blackdragons

Magic Carnival

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:43:55 +0100

In a strange city, every year there is a Magic Carnival Night: magic Masks are sold to inhabitants and tourists. Every mask has its personality and agenda.

The Mask of the Prince wants the love of the younger princess

The Mask on the Barbarian searches for a stolen Totem

ecc. ecc.

The wearer of the mask can choose to follow the mask or simply enjoying the City and the folklore… but impersonating your mask is funnier!

Introducing NPCs

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:08:00 +0100

Maybe I can steal inspiration from a screenwriter?

Skulls Bracelet. Soon a magic item in my Planescape campaign.

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:43:13 +0100

Skulls Bracelet. Soon a magic item in my Planescape campaign.

Samantha Black Crow in "American Gods"

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:37:02 +0100

“…I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen, I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it…”

By Neil Gaiman

Photo

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:36:00 +0100

Shadows of the Mind

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:35:31 +0100

The one-shot based on Altered Carbon is finished. Meanwhile I have even given a title to it: “Soulless”.

And now I am thinking to the next one. I plan on expanding and improving an old idea. Many chtulhu adventures describe the horror of discovering the secrets beyond the veil of reality. While discovering disturbing details your character loses his mind sanity falling toward madness.

In the next adventure “Shadows of the Mind”, all the characters wake up in a madhouse, not remembering why. Entire years are passed since their last memory. A year before, investigating on a blasfemous cult, they discovered too much, reaching madness and forgetting a big part of their lives. The adventure revolves around them trying to recover their memories. I will set “triggers” for every character: specific sensations, questions, situations will bring back bits of their past. For example, one of the characters will be a doctor that years ago has meet a son of Dagon (a God that lives under the sea). He is going to recover his own name while the guards of the asylum try to drown him in the bathtube…

Adventures: How I categorize them

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:02:49 +0100

Maybe it is a bit boring, but I find useful to divide the adventures I propose to my players in 3 kinds:

Campaign: In the perfect DnD style, a party of adventurers will face many different adventures and quests. The connection between the quests is provided by the setting and the party living them: all the facts happen in the same “plane of existence”.

Saga: In fact very similar to a campaign, a Saga implies a common plot connecting all the adventures, resembling one big uber-adventure. The tipycal example is four Hobbits traveling to save the World.

One-shot: A single adventure, with a start and an end, after which the characters are never meant to be use again.

Why I do this? Because having these definitions I can easily explain to my instructed players what I am proposing to them.

A One-shot is limited in the time: players know they can allocate a few evenings or simply a week end to it. It is also “intense”: losing a session is probably very bad, because you are not enjoying a big part of the story. On the other side, a One-shot is usually a VERY good adventure :) A Narrator can orchestrate very nice ideas in a settings in which he has fewer constrains. Heck, you can even destroy the world :)

A Saga is usually not suited for the more Hask’n’Slash players: too many hints and story elements to remember for many months :) The good part of a saga is that they tend to be EPIC. Your character is going to change the world…if the saga ever reaches the happy end. A saga is risky, a lot of them never develop to the final chapters.

The Campaign is probably the easier to maintain, but maybe a bit less rewarding.

I like making a parallelism:

One-shots are blockbuster movies: Full Metal Jacket, Indiana Jones (yes, good one-shots get sequels :) )

Campaigns are ongoing tv series: ER, JAG or Star Trek

Sagas are tv series with connected episodes: Heroes or 4400, or even the Harry Potter books.

What are you mastering this Friday? A Saga or a Campaign?

Many hated villains in my campaigns...

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:23:25 +0100

…have a thing in common: the first time they met the party, they paralyzed/incapacitated a lot of them for the whole scene.

Players remember painstakingly well who annoyed them.

"I hide behind the invisible mage."

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:58:50 +0100

Add-on to yesterday post: given a “colorful” battle, expect players trying clever but out-of-the-rules actions. From yesterday night:

Player: “I hide behind the invisible wizard.”

Me: “WANT? You said it yourself, he is invisible…”

Player: “Yes, yes, let me explain… I want the two-headed displacer beast to bite him while trying to attack me!”

DnD: exciting battles

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:08:52 +0100

Mastering fight-oriented games like Dungeons&Dragons is easy to have the party too “used” to combat. When I want a memorable fight I try to follow these rules:

You need more than one single monster. While it is easier too use a single one, it is difficult to balance it. A bit too weak, and the party swarms on the poor creature. A bit too strong and you risk killing characters in single blows (which is usually a bit frustrating for the players)
To add spice, use different kind of creatures. Intermixing their strengths and weaknesses you force the players to better evaluate their actions.
Never show all the involved enemies on round one.You want to avoid the situation in which a single “eureka!” spell or move kills them all on the first 6 seconds of the battle. Make reinforcements arrive on round 2-3.
If you want to increase the rhythm of the battle, aggregate all the monster on the same initiative value. It is less realistic, but easier for you and the player to understand and coordinate.
At the opposite, if you want a more complex battle, handle all the enemies on separate turns. It increases the feeling of the chaos.
Never, ever place all the monsters in a single fireball-able zone.
Prepare the environment. Fighting in a well detailed tavern with tables, stairs and big swinging chandeliers, or on a drifting rock island on a lava river is funnier than fighting in a 60 feet x 80 feet room. The players will immediately try to get advantages from the surrounding features. Let them do it, but get them used at not abusing it (if they pretend too much protection from a fallen table, even the enemies will use it ;) )
Place around secondary targets not requiring simple bashing: wounded princesses, closing portals, a foe running away.

Inspiration: when searching for creepy ideas...

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:40:00 +0100

…Never forget who killed bambi.

Horror Adventure idea: Grandpa secret.

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:02:25 +0100

An old man dies. His children and nephews (the playing characters) swarm in a hunt for his testament. In a old house a dark legacy is discovered. The deceased fought terrifying forces for the length of its life…will his descendants accept to bring on the battle?

Your Imagination...

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:35:26 +0100

…will never defeat Reality.

How to advertise your next Vampire Dark Ages campaign: Halloween...

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:34:58 +0100

How to advertise your next Vampire Dark Ages campaign: Halloween Party.

Idea: the Druid-King

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:26:38 +0100

A druid is standing in the middle of the forest.

His hands are trembling.

The wind has just brought the news.

His father is dying. His brothers have killed themselves in the battle for the throne.

His mother is coming to the forest to call the new King.

The leaves are singing the song of fear.

Soulless

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 05:13:27 +0100

Every Tuesday we play an adventure based on Morgan book Altered Carbon.

The book depicts a future where a person mind is continually saved in a chip installed in the body, so everyone rich enough can be reinstalled in a new body upon death.

The adventure practically wrote itself while I was reading the Book. Highly suggested to any Narrator in search of cyberpunk inspiration.

Once upon a time...

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:28:00 +0100

… there was a blog where I wrote down ideas for my role playing campaigns. Time to restart?