panic. You're going to start doing stuff right now, in the heat of the moment. Here's what to do. Wrap that story arc...
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands: August 2013
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The Keep on the Gaming Lands. Thursday, August 22, 2013. Digital Toolkit: The Evernote Dungeon. Right before GenCon, I ran a dungeon crawl adventure using my iPad, a set of dice, and monster stat blocks written down on index cards. On my iPad, I had GoodReader loaded up with PDFs of the rulebooks I needed to reference. For the adventure, I tried something different. I wrote up the dungeon using Evernote. It worked out pretty well. If you're not familiar with Evernote, head over to its web site. I create ...
