Fool's Moon Entertainment

One of my favourite things about roleplaying games is that as a game master I will never be able to predict where the campaign will go. The players are quite good at surprising me -- they decide where to go, they decide what to do, and because I give them free reign, they can go on tangents I never expect. For example? I had the PCs encounter a young green dragon disguised as a bandit - she charged 'protection' from anyone who goes through her area, and utterly destroys anyone who doesn't pay. So what happens? One of the PCs negotiates. They pay the tithe, but he offers to make her business 'legitimate' with the local city paying her for the safe passage of anyone going through, and the utter destruction of any threats that are coming through. Being an artificer, he's offering to craft her some things to help her, and to keep in touch with her in case she ever needs help. ... not something I'd expected. In a friend's campaign, the group is supposed to be...

Saw a post on FaceBook today, by a GM asking other GMs how to get the PCs to actually engage in combat -- the GM was upset that the players were going for non-combat solutions to their encounters. Personally? Let them have their non-combat solutions. If the PCs are anti-murder hobo, why not let them? Another GM wondered at hearing the players drive the story, and responded with, "what, I should just suck it up? My desires don't matter?" That's a pretty raw take of the situation, so here's my thoughts: 1) The GM's desires matter at the table. However... 2) The players drive the story. And their desires matter to. And what you need is equilibrium. You want combat? Sure, put in combat. There's some people who just don't listen to reason - they're there to have a fight, and trying to talk them out of it pisses them off more. Go for it. But if the players don't want combat? Then hold back on the combat -- let them have their roleplay. This is a role...

You've heard the stories many times before. The land is corrupted and foul things rise up to torment humanity. A dark god rebels and spawns evil beings across the land. An evil sorcerer crafts an artifact that twists all who use it. Cool, fine, we've been down this path thousands of times. But why not the other way? A land blessed and divine things rise up? A god of light descends and spawns angelic beings across the land. A good priest crafts an artifact that guides others to the light? Consider the Story of Garg and Moonslicer But how would this be a 'bad thing', you might wonder? Where's the conflict that will drive the story? Well, that it needs to create conflict isn't a given. Not everything has to cause people drama and angst. But if you absolutely must -- it's unbalancing. A land with such an abundance of prosperity draws the attention of nations that don't have such benefits, and that can lead to war. Or you have a population that think they kno...

There's a game called Kuro   that was released some time back. It's a futuristic posthuman J-Horror game. It's got cybernetics, genetic engineering, and the kind of horror you can only get from Japanese films. It was a very interesting setting for a tabletop roleplaying game. And it stopped at three books, because 'the story had been told'. Except it hadn't. It ended the story when the PCs came into their full capabilities, and then stopped. It told the game master about how the event could have spread to other countries -- but didn't go into any detail.  Sure, you know what Japan is like within this time frame and setting, but it tells you nothing about what the rest of the world is like. This has often been my beef with RPGs that focus on a culture or country and tweak it into something new. They either ignore the rest of the world, or simply allude to it and leave it alone, so that if you want to have the characters go elsewhere, it's up to the GM to ...

"I'm not here to coddle my players." "I'm not here to protect their feelings." "I'm not here to be their therapist." To me, that's shorthand for I don't have empathy, and don't care about my players. A good game master wants their players to have fun. Which means being acutely aware of what a player can and can't handle. Which means listening to the players, listening to the tone of their voice, and watching their body language. The goal is to make sure the players are enjoying themselves, and that means being acutely aware of your table. Does that mean the game master has a bit more work? That they need to put a bit more effort into the game? Yes, it does. But those steps should be automatic for the game master - it should be second nature to be aware of your players and how they are feeling at the table. And it means knowing your player's triggers. There's a reason there's a lot of talk about safety and lines and v...

A group rides down a road.  On either side is farmland, peasants working the fields. There's an inn near the village, and in the distance is a walled city, with a castle in the centre. The group sees wagons with barrels, or hay, there's carriages carrying those of status, and people lug around wheelbarrows, ploughs, and farming tools. Yep.  That's medieval fantasy. But where's the fantasy part? A lot of world building for fantasy games completely ignore the fantasy aspect when it comes to actual civilization. Sure, there's elves, and dwarves, and dragons, and orcs, and wizards and priests. But ... civilization doesn't seem to acknowledge that the very presence of magic and monsters would fundamentally alter how civilization would be changed. Some anime are taking this into account now -- magic items to mimic things we'd see in the modern day and age (the 'magic microphone to broadcast in arenas' being a good example, flying podiums, teleportation gat...

Let's talk Superman. And as part of this discussion, let's look at it through the lense of roleplaying as well. Because I think that the issues people have writing for Superman are possibly the same issues game masters have with powerful characters. A bit over a decade ago, I wrote a piece concerning Superman on io9 (back when it existed), and I think it's still relevant in this day and age -- and especially when it has to do with gaming. Which any number of game masters complain about power gamers and min-maxers, and yeah, it's the same issue.  First, I'll post the article (with a little editing), and then I'll get back to this.