The Year is 1806…
The Battle of Austerlitz, by François Pascal Simon Gérard. In December 1805, France decisively defeated Austria and Russia.
Fantasy roleplaying games, as a rule, are set in fictional medieval or early-Renaissance Europe. There’s certainly nothing limiting them to that setting, though; Dungeons & Dragons alone has featured settings derived from the ancient Middle East, China and Japan, and South and Central America. The ancient world, the medieval, and the modern era have all been covered.
What hasn’t been considered so well is the span of time between the early Renaissance and the 20th century. Aside from a few stabs at Victoriana (either gothic or steampunk-style) and a handful of Wild West-themed games, the pickings are fairly slim.
That’s a shame, because there are any number of potential settings in that span that would make for a gripping game. For instance… consider the year 1806.
Categories: Launching a Campaign, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (1)
Dealing with Disconnects: Cautious Combatants
Sometimes when you’re running a game, you want to emulate a novel or movie. Being unscripted, though, a game is a different sort of animal: the gamemaster may be the main storyteller, but he doesn’t have control over the protagonists. This can lead to disconnects between the way heroes act in the “source” fiction and the way the PCs act in game. One of the most common examples of this disconnect appears in combat. In the novels and movies, the heroes charge bravely in, performing risky cinematic stunts. They take chances. They risk death in order to end a fight more quickly so they can get on to their ultimate goals. They’re not necessarily foolish, but they aren’t cautious by any realistic standard.
In a campaign, PCs often act the opposite way in combat. They proceed with great caution, looking for every possible piece of cover or other advantage. They don’t use maneuvers that would cause them too many penalties. They minimize risk in any way possible.
Categories: Advice | Comments (6)
Spectacles for Your Maps
In the spirit of this month’s blog carnival on maps, I thought I’d talk a little bit about map design. Not the act of creating the actual map, although there’s plenty to be said about that; rather, the art of populating it. Not with settlements, either. With spectacles.
Spectacles are an element overlooked by many gamemasters, even experienced ones. We’ll lay out mountain ranges and rivers, forests and plains, cities and villages, political boundaries and dungeon locations. But what we sometimes forget to include are those sites that take advantage of the fantasy nature of the setting. We might have something akin to Weathertop from The Lord of the Rings, but what about the fairy tales’ giant beanstalks rising to the clouds or mountains made of glass? The mysteries of the world that inspire local legends and bardic songs?
Categories: Blog Carnival, Original Game Content | Comments (1)
Maps and Legends
This month, A Character for Every Game is hosting the RPG Blog Carnival. The topic is cartography.
Maps are obviously pretty vital to most campaigns. You’ve got maps of fantasy worlds, of dungeons, of the city your superheroes are based in, of the star systems (or galaxies!) your space-opera heroes are flying between, of the haunted mansion your horror heroes are about to get killed in. And there are plenty of tools to help you generate these maps, including random map generators such as Gozzy’s and full-fledged map-creation utilities such as RP Tools’ MapTool or DungeonForge (both of which are free).
What I don’t see as much of these days is the map within the game. In older editions of D&D, it was fairly common for a treasure map to be included as part of a treasure horde. This fell by the wayside in third edition, and fourth didn’t bring it back. Maps could, of course, still be placed by hand, but without a presence on the random treasure tables, I find many gamemasters tend to overlook them. And that’s a shame.
Categories: Advice, Blog Carnival | Comments (0)
Launching a Campaign: The Ground Rules Sheet
As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s important to inform your players about some of your assumptions before you begin your campaign. I find the easiest way of doing so is to provide a handout that summarizes some of the basic information about the campaign. A cheat sheet, if you will.
The sheet should cover the basic ground rules of the campaign in a reasonably compact form. The idea is to create something easily readable that conveys the basic information your players need in order to create their characters. You don’t want to rehash the character generation rules from the rulebook — just point out the specific variations you’re using, along with the general theme of the campaign.
The sheet can include anything you feel is important. Mine covers the following areas:
Categories: Advice, Launching a Campaign | Comments (0)
