The Tuesday Sundries - GM's Day Sale Finale

As the GM's Day Sale winds down for 2016, I thought I would make mention of three items that have been very popular this year.  The first is "30 Things Can Happen!" which is on sale for just one dollar here. "Never be at a loss again with these thirty tables of random Medieval Fantasy events and findings in urban, rural, and underground locations. Each thirty entry table is divided into three ten entry categories, some with additional sub-options, making for nearly one thousand random results including the fun and fantastical. Use these pages to help flesh out locations during prep or to perk up a flagging game session. This invaluable resource is system-free and ready to help with any fantasy roleplaying game."

Also, have a look at the "Superstitions" sourcebook for one dollar as well here.  "Can you steer your ship by the albatross? Do you dare to wear the Boar's Tusks of Goblinoid Slaying? Will casting the Shark's Feeding Frenzy on your companions save their skins?  This new 32 page pdf takes many real world superstitions and gives you tips on how to use them in your game. Nearly one hundred Magic Items, Spells, and Advanced Creatures are included."

Finally, the "Fighting Fire - Ernie Gygax Benefit Adventure" is still helping Ernie cover those bills that piled so high a couple of years ago.  It can be had here.  One-third comes right off the selling price and is directed to the fund set up by his brother Luke.  "The adventure takes place in and around the town of Gamington on the shores of Gentle Lake. An arsonist's fire destroys the Tower of Ernesto, a famous wizard, but a band of heroes rallies to right the wrong, rooting out the evil in the nearby Fire Peak. A GM can set this up as a campaign addition or one-shot, in any Medieval Fantasy RPG system. There are plenty of tips to help do either. Included are some character backgrounds for the heroes noted within as well as an epic poem extolling their exploits. I hope it is as much fun to read as it was to write."

The Tuesday Sundries on GRYMVALD.com
Essentially, a clearinghouse for topics on GRYMVALD.com
not covered elsewhere or wanting a particular focus.

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RPG Media Monday - RPG Podcasts, Roll for Initiative, & Fear the Boot

If you're unfamiliar, have a look at rpgpodcasts.com here.  It's a directory of freely available audio and video shows about roleplaying games.  But just to highlight a couple . . .

Check out Roll for Initiative here.  It's the original 1st Edition AD&D Podcast and has been running for years.

You might also like Fear the Boot here.  It's "an irreverent look at tabletop roleplaying games and a little bit more."

RPG Media Monday on GRYMVALD.com

What can be gleaned from Media

and used in our tabletop RPGing?

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The Tuesday Sundries - Player Advice Equals GMing Advice

Over on the Creighton Broadhurst blog, he writes today about "Player Advice: 10 Dungeon Delving Tips for Beginners" but GMs should understand that all of the points are also GMing advice.  Number one, for example, is "Never split the party" which most of us probably have heard before, but some of my favorite times GMing have been when the party splits.

I don't mean that I started an adventure with everyone naked and in a dungeon with no memory of how they got there, or even necessarily when a pit-chute dropped one or two down below and it took them some time to reconnect.  I mean when I truly presented an opportunity so tempting to a party member they felt it worth the risk to wander off.

That moment just before it happens is like watching a scene from a horror film where the music is nagging you, letting you know that something is amiss, but it hasn't quite happened yet.  There is a build while the person gets further and further along the path to true Splitsville.  There is even a moment of realization, in the worst case scenario when that split turns into death, that point of no return, when the person comes to understand that splitting was a bad choice.

Read more of Creighton's list here and think on the GMing possibilities.

The Tuesday Sundries on GRYMVALD.com
Essentially, a clearinghouse for topics on GRYMVALD.com
not covered elsewhere or wanting a particular focus.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Creighton Broadhurst on Unfair Encounters

Locations built into a world that adventurers simply should avoid until utterly sure they are equipped to handle them are a feature of Worldbuilding tabletop RPG settings since the earliest days.  Some of the first advice from the three little booklets suggest creating a town where PCs can be safe and a dungeon location where they can adventure, with the conceit that the deeper you go, the tougher it gets.  That's the early design fair warning system: stairs, a trapdoor, a slide.  If you blundered down a sloping passage and didn't have some way to detect that to be the case, then maybe you'd be rolling up new characters later that evening.  While this might sound to some like a story about walking both ways up a hill in the snow to get to school, understand that I am simply explaining how things were then.  Doesn't make it good or bad, just how it was and what we enjoyed when it was the way it was.  No judgement.

Many approaches to adventure or scenario design in various systems these days suggest something geared more closely to the talents and readiness of the PCs on hand.  Some even suggest that a certain percentage of PC resources (gold, spells, equipment, etc.) should be utilized to handle an encounter within a scenario, thus allowing the GM to tailor several such encounters for said scenario and have a good chance of the PCs surviving the adventure if they expend those resources judiciously.

Worldbuilding is a different animal than the latter but there is no reason some things cannot be learned from the micro-managing approach, something to keep in the back of ones mind while Worldbuilding that can help with the flow of the various locations and assist with choosing a good time to introduce hooks into a sandbox campaign that will challenge the players without setting them up for a fall.

Over on his blog, Creighton Broadhurst of Raging Swam discusses "The 4 Types of Unfair Encounters."  See more here.

Worldbuilding Wednesday on GRYMVALD.com
The nuts and bolts of Worldbuilding
for our tabletop RPGing.

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Weaving Random Happenings into a Gaming Session

With the release of 30 Things Can Happen!, my own tribute both to the 30-sided die and to random events in Medieval Fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, I wanted to write a bit about why to introduce such elements into games.  Two troubles that even the best run campaigns can encounter include players putting on blinders and players becoming too comfortable.

In the former case, getting used to going from one prepped situation to the next can eventually lead to players making assumptions.  They can wind up thinking that a GM will only ever throw important information their way.  Or worse, they follow that logic to a further conclusion that anything that doesn't fit the usual mold is obviously the holy grail they seek.  There are no red herrings in such a campaign.  There are no surprises.  This is because there haven't been any small surprises along the way toward what the GM would like to prep as a big surprise.  There are no tidbits of mild interest just for the sake of keeping players on their toes and there can be no little detail that later becomes important because if a detail was shown early on it was immediately seen as important.  There needs to be a lot more input than can be easily followed if surprises are eventually to work.  The players need to be made to look around themselves in the game world.

In the latter of the above cases, players can become complacent.  The GM finds his group has difficulty in self-motivating because they know if they wait around long enough the GM will throw situations their way and those situations will always be the thing to do.  In such cases, a GM can nevers throws curveballs or misleading clues.  Nothing can be quickly explored and discarded because everything is part of the single line of encounters.  Making the world richer excites players' imaginations and avoids them believing that their decisions are not meaningful.  It breathes life into the world around the players and shows by example that breathing life into the world through their own characters has value as well.

Lists of random events and findings have a way of enlivening and deeping the playing experience.  This added depth creates opportunities for the unexpected to happen, and not just by chance but also by design without the GM tipping his hand.  The bonus for the GM is that once the players have reinvested in a campaign, the GM also becomes reinvigorated and these two energies feed one another exponentially.  So, take a look at 30 Things Can Happen!  It's a very useful tool any GM will find helpful to their gaming experience.