I'd like to start off by first of all apologising for the abysmal name of this post. Would it not be better to name it after the campaign I'm currently running, as that's what this series will be about? Well, I don't have a name for it yet. What about the world in which it takes place? Nope, still not got anything suitable for that either. If there's one thing I'm completely dreadful at, it's coming up with names. This is most likely due to my general inability to make decisions or be decisive in any way, as I want any name I come up with to be the absolute perfect name, and won't accept anything else unless it's been literally months, and I'm still stuck for a name for something that desperately needs one.
But, I digress. With that out of the way, let me get to the core point of this post - introducing the aforementioned D&D campaign, the characters currently within it, and I may in later posts divulge some of the rich history of the world - history that I usually to end up completely fabricating on the spot.
The starting location for the whole thing, and also the residence of the majority of the PC's, is the small, quaint, bit-of-a-dump backwater fishing village that the players quickly named as Stonehouse - a name that, sadly, stuck immediately. Made up of a scattering of hovels, a blacksmith's, and a general goods shop, in the centre of Stonehouse lies it's namesake - a large stone mead hall that pre-dates the rest of the village, the history of which none seem to know. The whole village lies on the Western bank of a large, slow-flowing river running from South to North. The responsibility of running the village falls to a man known as Ural - a towering bear of a man, standing at a full 6'3" and built like a Orc chieftain, although his parentage is indisputably human.
It is in this village that four unlikely heroes show themselves - or rather get manhandled into completing a very simple chore for Ural, with the assurance of an almost unimaginable reward upon it's completion.
First of all is the village blacksmith - a stout dwarf with a bad sense of humour and an even worse drinking problem, Einki Loderr inherited his father's smithy in Stonehouse and has worked there ever since, making tools and arms not only for Stonehouse itself, but also for a couple of the nearby villages and even the nearby town of Sercton, the capital of the locale.
Next, there is the somewhat-Germanic Elven sorcerer Klaus - Einki's drinking partner and local annoyance, often using his many cantrip spells to confuse the other poor residents of Stonehouse, and never beyond using others for his own gain.
Then there's the dimwitted but well-meaning half-Orc, Yal-Grob-Shaft - the person most centred on the current objective of the quest, whilst ironically also the most stupid and the one who most often causes plans to go awry. He's also a favoured target of Klaus' devious tricks and pranks, much to his annoyance.
Finally, the party is rounded off by a Druid - another Elf, but one who lives a much more solitary life in the thick woods bordering Stonehouse, living off the land and well known for his incense and smoking herbs which he can bring up from the very earth itself.
That is the party as it stands - a fairly motley crew of fools who thus far have done very little save manage to get themselves caught up inside an Orcish stronghold - but that is a story for another post, in which I will explain the actual adventure the party finds itself on!
Until then, take care, and happy gaming!
-Mike
Friday, 31 October 2014
Thursday, 30 October 2014
Roleplaying - The winter, a time for late night gaming, and the basics for running roleplaying adventures.
So, it's fast coming to that time again, the clocks have gone back, the nights are longer and colder, and people tend to be feeling a bit more... "meh." So, what better a way to occupy your nights than to have a few friends over, find some clear space, and roll some dice? It's easy to shut yourself away over the long winter evenings, but it's always good to socialise, whether you're wargaming, roleplaying, or even just sitting and chatting.
For me, that's what winter is all about. Recently, my roleplaying group has decided to get back together after a half-year break and we'll be commencing with a Call of Cthulhu adventure - a group favourite - in order to get back into the swing of things. I'm also currently running a D&D 3.5e adventure for a few friends at my local wargaming club, which thus far has gone very well, much to my relief, as I haven't DM'ed for quite some time!
I'll be giving out the backstory of our CoC group in a later post, and then probably posting updates when interesting things happen in our current adventure, which officially starts tomorrow night. My next post will likely be addressing my current Dungeons and Dragons adventure, what the party has encountered so far, and thereafter probably session-by-session updates, most likely out late Wednesday evening once the game is over for the night and it's all still fresh in my head!
And that leads me quite nicely into the second part of this post - A few basic tips and ideas for would-be DM's who want to run an adventure but perhaps aren't totally sure how.
Firstly, tackle working out who your Player Characters are. In my opinion, this should be done BEFORE your get to your first allotted play session - rolling up characters can often take up far more time than you'd expect, and it's best to work in backstories when you're creating characters with your players so that you know who they are just as well as they do. Backstories aren't always necessary, and some players will simply omit them, but that's alright. All they do is give you more things to work into the narrative of your story, and therefore help your present better encounters to your players.
Secondly, introducing the PC's to one another can often be a pain, and can easily lead to boring, crowbarred-in meetings or awkward sessions where the Player Characters feel they don't know anyone. Normally, I find that it's best to force the players together for one reason or another, and then let them do the legwork in deciding how they know one another - or whether they know each other at all! For example, in the D&D adventure I'm currently running, all of the PC's were new characters, and therefore didn't have any adventures done with each other. I decided to introduce them by having them all invited (read: told to go by the guards) into the main hall of their village, and then plonked on a table together and allowed them to decide how they knew each other whilst I prepared the actual start of the adventure. As it was, the village blacksmith worked out that he probably knew everyone, whereas the druid ended up just passing through town and accidentally ending up in the main hall, and hence didn't know any of the others but decided to adventure with them after they all introduced themselves.
Finally, work out what the actual adventure is, and what the PC's incentive is to attempt it. Incentive can often be as simple as moral obligation or material reward, but you can be as creative as your want here - your players are unlikely to completely decline the adventure since they've taken the time to create characters and come to the first session, and will probably just attempt to haggle a better outcome/prize/whatever out of the quest giver before embarking upon their enterprise. The adventure is essentially what you have planned out for the party to do. The overall adventure needn't be incredibly complicated - for new players it's often best to have a "Go here and clear out the goblin raiders attacking our village" type quest so that both they and the DM can get to grips with the system as well as the other party members - just make sure they don't get killed! However, if your quest does indeed have a great plot twist or something of the sort - be sure to keep it a secret, and don't make it apparent until it's happening! That way your players will hopefully be swept up in your cunningly crafted adventure, and a good time will be had by all!
I hope this will be of some assistance to any budding DM's out there, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to leave a comment below, and I'll either reply, or tackle it in a later post on the subject! Happy gaming!
-Mike
For me, that's what winter is all about. Recently, my roleplaying group has decided to get back together after a half-year break and we'll be commencing with a Call of Cthulhu adventure - a group favourite - in order to get back into the swing of things. I'm also currently running a D&D 3.5e adventure for a few friends at my local wargaming club, which thus far has gone very well, much to my relief, as I haven't DM'ed for quite some time!
I'll be giving out the backstory of our CoC group in a later post, and then probably posting updates when interesting things happen in our current adventure, which officially starts tomorrow night. My next post will likely be addressing my current Dungeons and Dragons adventure, what the party has encountered so far, and thereafter probably session-by-session updates, most likely out late Wednesday evening once the game is over for the night and it's all still fresh in my head!
And that leads me quite nicely into the second part of this post - A few basic tips and ideas for would-be DM's who want to run an adventure but perhaps aren't totally sure how.
Firstly, tackle working out who your Player Characters are. In my opinion, this should be done BEFORE your get to your first allotted play session - rolling up characters can often take up far more time than you'd expect, and it's best to work in backstories when you're creating characters with your players so that you know who they are just as well as they do. Backstories aren't always necessary, and some players will simply omit them, but that's alright. All they do is give you more things to work into the narrative of your story, and therefore help your present better encounters to your players.
Secondly, introducing the PC's to one another can often be a pain, and can easily lead to boring, crowbarred-in meetings or awkward sessions where the Player Characters feel they don't know anyone. Normally, I find that it's best to force the players together for one reason or another, and then let them do the legwork in deciding how they know one another - or whether they know each other at all! For example, in the D&D adventure I'm currently running, all of the PC's were new characters, and therefore didn't have any adventures done with each other. I decided to introduce them by having them all invited (read: told to go by the guards) into the main hall of their village, and then plonked on a table together and allowed them to decide how they knew each other whilst I prepared the actual start of the adventure. As it was, the village blacksmith worked out that he probably knew everyone, whereas the druid ended up just passing through town and accidentally ending up in the main hall, and hence didn't know any of the others but decided to adventure with them after they all introduced themselves.
Finally, work out what the actual adventure is, and what the PC's incentive is to attempt it. Incentive can often be as simple as moral obligation or material reward, but you can be as creative as your want here - your players are unlikely to completely decline the adventure since they've taken the time to create characters and come to the first session, and will probably just attempt to haggle a better outcome/prize/whatever out of the quest giver before embarking upon their enterprise. The adventure is essentially what you have planned out for the party to do. The overall adventure needn't be incredibly complicated - for new players it's often best to have a "Go here and clear out the goblin raiders attacking our village" type quest so that both they and the DM can get to grips with the system as well as the other party members - just make sure they don't get killed! However, if your quest does indeed have a great plot twist or something of the sort - be sure to keep it a secret, and don't make it apparent until it's happening! That way your players will hopefully be swept up in your cunningly crafted adventure, and a good time will be had by all!
I hope this will be of some assistance to any budding DM's out there, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to leave a comment below, and I'll either reply, or tackle it in a later post on the subject! Happy gaming!
-Mike
An introduction to the blog - for you, the reader, and me, the blogger.
So, I suppose first of all, some introductions are in order. Sadly, I'm not too good at this sort of thing, so this may be a little on the short side.
I'm a 19 year-old college student in the United Kingdom, studying Interactive Games Design. During most of my spare time - and indeed most of the time when I should be working - I tend to be looking at shiny models and spending my imaginary money, reading through whatever book has currently taken my fancy, or writing something that tends to be completely irrelevant to my current assigned work.
More often than not, however, I'll be sat around with some mates pushing small plastic soldiers around a table and throwing dice at each another, and this is where I find myself most at home. This is what the focus of this blog will be about, although I'm sure I'll inevitably digress at some point.
The tabletop games that I'm playing at the moment are:
- Warhammer 40k
- Saga
- Bolt Action
- Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e
- Call of Cthulhu
- Hail Caesar (still learning)
These are the games I'm most likely to be talking about in future posts, although I'll rule nothing out as I like to at least try a few games of a system before I decide whether I like it or not. I'm also an avid modeller and a still-learning painter, so expect to see plenty of pictures of both my own work, and various battle reports. I'm hoping to pick up a new camera fairly soon, so the earliest pictures may be a little dodgy, but bear with me!
So, if you're a fan of any of these systems, or just want to follow a new blog, feel free to stick around! I'll probably make another proper post either tonight or tomorrow, or maybe even both, so keep 'em peeled, and welcome to Another Haphazard Tabletop Blog!
-Mike
I'm a 19 year-old college student in the United Kingdom, studying Interactive Games Design. During most of my spare time - and indeed most of the time when I should be working - I tend to be looking at shiny models and spending my imaginary money, reading through whatever book has currently taken my fancy, or writing something that tends to be completely irrelevant to my current assigned work.
More often than not, however, I'll be sat around with some mates pushing small plastic soldiers around a table and throwing dice at each another, and this is where I find myself most at home. This is what the focus of this blog will be about, although I'm sure I'll inevitably digress at some point.
The tabletop games that I'm playing at the moment are:
- Warhammer 40k
- Saga
- Bolt Action
- Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e
- Call of Cthulhu
- Hail Caesar (still learning)
These are the games I'm most likely to be talking about in future posts, although I'll rule nothing out as I like to at least try a few games of a system before I decide whether I like it or not. I'm also an avid modeller and a still-learning painter, so expect to see plenty of pictures of both my own work, and various battle reports. I'm hoping to pick up a new camera fairly soon, so the earliest pictures may be a little dodgy, but bear with me!
So, if you're a fan of any of these systems, or just want to follow a new blog, feel free to stick around! I'll probably make another proper post either tonight or tomorrow, or maybe even both, so keep 'em peeled, and welcome to Another Haphazard Tabletop Blog!
-Mike
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)