X Rounds of Combat

Day 30 - CONNECTION Two interesting types of connections: 1. The Team Why are you a team anyway?  Connecting the team at character creation is something I really like. To me it really brings out the collaborative element of adventure games. Games based on FATE Core ( Dresden Files , Mindjammer , Tachyon Squadron , War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus , and dozens more) already do that as their zero session setup. Simon Burley's  Squadron UK (which totally is not a rewrite of Golden Heroes that the author did due to losing copyrights to his own creation - check out the amazing  Grognard Files for more) also makes players create characters together and work with each other to connect their stories. --- Assemble! 2. The villain A literal connection to the villain might be the them being always at the right place, one step ahead of the party because they either have spies following them or they are scrying on them. Obviously, things like that need to be hinted at in a

Day 29 - EVOLVE That new 'TOOL' album is really good. Just a few things to think about: Westeros is about eight thousand years old, but has not evolved beyond Middle Ages. Why? Did something prohibit it? Was there a more advanced civilisation that has collapsed and the events of A Song of Ice and Fire are the post-apocalyptic Dark Ages? Why are there elves, dwarfs and other species in your game? How did they evolve? Where are they going as civilisations? Does the world evolve with players' actions? Can their characters introduce permanent change? Or does the world "reset" to an some unspecified state as the Dark Souls games do after character death/resurrection How did magic come to be? What are it's sources and how does it work? - in world fiction, not mechanically Almost all fantasy games are post-apocalyptic - there are various ruins of previous civilisations, dungeons, abandoned cities, etc. Who were they? How did this previous civilisati

Day 28 - LOVE Back in my day we didn't think about love, we were kicking goblins open and killing doors. But seriously...  When we started as 15 year olds love wan not something we were looking for in a game. It could have featured as a theme - as someone's motivation for their actions - but I don't think it ever came up in regards to our characters. I believe that, quite traditionally, our characters were orphans or outcasts or both.  Thou art overly young, boy-knight. I shall marry your horse. He has better sense of style anyway A concept of characters falling in love has never occurred to us. It was Poland after all and we were all straight guys (although from perspective I'm thinking that one guy might have been asexual and another deeply repressed and closeted, heck if I know) The only advice about introducing any subject I can give is - have a look at free pdf on  Consent in Gaming , that you can get for free from Monte Cook Games website

Day 27 - SUSPENSE The simplest way of introducing some suspense into your game is foreshadowing. Everything is better with Tim Curry Foreshadowing is a writing technique where you introduce a "gun hanging on the wall" that will soon fire. You can introduce a plot point that will quite obviously develop into something that the players anticipate, they just don't know how and when it happens. Rocky Horror Picture Show is the best musical, fight me! The Pirate story in the Watchmen foreshadows the events of the main comic book. In Empire Strikes Back after Luke kills the phantom Vader he sees his own face. Boromir from his very introduction wants to use the One Ring. When you watch the Sixth Sense again you realise that there is not a single interaction between the main character and the living people. Telegraph things to your players, get them to speculate or even guess the development of events just don't tell them when the hammer falls.

Day 26 - IDEA Back when I was starting in the hobby (late 90s) most Polish players would promote the view that the Game Master is supposed to come up with original stuff on their own. Maybe it was because of lack of support - apart from D&D 3E we usually got the core book for a game and maybe, MAYBE, a supplement or two. What year is this?! When we recently went to Burnaby Village Museum I did not think I would have so much fun. The whole place is stylised for  1920s, and a lot of stuff surprised me. I don't think there was semi-reliable electricity in Poland at that time. My primary school classroom, grades 1-3, was not that much different than this. The whole experience was closer to the "Wild West" American frontier than I expected.  Inspiration? Yes.  Ideas...? Oh, yes! 1920s apparently Where to get ideas? other RPG products - they don't have to be for the same game or even genre that you're running, as long as they ge

Day 25 - CALAMITY It doesn't always have to be orcs. Natural disasters can redefine your setting completely, and part from initial chaos tend to have lasting consequences. Depending on the level of realism you want there will be destruction, dead and wounded as in a war-like situation, refugees and increased migration from the affected region. And all that leading to increased social tensions, racial prejudice and conflict at the worst possible time. Just shake things up. What happened? - a d10 list Earthquake Flooding Meteor  Draught Hurricane Wildfire Avalanche or landslide Volcano eruption Blizzard Hailstorm What was affected? - a d10 list Mostly uninhabited area A village A small town Major town A small city Major city  The capital  Majority of the county Majority of the kingdom The whole continent Why it happened? - a d4 list Natural occurrence Political plot  Divine intervention Planar invasion What are the consequences?

Day 24 - Triumph As I was sitting in the washroom, holding my thumb under running cold water to stop the bleeding from almost chopping it off, I started thinking about the concept of triumph in RPG.  Weird place, I know. Triumph as an act of destruction  If you're playing D&D or any of the mainstream games you are fighting bad guys and killing monsters. It's just the nature of the game. The party will consider it a triumph when they manage to slay the Big Bad Evil Guy or a dragon or some other dangerous creature. Bishop to E3! Check! Triumph as a positive act My little triumph was that I still have my thumb, although we'll see the exact extent of damage in a few days. Escaping a collapsing cavern seems like a triumph to me. O finding that lost child and returning it to the grieving parents.  Or preventing an armed conflict.  Or navigating the court intrigue in a way where everyone is equally unhappy but the long term consequences will ha

Day 23 - SURPRISE! At some point in fantasy RPGs many adventures and therefore parties move onto epic levels, more tactical combat, almost superhero gaming. There isn't much dungeoneering or dragoning going around. Those early levels especially (with their higher squishiness of characters) are fit for classic dungeon or cave crawls. There is a reason why the original way of playing (revived by OSR games) was such.  It's behind me, isn't it? Dungeons, caverns and crypts are hostile places where characters are vulnerable, and their survival requires smart thinking, tactical planning and resource management. Even characters with some degree of infra- or dark vision should have harder time exploring and noticing things around them.  Let the games begin! Creatures that have been born in darkness should have an advantage at surprising the party, hitting hard and disappearing into the darkness to strike again. The underworld is full of surprises, mostly bad,