It is late Sunday night, and I just got back from a five day conference. Also, Headshots from the Heart is this week. Oh my. So here’s a post from Legends of Madjan’s adventure log. Look for more wiki updates in the coming months, both from Ilderan Tales, and Ryan’s game Vale Tales. Exciting!
List is both late this week due to yours truly being buried in thesis work but lets take a look at what the internet had to offer while I was analyzing the buying habits of 1st century tribal chiefs of southern France.
Last week Ryan wrote about using a published setting which, I’ll be honest, is something I haven’t really done. World-building and myth-making is one of my favourite parts of roleplaying games, so even when I GMed World of Darkness, I made a bunch of changes to the setting. There’s a lot of work involved in it, and my D&D world has changed a lot over the years, usually from me inventing things from whole cloth and then making them fit after the fact. I’m not going to say that’s a best practice, but it’s also not necessary to invent all of the nitty-gritty of everywhere in a setting for one campaign. If the players aren’t going to go there, it’s a place of rumour and wonder, and doesn’t really need to be filled in. All that said, these are the three things I do when I’m sitting down to create a setting, even for a pickup game.
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This week on History Hooks, I am up to my neck in thesis work so the Gauls will once again be gracing us with their presence since I have nothing else on the brain. But, while we focused on the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar in the years 58-50 BCE last time, today we will be fast forwarding over a century to the year 69 CE and a man named Mariccus who thought himself a god.
Not to TPK, that’s in August. To me. Today is my birthday, so of course I’m updating the blog. I’m officially thirty years old, and I’ve spent almost two thirds of that playing roleplaying games, and loving it. Today I just want to mess around a bit, and do a short post on some of my biggest gaming influences over the past twenty years. Here’s a short rundown.
From stories of the mundane, to plots from real life, there’s a lot to see in this week’s TPK roundup! Send us your cool news or gaming stories by tweeting us with #TPKtalk, and we’ll check them out.
Today on Hisory Hooks we are going to look at one of my favourite individuals from antiquity: Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II of Egypt and his rather complicated family history. He was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, which began after Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BCE and lasted until Cleopatra VII committed suicide in 30 BCE. Lets look and see what a GM can gleam from this troubled Pharaoh.
When it comes to my friends, I’m the GM. Any system, any timeframe, I’m the one who runs the games. Every once in a while someone will run a game, but it peters out after a few sessions, and I’m back behind the screen. I get it. Many are called, few are chosen. But I finally got into something more long term, playing in Ryan’s D&D Essentials game, and boy did I have a lot to learn about stepping around the table and playing. I wanted to share the biggest things I’ve learned about playing as a GM with you today.
We’ve got some great things in this week’s roundup, from how to be a gaming ambassador to a bunch of incredible art projects, and a warning from Pat Robertson about the evils of D&D. Serious business.
One of the first and most important steps when starting up as a GM is to pick your system. There are many factors to take into account when choosing one, e.g. complexity, setting, combat, player expectations. When faced with these factors last year I settled on D&D Essentials as my system of choice and I’ll explain why below.
