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Showing posts from December, 2014

Review: Silent Night, Darkest Night

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"You know Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen. The other reindeer from that song have all been eaten, by Rudolph. This monstrous reindeer was made fun of when he was growing up, but then he kept growing, dwarfing the other reindeer by the time he was an adolescent. Their jibes about his size finally got to him, and he lashed out, killing at least three other reindeer before Santa was able to chase him away using his Christmas magic. Now Rudolph plots revenge against Santa, the elves, and the other reindeer, and he has been studying dark magics which make him more powerful than any reindeer before him. His nose now glows not with Christmas magic, but with seething hatred, and its red color is the product of the fresh blood which covers Rudolph’s face after feeding on the flesh of the living, which he must do every few hours in order to power his profane magic." - From Silent Night, Darkest Night In honour of the Holiday Season (the "Christmas" Season, for

How to Run a Long-Term Zombie Apocalypse Game

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In the past few weeks I've written a bunch about zombie apocalypse games (I blame it on The Walking Dead ). I've also been running my regular group through bi-weekly " zombie grinder " sessions, which is basically DCC Funnel adventures but set in a modern zombie apocalypse. It's a hilarious good time  but not a basis for a long-term campaign, so I've been trying to come up with some ways to stretch it out and get some more mileage out of a pretty simple premise. I realized that zombie apocalypse scenarios , as depicted in movies, books and games, can be broken down into three distinct stages (there may be more, but three works well for my purposes). Each stage comes with its own story possibilities and game mechanics, which will hopefully revitalize the players help the game go longer. Tell me what you think: PART 1: THE FALL Civilization is crumbling. Humankind has been struck by a terrible plague that is killing people by the millions and caus

You Can Never Have Too Many Campaign Ideas

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I am somehow at a time in my life where I'm running, or playing,  all the games. So, now I get to bore everyone with all the weird ideas I have for campaigns. Here goes... Mythical/Heroic Ireland System: D&D There is a lot of fodder for a good campaign in the myth cycles of Ireland. Giants, wizards, kings with silver arms, gods from weird magic islands, who fly around in spaceships, and of course, a huge bucket full of fey folk, curses, geas, and all the other wacky Celtic shit you can think up. Renaissance Call of Cthulhu System:  Call of Cthulhu, or Harnmaster with insanity rules. Kind of a wacky Leonardo Da Vinci investigates fucked up horror stuff in the Italian city states vibe.  Most likely a bunch of  church corruption and conspiracies, secret cultists, and all the usual good ol' Cthulhu stuff, mingled with a bit of X Files monster of the week. Apocalyptic Nazi's in space System: d6, or BRP Nazi's destroyed the world and moved to space

Can You Tell If People Are Having Fun Over The Internet?

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As I posted about here , I had been toying with GMing a new game.  Well it has come to fruition.  My group has started a PBEM (play by e-mail) game, set in the world of Robin Hobb's Farseer books . We've only been going for about 2 weeks now, which isn't very long in PBEM time, but I'm already having doubts.  The problem is, I can't tell if my players are having any fun. The start of an adventure is always tedious.  Players aren't sure who the other PC's are, or where they are supposed to fit in.  As GM, I never know how much infomation to give.  So far my adventure is pretty open.  The King has given the party a task, but how they go about it, and what they discover along the way is up to them.  I do have a general story in mind, but if they take a left turn, I'm happy to adjust and improvise.  And as a PBEM, that's much easier for me as I have time to think about any changes. Where I think I might be going wrong is that I haven't explai