game planning Archives - Page 3 of 5

September 29, 2008

Hack Game Design

Sometimes I read non-rpg-related blogs on gaming and game design (for boardgames or video games). Sometimes they help me come at rpg gaming from a different perspective. Video game level design, for example, can tell you a lot about rpg adventure design – and not just about dungeon adventures either. Today, I ran across this post: 10 Ways to Know...

August 29, 2008

I love it when a plan comes together…

As Jeff noted, we sat down the other night and figured out what the group was interested in doing. Jeff and I will trade off story arcs (probably every 4 sessions or so) in two different games. He’ll be running a pulp SF game in the Buck Rodgers style. I’ll be doing a cyberpunk-fantasy-post-apocalyptic mashup – Shadowrun meets Gamma World....

August 26, 2008

Vampire allergies and other strangeness

I’ve talked a bit about the Monday night game that I play in – it is a Morrow Project game that uses White Wolf’s Storytelling system. The Morrow Project is a game about operatives for a shadowy philanthropic paramilitary organization who are cryogenically frozen in case of disaster. We woke up to a post-apocalyptic world ~150 years after a nuclear...

August 20, 2008

Building Woodstock (Part 1 of ?)

In my last post, I discussed the possible development of a fictionalized city for a modern fantasy game Angela and I are planning on running. We’ve tentatively decided on Woodstock, NY – in a world where the 1969 festival brought on a population boom to the area. The problem, of course, is that Woodstock wasn’t in Woodstock. The festival was...

August 18, 2008

Life in the Big City

As I mentioned in my last post, Angela and I are planning on running a modern fantasy game. We’re not sure where to set it, though. Here are some criteria: It should be a city conveniently located to a large portion of North America (having a major airport would cover this). It should be fairly large (at least a million...

August 18, 2008

A Weekend in Indianapolis

I have come to believe that Indianapolis doesn’t believe in signage. This is unfortunate. Really, it only interfered once. Finding our way in and out of the Embassy Suites to attend the Goodman Games seminar on adventure design was an adventure in itself. It was like we got to attend the True Dungeon for free! …except not fun. Other than...

July 2, 2008

Yesterday: Not as planned

…but it turned out OK. I had a wee headache in the morning that got progressively worse throughout the day, so I ended up going home early. I took some painkillers and a nap. In the meantime, the Nobilis game was canceled because the GM (HG?) was ill. I’m enjoying Nobilis. It works as a system and setting better than...

June 25, 2008

4e: Game prep

(Note to my players: you can read this. It won’t have any spoilers.) Preparing Keep on the Shadowfell for running three players through seems fairly straightforward. Cracking open the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it looks like the basic idea of encounter design is to pick an xp total for an encounter and then spend that xp budget on monsters and traps....

May 14, 2008

Cooler Tool?

So, I’ve mentioned the usefulness of Google Docs and such for gaming in the past. Today, I’m looking at Zoho. Those who have tried both seem to prefer it over Google. In addition to the typical apps (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, etc.), Zoho seems to offer a free/integrated wiki, planner, chat service, database, and web conferencing service. I haven’t poked...

April 29, 2008

GM Tools

Printable Graph Paper: Here or Here. Because you can never have enough. Freemind – Mind-mapping software. Angela recommended this to me for creating flowchart-like-things for planning game sessions. I haven’t tried it out yet. Maple – a document organizer that includes a word processor and built-in databasing allowing you to connect documents with images, web pages, and such. I haven’t...

Neitherworld Stories

Tag: game planning