Damn I Am Pretty Art Laboratories

So I am reading the Free Council book for Mage: the Awakening . Its nice read for one of White Wolf's splat books. I admit it: I'm addicted to such splat books. Organization and political books fascinate me in RPGs. The Mage order books are fairly inspirational. But the Free Council book is awesome in its Character inspirations and ideas for Chronicles. Several ideas come pounding at after reading it. Great book. Glad I bought it.

So. A odd occurrence happened. I just recently have been 'installed' as a GM in a Pathfinder game. My opinions on d20 aside, I decided to take a different tack with this game. I steered the game as far as I could in very MEDIEVAL direction. A attempt to put the realism first in a fantasy game. In other words, I was certain it wouldn't work with my players. So I'm going to just share what I did, what the setting looks like and, well, show what I think made the character creation successful. Character Creation I went gone ahead designed the group template : "You've hit the big time. The Baroness has knighted you, making you minor nobles and members of the Order of the Emerald Stallion. Now, you're working directly for Baroness Lady Sotira Greenhall. As her vassals, you obey the word of Marshal Yahma and help keep the peace. "The large Barony of Greenhall can grant rewards to its loyal servants, from land to titles to households with servant...

Campaigns and Chronicles are meaningless without characters. For Equinox, I have two players with two characters. I'm going to go into each of them, without rules explanation, just their bits of flavor. These are Mage: the Awakening characters, so a lack of setting knowledge may or may not make it harder for you to understand. The Esteemed NYU Professor of Chemistry Anubis Name: Xavier Cohen Path: Moros Age: 38 Xavier is the one teacher that the students under him dislike and hate. It isn't out of disrespect or the way he teaches- it is more out of a fear of him. He has worked at the University for almost a decade, his one favorite student and friend turning out to be Marte. Xavier is a Orthodox Jew- not that he is religious. He doesn't attend services much anymore. His wife also is on the University staff as a Librarian. And his young son dislikes science and even his father a bit. His Awakening occurred during a normal day. He received an odd skull from a myster...

One of the things I once used to great effect in a game I ran was the idea of 'Seasons'. Like TV shows here in America, I'd try to break my campaign/chronicle down to a limited amount of adventures. I'd try to ahead of time decide the number of adventures- or episodes for the sake of analogy. I considered it a great creative boon for writing long plots. If you know its going to only last ten adventures, then you can go ahead and try foreshadowing in adventures two and three. The other advantage of the use of Seasons is that it allowed me to End the Campaign on a note. I always approached the end of a Season with a finale- meant to cut off the campaign and end it nicely. When I've run games that didn't use the Seasons idea, they kinda just lingered and died. The story was still there, but it had faded away, and never really was resolved like it could be. Unfortunately, this style sometimes can conflict with the idea of a the super-long serial type game. ...

So I've sent out some emails and got some notes down for the upcoming Mage game. Among the things I've noted and tossed out is the Group Template . I first learned of it from the guys at Fear the Boot. Listen to me, like I know them or something. Ha. Anyway, back to the Group Template. I love the idea of the Group Template. Its a great concept, where the entire party in the game share a common history and relationship. It avoids the age-old tavern meet between strangers. I like it because it makes the roleplaying easier. I've only gotten it to work right, and that involved the right players and the right amount of control over character creation. It was my Werewolf game, the Robot Lords. Games where I've been a player and not a GM, I've been unable to get the idea across. Not the same group of players as the Werewolf group mind you. But in the latest pathfinder game one of the other players told me that he 'wondered what was the point' of that...

The werewolf game has reached its end. When a game goes on hiatus, in my view, its the death knell of the campaign. I don't want it to be shelved, but reasons beyond my control force my hand. So the next game idea has come up. I'm down to 2 players (which I've run games for before) and we've decided to try out Mage: The Awakening . I've never run a Mage game before (old or new World of Darkness). Nor have any of my players played in one. So it balances out. Unlike my Werewolf game, I'm keeping completely to the new World of Darkness, ignoring the entirety of the old setting. In werewolf, I had to rework alot of the rules to fit. With Mage, I can leap in without too much heavy rules revision. John Wick had suggested once a reward rule I think I might try out. He called it 'pushes', and I think it can be easily translated into the storytelling system. Now, the point of the 'pushes' is to reward the players and characters. Whenever the...

I've started a new blog to record some ideas of mine and post them on the web. These ideas pertain to my campaigns and stories. Its my little thought-design-diary. Hopefully my players won't find it. The Robot Lords is a odd creation for a RPG game. For me, anyway. The game uses a bit of World of Darkness from all over. The players are Werewolves ported straight from Werewolf: the Apocalypse; the rules set is a amalgamated mesh of old World of Darkness and the new World of Darkness. In addition, the game is set in Chicago, 2004. Its focus in on a CyberPunkish look at Werewolves, and to see if they can handle the Machine without losing the Wolf inside. A hiatus in the game, about a month or so of not playing it, motivated me to try a new tack for when it came back up to run again. I've decided to skip the timeline of the game ahead by a year. This is clearly a habit of some shows , but for me it felt necessary. The skip benefits the pace of the game, and lets my p...