A new campaign, a new begining

After a long hiatus from regular gaming, today I ran my first game of Pathfinder. Not all my players were able to show up, but I was able to get a good intro for the players I did have, and ended the session at a good point for adding new players.

As far as running the game. It went well, having not had a lot of d20 experience it did run smoothly. The combat maneuver system was great, and kept the action moving quickly in the combat encounter that was the climax of today’s game.

The only real slowdown was hunting down the target number for a will save verses the color spray spell that the Elf Magus cast.

I did make use of one whimsical accessory, Paizo’s Condition cards deck that received raves on the Know Direction podcast. Its from the Game Mastery line and the art is a hoot. It also eases the load of reminding players of the effects various things that could befall their character.  I got to use the prone card during one of the more memorable parts of the combat.

District Del Sol Sanctuary Under Siege

I have been thinking a lot about running the Dresden Files RPG of late.  I have as a result been thinking about locations in the Twin Cities and beyond that would skew well for the Dresden-verse.  One that comes to mind is District Del Sol.  Del Sol is just south of downtown St Paul, and is Minnesota’s oldest Latino neighborhood.  As such I thought it would be a natural for doing something with the Red Court vampires. Combine this with Minnesota’s history of welcoming refugees from persecution, and terror and you have a great sanctuary for those fleeing the Red Court in Latin America.  Oh and there is this cool  mural of the Sun that watches over the neighborhood, its eyes looking so tired from watching out for the neighborhood.

District Del Sol

Theme: Sanctuary Under Siege

Threat: Red Court Minions encroach.

Face: Augusto “Augie” Perez  Weary vampire hunter.

Since its early days Del Sol has been save haven from those fleeing the Red Court.  Its proximity to the mighty Mississippi makes for a great defense as do other more recent architectural and artistic enhancements in including the massive mural of the Sun that watches over the neighborhood creating a thresholds to hold fiends at bay. Latin American groceries and restaurants  are scattered threw out the area,  Including El Burrito Mercado a large grocery and deli where garland of garlic adorn the entrances and aisles of the shop. A full deli emits amazing smells of chillies and spices.  At a table in the center of the deli you can often find Augie Perez, he looks as weary as the sun mural that watches over Del Sol.

Late October: A Halloween Zine

Hallowween is our big holiday at my house and as such my wife Kala recently completed a Halloween themed zine. Its  packed with art, stories puzzles and a few tasty tasty vegan recipes too. There is even a little bit of  art work and a short essay by yours truly.

Its called  Late October A Halloween Zine  and its available in her etsy shop!! So get into the spirit and check it out!!!

–Shane

For the Game Masters Toolkit

Truth be told I have never liked modules, at least as a GM. Going back as long as I have ran games canned adventures have never really fit my GM style.  I picked up shrink wrapped booklets for everything from Star Frontiers to D6 Star Wars amazing cover art and an intriguing  pitch on the back always lead to disappointment later.  If I was lucky I could salvage a good map or bit of gear or an NPC that I could repurpose.  This is not to say I don’t understand the value of such products as time savers, especially as the other obligations in life take up much more time than they did when I was a teenager getting into the hobby.

The good folks over at Gnome Stew have come out with a couple of great tools for the GMs toolkit Eureka 501  Adventure Plots To Inspire Game Masters and Masks: 1000 Memorable NPCs For Any Roleplaying Game.  Eureka features well 501 story plots. They are organized and cross indexed by genre, sub-genre and action description(combat heavy, RP heavy, etc). All of this is supported on George Polti’s 36 Dramatic situations.

None of the plots are system specific so its up to you the GM to stat out anything you think needs stating, tweeking elements of the plot that would make it fit into your game.  I have used a couple of plots in my Shadowrun game and have written up a few more for future use. So far I have been very happy with the results in play nothing feels like a canned adventure, and everything has been very easy to tweek and put into my campaign.

The Second product is on pre-order for a hard copy but I do have the PDF. Masks 1000 Memorable NPCs is just what the title says it is 1000 NPCs.  The characters within are divided into Fantasy Sci-Fi and Modern genres, and then further divided into villains, allies and neutrals.  Many of the NPCs are interesting on their own to hand a session or two on.  All the NPCs have description, roleplaying tips, motivation and a back story, traits also listed are searchable in the index in hte back of the book.  I am looking forward to the hardcopy for more thorough examination of the book as my browsing on PDF is never quite as fruitful

Attitude – Sixth World Swagger

A couple of weeks ago I hit the big four-oh and one of my gifts from my wife Kala was the new Shadowrun sourcebook, Attitude. The book is a guide to the culture of the 2070s a bit like Shadowbeat and portions of the Neo-Anarchists  Guide to North America were in second edition Shadowrun.  The first thing you notice is the cover by Echo Chernik. Its a very striking cover, one of the best the line has had, chainmail bikini or otherwise.

The content of the book is what some would disparage as “fluff” as it is all about setting, and giving you the feel of the Shadowrun world. The opening chapter  “The Untethered Life” is written from the perspective of a mage who is a Shadowrunner and part-time academic, and looks into why people become Shadowrunners, and I think everyone playing the game should read it before they build a character, or even after to give some thought to who their character is.

From there the book takes a look at street etiquette and codes in the free lance criminal underworld, for GMs looking for  adding detail and nuance its golden. Much of the rest of the book looks at the pop culture and other distractions. Music, Film, Trideo(3D-TV), and Simsense (including Better-Than-Life) are all given coverage with lots of  information a GM could form a story around, or at least create some good complications. Sports of 2073 are also covered, a handy thing in my current game as one of  the characters wants to become a pro-athele in Combat Biking.

Bottomline I recomend this book for GMs and players, although if you prefer rules to setting background you might be disappointed, but for me it gives the feel of the game and will be a great help in making the game world pop, adding those bits of detail, and personality that make a fictional place feel more real. Oh and just an FYI Attiude has received two ENnies nominations, best sourcebook and best cover art, i hope it does well.

AHHHHH, MY ACHIN’ BACK! Or Convention games vs. system bloat

GenCon is right around the corner and preregistration stuff for our local gaming convention Con of the North will start soonish as well.  This has me thinking about games to run at conventions.  GenCon stands a good chance of not happening for me this year for a myriad of reasons, but Con of the North will for sure be on my to do list come February 2012. So my big goal for any con this year is running games with no more than two books, and if possible only using a systems core rule book.

Every time I load up for my Shadowrun game it make me think about this.  Do I always need 50 pounds of books to run a game? In an ongoing campaign I can see how it can be useful if you want that level of detail, but at a convention I think it tends to slow down play.  Case in point Con of the North 2010 and Star Wars Saga Edition vs Cthulu Tech. The Star Wars game felt bogged down by a bag full of splat books to look for this rule or that, not to mention the minis, battle mat and such.   Cthulu Tech on the other hand, I was running with the core rule book and the  Vade Mechum source book, and it was fast and fun, and had a lot more role playing to be had by the players.

So that is my goal run two or maybe three games, and only have between 3 and 5 books leaning towards the  lower number.  To that end I think I will try and stick to rules systems that I only own the base rules to prevent going source book crazy.  So any other GMs out there what are your thoughts/feelings on convention games and system bloat?

When games go splat!!!!

So Last Sunday, my Shadowrun just did not gel for any great amount of time. I thought it was a good story, an exciting wrap-up to the previous sessions story. There were some good RP opportunities, there was the planning portion, my players love a good infiltration, and there was the chance to be an international team that had been frequently talked about.

Sadly the game broke down into minor squabbles, over planning and it just slowed down. So what do other GMs do in this situation, I floated a Twitter balloon but only got one response.  The option of just scrapping the game for the night, but that just did not feel right for how things was fallin down, i think we all wanted to be there but there were just lots of problems on how to handle what was going on.

In the time since then one of the players thinks the international route might not be the best for his character’s mind set after all so the campaign might be moving in a different direction than previously planned, but I still am left wondering about how rescue future sessions if things just start to go south. Gaming time is preciously small as a full fledged adult so i hate to see a game get called off, so does anyone have any good ideas?