Posts

Characters as Arrows

Discussions often revolve around character backgrounds and how to build them in a way that allows players to better tie in with the story being told or with the other characters/players at the table. Specifically, a frequent pitfall is to build a character without any motivations to go into an adventure or to get involved with a story. A local folk hero who decides to go adventuring through the world might sound interesting on paper, but unless we understand what made him leave his home, his family, we run the risk of lacking a clear character motivation to help us push forward and embody them when the first decision has to be made. At the same time, as a game master, it might sound simple enough to put things along the path the players are headed to and hope they will just engage with them. Attempting to do that will result, more often than not, in your players ignoring your hooks and your quests, just getting interested in the details you did not think of. While this makes for excell...
Post a Comment
Read more

From Dungeons to Dialogues: Random Social Disruptions

I often wonder how in a TTRPG one could transpose some of the mechanics usually associated to dungeon exploration to social investigation. After all, navigating a dungeon, avoiding traps and fighting monsters might be reimagined as investigating a case, figuring out who is lying and extracting information in a conversation. Following this line of thought, it can be interesting to rethink random encounters in a social framework. Ultimately random encounters are a way to spice the exploration, and the more connected to the story/world the scene is set in, the better. As a starting point, I thought I would produce a list of 20 possible Random Social Disruptions  to give an idea of what I mean. This can serve as a starting point for a Referee to build their own list or use it as is. How to make it work : if a conversation seems to go long (according to Referee's judgement), roll a d6. On a 6, roll on the table below and interpret and use the disruption into the ongoing conversation. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Experience points in Original Dungeons and Dragons

Image
I like to look at numbers and (despite my colorblindness) at colorful graphs. As an excuse for doing that, I decided to look at how leveling up worked in Dungeons and Dragons in older editions. My secondary goal is to simplify class conversion between older editions of DnD, but to achieve this, I first need to understand their core mechanics. Join me as we explore this process! Introduction When the necessity of telling stories of heroes who would become more powerful with time emerged, DnD's designers (like many others before and after them) decided to encode this growth through a level system . As your character perform actions, they gain a metacurrency called experience , and accumulating more of it increases their level. The higher the level, the stronger the character. While the rate of experience gain per level could be constant, if stories focus on characters becoming increasingly powerful over time, it's natural for the experience required between levels to grow progr...
Post a Comment
Read more

From an Idea

To achieve something there is no way around trying it first. This sentence, which is an oversimplification to say the least, encompasses a strong principle for me. Of course to achieve a project you have to start it, but the truth is that before the project start, only the idea of it exists. When we think of RPGs in particular, this is a recurring topic. Thinking about one's next session, adventure, campaign, comes with fears and insecurities.  An idea until realization remains just that: an idea . As such it's very hard to believe it will succeed to exist outside of our mind. An idea has no body, only concepts. What if the core concept is not strong enough? What if nobody wants to play in my campaign? What if my plot is not accomplishing what I want at the table? "What ifs" curse the mind of the dreamer.  This is where the trying part comes in. If you have the idea, you're already the perfect candidate to try it. Because you thought about it, it means this projec...
Post a Comment
Read more