Rule of the Dice

I am gearing up for a new campaign and in the process of finishing all the fun bits and pieces. This is my favorite time, just before the show starts and the lights come on. I am trying very hard to create a campaign that will execute maximum awesome with minimum stress. I try to follow three simple rules when I create a new campaign and get ready to throw my players into it. 1) Your players are your campaign - Make the campaign for your players, not for you. Its that simple. 2) Create stories, not a story - Its always a temptation to go all Lord of the Rings with a campaign. DON"T.... you are not Tolkien and this isn't Middle Earth. Creating an epic over-arching super story that binds the characters into an amazing epic adventure is almost always doomed to fail. Create many stories for your world and let your players own ambitions create the epic story. 3) Make the campaign intriguing not cool - If everyone is an uber-cool ninja gangster, and there are a thousand co

Unfortunately I don't remember where I found this picture or who the artist is. I am pretty sure it comes from DigitalArt.org but I can't say for certain. I think its a great piece and an inspiring looking place for adventures in game. I just imagine the PC's  entering a lost kingdom high in the mountains full of dark secrets and powerful magic. It also reminds me of  Hyberborea from Conan the Frost Giants Daughter , and anything that reminds me of Conan is awesome.

I don't know any of you guys beyond the words on your blogs, but I wish I did - because, after all the shit you've put up with over the last little while I would take all of you out for a beer and some good food. Thanks for creating the RPGBN and through it introducing me to so many blogs that I never would have known about. Thanks for making my blogging life better, easier and more fun. So thanks Dave, Phil, Graham and Danny, you guys rock!

This weeks picture comes from artist John Howe . He is best known for his Tolkien art, but his other works are pretty awesome as well. His depictions of Middle Earth are some of my all time favorites. I find his vision of Tolkien's world somewhat darker than most artists, which is probably what I like most. This is one of my favorite pictures of his, and also the current desktop picture on my computer: Check out John Howe's art for yourself and get some good ol' inspiration for your game.

Suffering follows a hero like stink follows a Stench Kow. If you take a look at almost any hero from mythology you have the immediate realization that being a "hero", or for that matter anyone of consequence in history is a pretty shit deal. Not only are there terrible responsibilities and grave decisions to be made, but almost everyone you will ever meet is probably dependent on you in some way or another. So, I guess this begs the question:  If being a hero is so damn shitty why would anyone want their characters to even bother with it? Simple answer,  its a game. You don't have to suffer the travails of your character, but you get to reap all the fun from going through them. What, suffering is fun? Sure is, if its imaginary.Where real suffering sucks, imaginary suffering brings you closer to the character you're playing. We are all bound by our suffering. It is a universal truth and the root of compassion and empathy. So it makes sense that if suffering evoke

The RPG top ten for this week is... The Top Ten Ways to Know Your Campaign Sucks 10) Everyone meets in a tavern. 9) A dark robed man enters the tavern looking for "adventurers". 8) There's a fight in the tavern. Because every fantasy world has all of its taverns filled to the brim with mercenaries, thieves and assholes just looking to fight anyone who happens to be around, regardless of the consequences. 7) The only thing that the players remember from the last session is the pizza, and it wasn't that great. 6) Your NPC's are way more important than your PC's. Its your world by jebus , and you don't want "players" screwing it up. 5) Your Elf/Dwarf hybrid race the Dwelves are not well received. No one recognizes original ideas anymore. 4) You're using the world of Synnibarr for your campaign. 3) For dramatic effect you demand that players dress and speak as their characters when they enter the games room in your hous

I have been working on the outline for a new campaign world and I will have the first drafts ready in about two weeks. I would like to thank  Zzarchov , Tyler and  seaofstarsrpg for their comments from my previous post . They helped a lot in gaining some perspective on a somewhat muddled idea . I am looking for people to collaborate with on this project. I have plans to publish it, and already have a few other people on board and would love to have more. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but if you're interested email me at: jack(at)ruleofthedice(dot)com and we can talk. >

I've had an idea for a campaign world floating around in my head for the better part of ten years. Its an idea thats always there but as soon as I get close I start to get uneasy about it. You see, this idea is out of my usual pulp sword and sorcery genre and that is disconcerting to me. For some reason as much as I want create it, I just chicken out. Here is the basic idea: Add 1 part collapsing Roman Empire Add 1 part wild west Add 1 part Steampunk Add 1 part H.P Lovecraft Add 1 part Harry Potter (at least the idea of vast magical institutions) Mix all ingredients and hope for the best. I envision a vast empire struggling for its last breath. As the empire dies new masters are claiming their stake in the once rich and now unprotected outer provinces. With the diffusion of power new technologies are birthed unaffected by Imperial stagnation, and while the old world crumbles a new one is born. The old world is still there of course. Some with old world values have bec

This weeks picture is by one of my favorite artists Justin Sweet. His style is a similar to Frank Frazetta (like almost every fantasy artist) but he has a unique coloring and line style that is very striking. From what I know he works a lot on the computer using Corel Painter for illustration as well as traditional mediums. He has done the art for several video games including the old Icewind Dale game (a favorite of mine along with the Baldur's Gate games), and did several concept paintings for the movie Prince Caspian. The picture below is a simple concept picture, but I love the color and style. As much as I like chainmail bikini's I think this is far more practical attire for the female adventurer. Check out Justin Sweets website .

I thought I would hate it, I thought it would suck, but in the end I gave in and started watching Lost. I usually completely disregard the TV advice of my fellow geek friends, especially after they recommended that I watch the new Battlestar Galactica, which I hated every minute of with a smoldering dragonfire like hatred. So when they started recommending Lost I didn't listen. I didn't listen for five years, but three weeks ago everything changed. My girlfriends brother gave us a copies of all the first four seasons of Lost. She started watching them first, I just sort of let them play in the background while I was doing other stuff. Eventually they became the other stuff, and I'm proud (and somewhat ashamed) to say that I have watched four seasons in three weeks, and I'm hooked on the show like it was heroin. Because of this recent obsesion I have tried to incorporate some ideas from the show into my current campaign, and I think the show has a lot of valuable id

One year ago today we lost the godfather of gaming, Gary Gygax. On this day lets all pause to remember the impact and incredible inspiration his creation has had on our lives and the lives of millions of others all around the world. Get out those old school books and game.

This is a re posting. I am still too busy to do a real post, but someday soon real life will no longer interfere with my blogging life. I wrote this post originally as my first post for the RPG Bloggers network and then foolishly backdated it by accident, so I'm pretty sure a lot of people haven't read it. The post sums my play style and general philosophy of role playing. To me, world and campaign building are the meat and potatoes of role playing. I am a homebrewer through and through. I hardly use any published material, as a matter of fact the amount of RPG books that I own can fit neatly on one small shelf. On the other hand the amount of homebrewed material that I have wouldn't fit neatly into a large room. Creating worlds and campaigns is what I do best, and its what I love most about gaming. I have used many game systems over the years, but I find myself becoming more indifferent to the system with age. I've always found that you can argue the virtues of a g

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, my real life has been busy so of course my blogging life has suffered. I should be back to blogging sometime this week with new posts on a regular basis and a few new features. This weeks awesome picture comes from the master himself, Frank Frazetta , arguably the best fantasy/science fiction artist of all time. If you are unaware of Franks art, and it is almost unimaginable to me that anyone would be, you NEED to check it out . This is the man who created the archetypal image of conan , and almost every fantasy artist that has followed after him has been influenced by his style. So without further ado this weeks awesome pic, Dark Kingdom by Frank Frazetta. All I can say is I want all my characters to look this badass, and be doing whatever it is he is doing. What do you think?

I am preparing several new posts for the site and they will be up in a few days. In the meantime, just for fun I am re-posting the first post I wrote here at rule of the dice. Just so everyone knows, I am an old school gamer who started with OD&D and I still love a good old school megadungeon from time to time. This is just for fun, if you happen to take offense to it you can go here instead. The top ten ways to know you're an old school gamer 10. You still think Elves should be a class. 9. You always make at least three characters per session. 8. You have at least one story of someone whose D&D books were burned by overzealous Christian parents. 7. You bought the wilderness survival guide, unfortunately. 6. The only threefold model you understand is this one . 5. You think everyone needs more orc’s in their game. 4. Gnome Illusionists. 3. You don’t understand why everyone hates THAC0. 2. You were there for the release of the original Dark Dungeons Ch

If you talk about alien abductions, shape changing pan dimensional beings and the secret cabal of the Illuminati in real life you probably need a psychiatrist. In real life conspiracy theories are ridiculous, but for role playing games they're great. Using conspiracies in a game add depth and a sense of mystery to a campaign. Imagine playing a modern game where the Illuminati were the sinister group conspiracy theorists believe, and they were really trying to bring about a new world order . Throw in some David Icke pan dimensional reptilians and you have the makings of a great campaign. Its fairly easy to translate conspiracies to any game world from our own world. Take the DaVinci Code, for example. Every scholar worth their salt knows the Da Vinci Code conspiracy is nonsense, but it does make for an excellent story, as Dan Brown's bank account can surely attest. But the premise is easily translated into a campaign. What if that famous prophet wasn't really what he

Lets face it most NPC's are fodder for the hero machine. You will be lucky if your players remember your NPC names, let alone the details of their lives and interests. So because of this I find it best to create as little as possible in the beginning and fill in the details as you go. I call this down and dirty NPC creation and its served me well for years. Before you even start creating an NPC you should first consider these three things: 1. Remember that no one gives a rats ass about your pet NPC's That's right no one cares that Sir Fightsalot has an awesome back story and all sorts of cool skills and powers. As I said before, you will be lucky if your players remember your NPC name. 2. Speaking of names Give your NPC's great names. There are many awesome name resources on the internet, so there is no excuse for creating lame ass names (except maybe ignorance). If you want the players to remember your NPC's they have to have great names... or really stu

This weeks awesome pick of the week is from a warhammer concept drawing. I don't know the name of the artist but its from the wild elves concept art on the Games Workshop site. Warhammer has some of the coolest art in gaming, I might even be so bold as to say they might have the best art in gaming. The art is dark and really portrays a gritty world, and if you've ever played the Warhammer RPG you'll know that the game is very dark and gritty. So here is the awesome pic of the week: To me this picture is what a crazy fantasy battle should look like. Wild Elves on horses fighting beastmen, while giants and walking trees look on, its pretty awesome. This would be a great scene to reenact in a game, an awesome epic battle in the forest. It makes me want to play warhammer again. What ideas come to you when see this pic?

I have a love/hate relationship with magic systems in role playing games. I haven't had to worry about using a magic system in my last few campaigns because we were playing in a very low magic world. The campaign I am currently working on is going to be a standard fantasy world where magic is relatively prevalent, and this raises the irritating question of what kind of magic system do I want to use. The game system I'm using is going to be a stripped down d20 (no feats or powers, or 4e generally) with a mingling of old school AD&D thrown in for colour. I would love to have my own game system up and running, but time and wanting to actually play are outweighing that project so it can simmer on the back burner for a while longer. You might be wondering why I'm not using D&D's magic system, and the answer would be, I fucking hate D&D's magic system, and always have. I might lose old school cred (I don't think I have any anyways) for that statement,

Awesome worlds and kick ass campaigns is a weekly post on creating... well, awesome worlds and kick ass campaigns. For my first installment I am going to talk a bit about preparing to create a campaign world. Anyone who has ever been through this process will understand the points that I'm making here, but if you've never embarked on a homebrewing adventure I hope this advice helps. Four things to consider before you start your kick ass campaign. 1. Pick your genre well because you’re stuck with it. This might seem obvious, but I know everyone has made the mistake of playing something they weren’t into and the campaign suffered because of it. You can avoid this one by getting together with your players and discussing what kind of game everyone wants to play. 2. Know thy game system. Once you have your genre decided be sure that the game system fits the genre. D&D is fine for heroic fantasy but it doesn't work well in a gritty real world medieval game, without

I'm very happy to have been accepted into the esteemed company at the RPG Bloggers network. I figured for my first post on the network I would talk about what I love about this hobby, and how I design and play a game. I think this is a nice way to introduce myself to the community and give everyone a little background on my experience with role playing games. To me, world and campaign building are the meat and potatoes of role playing. I am a homebrewer through and through. I hardly use any published material, as a matter of fact the amount of RPG books that I own can fit neatly on one small shelf. On the other hand the amount of homebrewed material that I have wouldn't fit neatly into a large room. Creating worlds and campaigns is what I do best, and its what I love most about gaming. I have used many game systems over the years, but I find myself becoming more indifferent to the system with age. I've always found that you can argue the virtues of a game system until

So my girlfriend has really been getting into Harry Potter recently. I am not a big fan of the books but I think my twelve year old self would love them, and J.K Rowlings is a very good writer. So over the course of her reading the books we've been watching the movies together. I did think the movies were boring until I saw Order of the Phoenix, and more precisely, until I saw the best, most kick ass wizard fight ever in order of the phoenix. Most wizard fights suck. No one thinks Saruman spinning Gandalf around in a circle is cool, its lame, as a matter of fact most magic in movies is lame. But holy shit the wizard fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort in Order of the Phoenix is kick ass. It has everything that I want in a wizard battle, fireballs, fire serpents, water globes, spells flying that I can't even describe, and Voldemort is one scary ass mofo. I want the magic in my games to look and feel like that movie scene. Even if you don't like Harry Potter, watch the

I was out and about the RPG blogs this week and found these treasures, after killing the monsters guarding them and taking their stuff, of course. Killer GM or Selfish GM - This post comes from the always awesome Gnome Stew and asks the question: Are you runnig the game you wish you were playing?. Are you? How much campaign do plan before you start? - This is a post by Johnn Four of role playing tips / Campaign Mastery on gauging your preparedness level when you start a new campaign. Its fun to think about, and insightful if you've never bothered to think about it before. DM's Toolbox: Patrons - This post comes from John Lewis at RoleplayingPro . It is an excellent article on the use of patrons (very powerful npc's) in a campaign world. Not the revolution I signed on for - This post comes from Jeff's Gameblog and is about the Old School Renaissance project and the controversy regarding the possiblity of a comittee being formed to judge the "real old

I haven't been posting much over the last while because I have been working on a campaign, which I feel is a pretty good excuse. It turns out that I am going to be running two campaigns, a solo campaign and newbies campaign. I've decided to keep the campaigns separate because I know the newbies are going to need some coaching and I don't want it to slow down play for the other player who is experienced. I plan to merge the two campaigns at some point when the newbies learn the ropes. Now I need some advice. I haven't had a lot of experience coaching new players, most of the people I've played with over the years are experienced gamers. What do you think is the best way to get new players immersed in the game and used to the rules?

Every gamemaster has had a WTF situation while playing a game. A WTF situation happens when players do something so absurd, ridiculous or unexpected that you have to sit back and go, "WTF... really you wanna do that... really." Sometimes a WTF situation is funny, sometimes its stupid, sometimes disastrous, but it is always guaranteed to be good story afterward. I've had several WTF situations while GMing, but one WTF moment always sticks out in my mind. The players had all just been captured and imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit and were facing possible execution in the morning. They knew they had to escape. They were each locked in single cells, the mage was bound and gaged so spells were out of the question, it was up to the thief and the fighter to come up with ideas. Now I had prepared several possible avenues for their escape, but I never expected in any way the route they, and by they, I mean the thief would go down. They discussed several ways to

Congratulations America, you have elected yourselves a pretty awesome gamemaster.

I thought it might be funny to take the various schools of RPG thought and assign them a D&D class, and then determine what class (or multi class) I would be. I'm going to use the four standard classes, fighter, thief, cleric and magic user, but with a little imagination I'm sure something could be figured out for other classes as well. Old School/The Fighter - The old school grumbling Grognard , heavily armoured, hard to kill and always ready for combat. This group is by far the hardiest of the RPG schools having weathered many storms and seen many battles. But even after many campaigns the old soldier keeps on playing... OD&D. New School/The Thief - The new school of RPG's "borrow" liberally from their predecessors, but like any good thief deny that they did, or were even there, or were even in the city at time that that happened... I don't know a Gary Gygax, never met him, never... OK...I stole your twenty sided, but you can keep THAC0, no one

So I think my next campaign is going to be a solo campaign. I have GMed one other solo campaign and it was one of the best games I've ever run. I don't lack players, but I do lack players I want to play with. If that makes me an elitist asshole well so be it, I will take one great player over ten mediocre ones any day. I want an involved and evolving game in a non-linear sandbox setting. I guess this could be done with a group but I'm pretty sure it would much harder to maintain consistency. I already have the world developed (pretty much anyways) and just plan to let my player run wild. I expect a lot of improvisation, which is something I excel at, and I expect my player will riff along with me into some pretty awesome new territory. I think I am going to use heavily modified AD&D 1e with some world specific races and classes. The magic system is always my Achilles heal because, unlike a lot of older gamers, I hate the Vancian style of magic and D&D's magi

I am going to be doing a weekly post on blogs I think every role player should read. I am going to try to cover at least six links a week with a small write up about the content of the blog. For week one Here is a list of several role playing blogs that I read on an almost daily basis. 1. Gnome Stew - This blog is exclusive to gamemastering and has several great posts. If you need some good advice on how to run a game this is the place to go. 2. The RPG Bloggers network - This place is great, there are hundreds of awesome blogs that can be found here. I can spend (waste) an entire day just checking out all the sites available. At some point I will put in an application to join the network when I have a little more material on Rule of the Dice. 3. Musings of the Chatty DM - What can I say, Chatty has a bit of everything. He is one of the most prolific bloggers in the RPG community, if your looking for something RPG related chances are he's wrote about it. 4. Jeff's

Here is this weeks pic: What can I say, who doesn't want a city set high in the mountains in their game. Maybe this is a city that was built as a gift to humans by some dwarves in a previous age. Maybe a group of immortals live here and waste their days in decadence and despair. Or maybe this is a lost city, whose builders have long faded into the obscurity of a forgotten past. Whatever this place is it looks like a damn good setting for a lot of cool and original ideas. I can already see some type of dragon siege happening here, that would be pretty intense. I can also see airships and all types of winged creatures that are used for transportation. That's just a few ideas, what do you think?

Well here are my RPG new years resolutions, better late than never: 1. I will work on my blog Rule of the Dice. I have wanted to write this blog for nearly two years and have putting it off again and again. I am going to do my best to write at least one post a day. 2. I will be more active in RPG community. I have been reading RPG blogs and forums for years and have never really bothered to get involved in the online community. So I'm going to do my best to comment on blogs and forums and try to let the community know I exist and that I think that the role playing community rocks. 3. I am going to finally design a game sytem that I want to play . I have been putting this off for a long time and I really want to do it, and with the game system I am going to create a kick ass mofo of a campaign world. 4. Last, but most importantly, I am going to game the hell out of 2009. I have players, I have ideas and I ain't got no more lazy ass excuses not to. Cheers and good ga

I was reading a post at Greywulf's Lair today about a character that he badly named in a classic D&D game and it got me thinking about names in RPG's. What is a "good" name for a character or a place in a campaign world is a matter of taste and style but I've found that following a few simple guidelines produces much better and more memorable names. 1. Keep it simple - The more complex or strange a name is the less chance the players are going to remember it. If you keep the name simple you can avoid a lot of things like, "GM: Zardarakstinera is a great city state in the eastern isles... Players: I guess we'll go to that Zardar place..." 2. Give the name a context - Relate the name of a place to some relevant event or person and give character names a backstory. By creating names that have a story it is easier to remember and makes the place or person more interesting. 3. Don't use cliche or famous names - This one should be self evide

I am almost always disappointed with the mechanics of an RPG system at some point, but I never bother to do much about it. I’ll make house rules, modify a few things but its really just a band-aid solution. So I’m going to do something about that and create my own damn game system. You’re probably thinking why do that there are countless games out there just look and find one you like. Well the problem with that is that the big games (D&D, White Wolf etc…) while balanced and play tested are tedious after a while, and the indie games, much like indie rock, are 90% pretentious garbage and 10% brilliance, and in the time it would take to wade through the trash I could just make my own. I want to capture the spirit of the old school games but not necessarily make an old school game. I am not sure what the exact model for the system will be yet but I will try to steal from the best sources. I am not interested in creating something “original” I am interested in creating something tha

I have been reading a lot about old school gaming recently. Maybe its because the Godfather of Gaming passed away, or maybe us older gamers are longing for the days of our youth and pining over our favorite long faded campaigns. Whatever it is there seems to be a marked upswing in the old school gaming racket. This got me thinking, what does old school gaming mean to me? My old school gaming was dungeons & dragons, killing orcs and bad storylines that involved killing more orcs. None of the crew that I played with knew what the hell we were doing, but holy shit did we ever love playing. Our games were a hodgepodge of convoluted rules placed in campaign settings that resembled Heavy Metal magazine a lot more than the Forgotten Realms. But it worked somehow, it always worked. It worked not because of the rules or campaign setting, it worked because of the spirit of adventure. We all had a spirit of interdependent creativity, we were in it together and everyone created something. If

I expect my players to create characters that they think are completely awesome, and it is my job as a GM to facilitate the awesome within the context of my campaign. Repeat this many times, let it be your mantra and your players will love you forever. Everyone wants a unique and cool character to play. Whats the point in playing someone who is mediocre, if we wanted that we would play Administrators & Secretaries not Dungeons & Dragons. Heroic characters doing heroic things in a heroic world filled with heroic adventure is what we all want and it is your job as the GM to deliver it. Here are four suggestions for players and GM’s to awesome up a player character. 1. Delete unawesome elements - If the game you play has boring, useless, fluffy or irritating character classes or races, get rid of them before you start playing. This way no one will feel either compelled (the super role-player type) or obliged (the “balance the party type”) to play them. Now this is different fr