Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Your party is in a town. Who do they run into first. Whats that NPC's deal anyway? Make one of these charts for  any  town the players may stay in for a while. The interconnections of the  towns folk will lead to things happening. Roll D20: Kyle O'Tooligan: Former sportsman, played the  realms version of Rugby at a high level, until he broke his knee. Now Kyle owns a small bar on the edge of town near the  sports pitch. He will give out free drinks if you are willing to sit and listen to his stories about the glory days. Tessa VonEtten:  Midwife in town. Has a tremendously bad habit of vocally encouraging  young couples to have babies at inopportune times. Slayer Roberts: real name Mathias, Refuses to answer to anything but "slayer" Claims to any one who will listen  to have once killed a basilisk, there are no witnesses or proof to back up his claim. Kanna Vassil: A woman in her early 40's with a taste for  younger men. Kanna likes to hang out in the  market p

Mamluk from Aleppo My friend is starting a new campaign tonight. This will be his second full fore into campaign play and I for one am looking forward to getting started. Unfortunately this means I have to make a new character a level on sprout consisting of some class and race combo. Sometimes I wish  DM's would just hand me a pre-gen and say "let er rip."  I'm a GM I know, when everyone comes to a table and you look at the assortment of freaks on the table and say,  "That? group.... is going to be a party?!"  "Yes! We have the  Thief, Paladin, Priest of death, Necromancer, Druid  combo!" The joke around our table is, Mark always makes a fighter. A strong silent type, 2 handed weapon fighter. There are reasons for this  choice, those guys fill a role. My last character Orin had a pretty good amount of influence on the  games path even if he didn't talk all that  much. No idea who this is, great pic though Statistically it's nice to have  a

Ritual magic in  5thed D&D (201 to 202 PHB) is  a cool idea but I think it's execution is kind of bland. The idea of taking some time in the evening to set up  a ritual so that a spell can be cast sort of out side the  normal  spell slot structure speaks to me as useful, even utilitarian. (Why EVER waste a slot on the  Alarm spell?) What I think was missed was the opportunity  to create variety through the  ritual. As in  some materials are better quality than others, the  wizard might draw the symbols just a bit more exactly this morning than other time. There are a myriad of details that might go into a magical ritual. Lets play with this. Before the game: We will need a normal deck of cards. separate the cards by suit into four piles If the player decides to cast a ritual spell, the player draws one card off each pile face down on the table. Work the ritual as per the normal rules, once the ritual is complete flip over each card. A player may spend inspiration to draw a new

I find prepping for an online game (I currently use roll 20) a bit of a pain. I pine for the days of a big binder full of notes and sketches. Unfortunately that just doesn't cut it anymore. In an online game there is another layer between the  players and the GM , a layer that in the best cases should contain something. The play space in an online game is a screen that everyone is going to look at, a "shared information-scape." To leave it 100% blank is doing a disservice to the players, lets face it those folks have to look at that screen for the duration of the game. (or to be honest chances are they are googling something in the background.) Still while the players are playing the  environment of an online game requires a bit different style of  presentation than handouts at the table. My usual style is to put game relevant charts and such on the  front page. Things that we may all need for quick reference, then build maps and such on secondary pages. I was doing that

This is an unfinished image that was going to be  an interior scene in my AAIE game. It had a strange beginning as a doodle (Minataur) I made while sitting around with friends playing Munchkin. I never win at munchkin, it's a known fact, so I usually kind of zone out and enjoy everyone's company when we play it. Things like this happen. As a drawing it is pooched in a lot of places (the  background is shit, which is what I get for using a shit pencil that dulled out) but  I thought I would share it anyway, I think it's funny. Pencil on run of the mill sketch paper Thanks for looking -Mark.

Warning. To all  you amazing folks who read the gaming posts on this blog, this is not an RPG post. This is a post about boxing. I need to say I am not a boxing expert, but I am a boxing fan, I have been a boxing fan since I was young and would watch matches from my grandfathers couch. As an adult I understand the endemic and historic corruption in the  sport. I also have a fair grasp of the sociological and economic issues that underpin the sport. Its dirty, it always will be, and it always has been. I still love boxing. It can also be as close to pure competitive poetry as anything else we have to offer. Barbaric?  outdated? outmoded? sure, absolutely. Go on you tube, watch Micky ward vs Emmanuel Augustus . Come back and tell me those guys didn't leave it all in the ring, that there was not  respect at the end of the fight. There's something about that kind of purity that give me chills, every time. Watch Tyson Loose to  Buster Douglas. In the context of boxing history that w

I have been working on a home brew game revolving around my  D&D style fantasy setting. It's one of those projects born out of a desire to see my setting  uplifted by the mechanics of the game, as opposed to setting and system being two separate layers in a cake. I have been trying to come up with mechanics that will support the  kind of  experience I picture the characters having in the setting. A free wheeling adventure setting where combat is  fast, dangerous, and, creative strategies are rewarded over just running up to a monster and bashing it. I'm not trying to sell anything here, I just really want to  encourage interesting actions during combat scenes. It's not that that can't happen in say D&D 5thEd or red box basic, but there is nothing there to encourage it. Monster hunter 4.. never played it. If A player says "I want to  jump of this big stone, land on the  monsters back and start jabbing my  dagger into it's skull." As a D&D  DM I

Ok Last one. I never submitted this one because it's not truly a game, Its more of an activity. Though I might work on it a bit and add it to one of my other projects as a "Group scenario set up" mechanic. I think it would be fun the  way microscope is fun only with  less index cards and dots. What if, And, But:  Two to five players each with a D20.   Each player states “what if "  about a place._________.” then rolls 1d20.   The player rolling highest has created a “truth”   Each player then states an “And _________.” about the place, and rolls d20.  The payer rolling highest again Creates a truth about the original place.   The player rolling lowest Can state a “But____________” about the truth created by the “And” statement.   The “But” may add or modify the “And” statement.   A new Round starts   The new “What Ifs_________.” may be related to any part of the first round and may be a person place or thing.  If at any time there is a tie for highest or lowest roll

The Ukraine loves it's 200, do you ?  I never formatted this game to make it looked decent. Plus I felt it had a few cracks in its design. In the end I never sent it in. I have another one I might post tomorrow or next week that was even less finished. Hey at least I got one game in. Here is a link to view all of the submissions from the 200 word RPG challenge. So for your consumption I present a kind of dungeon crawl party game in 200 words: Endless Crawl: Always be descriptive! Four players have a piece of paper saying Map, Danger, monster, or treasure. Map player draws a room with at least three entrances. Danger player: rolls 1d10, under the (Danger) = A monster in the room. Monster Player: Monsters Have 1d10 HP + (Danger) Split hp for multiple monsters.   Monsters do 1d10-5 damage (+ Danger on a 10) Choose a character. Fighter:  10hp / 1d10-2 damage. Cleric : 8hp / 1d10-4 damage / or may heal for 1d10 HP. Thief  8hp / 1d10-4 damage per attack/ or skip turn attack monster attac

So being part of the  "write about your favorite RPG" project over at Dyver's (link in the left hand bar) got me thinking. Ok I always say how much I love and respect the Mayfair Exponential Game System used in "DC Heroes 3rd ed," why have I only run it once in 20 Years? That's a fair question if there ever was one. It's comics. I just don't know comics, and my friends do. So when I tried to run supers I always felt like I was faking to much of the funk. Not only that but all the  research into the standard tropes of comics that I could possibly do would never key me into what makes comics cool. People who love comics, LOVE comics. People who love comics have strong opinions about them, and I have always been ill-prepared to jump that knowledge gap. Well Fuck that. I guess I'm not quite so  self conscious as I was 15 or 20 years ago, because this week I started thinking up the  framework for a Supers game lack of Comics savvy be damned. I got to