The Roleplay of Dylan

Why I Run Short Campaigns

I don’t think that I will ever get into Dungeon mastering or game mastering for a really long campaign. I’ve listened to podcasts that their campaign has been running for two years or read about some people that have played in campaigns for over four years.

Holy shit…That is forever in my RPG dog years! My group meet some what consistently on a bi-weekly basis and if we would ever attempt a two year campaign it would stretch out for four years. I really like the idea of shorter campaigns because I can make a story arc in a world and just play out a nice story and move on. I feel three to four nights of playing will get my story told and have a decent closure to it.

The way that my group plays is we share GM duties and each person runs their storyline and then the next person takes their turn running another game. As long as I have been with them, we really haven’t touch on the same type of game more than once or twice. Thinking Ray and Bob both ran a Boot Hill game. We each run our type of games. I am enjoying this sort of progression because it lets my limited imagination start to flourish and think of other things that I could run or play in the future. With us being adults (we may not act like it), we have real life to live as well so I can’t imagine anyone of us wanted to get bogged down with two year campaign when there is so many other things to explore. 

However, I want to say that at some point, we could more than likely pick those characters back up and drop them into a follow on story. After finishing my pirate campaign, I’m looking at picking that game back up next year sometime and see how the relationship between Beautiful James and Julie has grown, but I have several other stops that I’d like to make before that.

I am just enjoying the ride as I go now, stopping to smell the roses as I go.

Something new to read

I’ve now got a new rulebook to start tearing into and start planning future games.

I’m thinking about coming up with a one-shot adventure using popular heroes as a pilot run and then go back and begin creating a new heroes. There seems to be a ton of interesting reading to be had in this latest book.

The Walking Dead Zombies

I finally got around to defining some of the NPCs and “Monsters” in my upcoming RPG adventure that I am preparing to run in the near future. I figured that I needed to finalize some of the details of the monsters that my players will be coming across.

In the comic book series The Walking Dead, there really is only four types of grouping of zombies. They are the Roamers, the Lurkers, the Sickly, and the Herding Zombies. I will just use these as my basic classification and will apply them at various times throughout the campaign.

Roamer:

“Roamers" walk while seeking new victims. The roamers are attracted to noises, and tend to walk towards any new sounds, sometimes forgetting why they are walking towards it until a new sound occurs or victims are found.

Lurker:

The "lurker" category of zombie simply remain motionless and "play dead" until a human gets close enough to be swiftly bitten. If other zombies approach lurkers too closely, the lurkers may "yell" at them in annoyance.

Sickly:

As of the "What We Become" story arc, it seems as though the zombies are dying or deteriorating from an unknown cause, possibly fatigue. While the group is rummaging through an abandoned town for supplies, a zombie lying on the ground reaches out and grabs Rosita by the ankle, but does not bite her. Eugene inspects the zombie and decides it is weaker and more sickly than the others, but is unsure as to why. More of these sickly zombies are encountered later on.

Herding:

When enough of roaming zombies gather, zombie packs and herds develop, which can include as many as hundreds zombies traveling together.

I won’t be posting any stats of the zombies because I want the players to find out for themselves how easy or how tough they are to kill.

More updates soon.

No Roleplaying?

So those that to follow my posts may be asking yourself “Why no posts from Dylan?” Well, the answer is that I’ve been working through some various projects.

I finally did complete the four campaign story line for the Pirate game that I was running. It was a great experience for me to learn to GM and I hope that the players enjoyed it as well. My notes are up on Obsidian Portal under the campaign “Scarborough’s Fate”  There are several of my favorite moments in the campaign and here are two examples -

1. One of the players was swinging over on a rope and rolled a 2 or 3 on the skill check so I had him crash into the side of the opposing ship and start to slide the rope and barely grab on to side of the ship.

2. A couple of the players rolled a small powder barrel in a room with a dozen or so evil cultists. The picture in my brain when they rolled a natural 20 was amazing. Much like a scene from one of the Saw films – blood, flesh and guts just flying everywhere.

So, the projects that I’ve been working on….

One is not so secret – I’m setting up a 4 or 5 adventure campaign using the BRP ruleset based on the Walking Dead comics. So, I’ve been digging pretty heavy into the ruleset and working on campaign plots. My group has started to provide me their characters so I can start getting them places in the universe.

And yes, I did say “characters” in the last sentence. With the campaign running in the modern world with zombies, you just never know if someone is going to reach up and get a bite taken out of them. I thought it would speed up game play if someone does get taken down to have a backup character ready to introduce if the need does come up.

The second thing that I am working on is I volunteered to help playtest an upcoming rpg called “Early Dark” I’ve been going over some of the rules and trying to come up with ideas for three or four one shots that I can try and get the group together to play at some point.

Unfortunately, summer hit and our playtime is going to be pretty non-existent during June and probably a good portion of July. Maybe we can get some online Fantasy Grounds game going as well. I’ve been thinking about doing a Star Wars Saga adventure online like that. But I have no clue when I will find the time to work on that.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to more gaming as both a player and a GM in the near future.

Dropping the DM Screen

So this past weekend, it was time for the session three of the modern d20 pirate campaign that I have been running. The first two sessions I used a DM screen so I could layout the minis of upcoming NPCs and rolled behind the screen. In the last session, I decided to leave the screen in my backpack and play at the table with all of the other players.

It was an interesting feeling. I set my mini box on the seat next to me so I had easy access and kept the minis out of sight. However, I felt closer to the action and was part of the group instead of hiding behind a screen.

I enjoyed the game more because I felt more involved with the players. My rolls were out in the open and I felt like I wasn’t pitted against the player.

I will definitely be GMing this way again.

I’m a sanctioned DM now

The process to get sanctioned and setup a public venue is a pain in the ass.

With the lack of results by posting flyers and word of mouth in the small town of Bluffton, I only found two people that were interested in playing. I thought that by being able to publish the games/events on Wotc’s site I might have some more luck.

Well after about a week, I am all signed up – took my DM exams and I am a Herald DM now and I can organize events in public places. Woo hoo!

So I am going to run a few public events in Bluffton to see how that goes and I’m hoping that by the next big events that I will be able to run/host a Dark Sun and Gamma World release game day.

So check it out if you are interested: My First Event

I am hoping that this will spark up some more interest and we can get a full campaign going.

Test post for @Anywhere

Utilizing this post for Twitter’s @Anywhere function.

My Hardy Pirate players are @chompa @awakebyJava @capadel

Bring on the Zombacalypse!

After reading 70 issues of The Walking Dead in the last three days, I am very impressed at the dark story written by Robert Kirkman. What is great about this comic is the story is about the characters and the dark nature of the human race and not as much of the millions of zombies roaming the earth.

There is heartbreak, despair, loneliness, loss and very little happiness or Joy. The main character, Rick Grimes, lost his wife and newborn baby to an attack by another group of living people. He leaves with his 7 year old into the wilderness.

As I have been reading these book, it has been screaming – “Role Play Me” “Role Play Me”. And now my brain is churning – I think I could make it into a roleplaying adventure.

The PC could either play the main characters in the Walking Dead world or they could play a subgroup that meets up with Rick, Carl, and Glenn at some point. There is a ton of ideas burning up the brain cells to make this work out.

I don’t think the system would matter, except that I would like to see where the combat would be body specific in the attacks. If the player attacks the zombie and rolls a 12, he still would hit it because maybe only chop off a hand. A 17-20 would be a hit to the hit and depending on the weapon type that is how much damage that the zombie would take.

I may start working on it and have it ready to play by the end of the summer.

Geek Porn – GM’s Guide to Ipad

I’ve been reading Gnomestew’s GM’s guide to the Ipad over the last few days and they just released three videos showing the points they discussed in the article.

I don’t know why I tease myself because I see all of the uses for it for roleplaying or even just general notes/campaign building.

I have embedded the video for your viewing pleasure. Make sure that you have tissues close by for the technology geeks if you need to clean up after viewing.

If only I had $500 sitting around……

How I Failed DM Tracker – a Review of Sorts

After a couple of GM sessions under my belt, I’m starting to get a decent feel for what I should be doing behind the screen. I work in the IT field and deal with computers, servers, networking, wi-fi, and other odd things all day long. So to try and be a digital Gamemaster, it should have been a no brainer.

Well after two sessions of using DM tracker, I think I’m going to another method – paper notes or something else. It’s not that the iPhone application is bad – it is rather handy, but I think that I just failed it.

First off, a note – DM tracker was developed for Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. I am not playing 4th edition when using this app, I am running a d20 past campaign. I knew that I would  not be using all of the features going into it. I was looking at only using it for initiative, HP, and Fort, reflex, and Will saves.

First off, I had to make the NPC characters and their modifiers. Only thing that I didn’t like on this part was that I could not put a negative modifier in there. If the Initiative was a –1, I had to put 0. For d20, there is no perception or insight so I just left those blank.

It was nice that you could clone a NPC so I did not need to key each one separately. I created one then cloned it five times and then renamed them.

After all of the NPCs and PCs were added, you would create a group and then select the participants in that particular encounter.

So after that, you have all of your encounters prepped and ready for combat. Once you are ready for an encounter to start, you touch the crossing swords. (Really?? I said that… crossing swords..)

Once in the combat, you enter in the initiative rolls and you begin the turns. Once the you have said that the PC or NPC turn is complete, it moves them to the “Done with turn” side and you can move to the next person.

You can do several things with the player or npc including adding hit points, or damage as well key their initiative roll You can also up any effects like bloodied, dazed, etc. Once a person is done with their turn, touch the save and end turn button.

Overall, this was a good app for the price. I think it was $2.99 when I picked it up. It is a handy tool if you have done all the prep work ahead of time. For me, I didn’t have enough time to fumble with it and put in a PC’s stats when I thought they weren’t going to be there that night.

A couple of small requests – let me key negative modifiers and give me a sorting option on the encounters. The sorting was alphabetized, so I just had to remember which encounter I was going into. Also, a simple rename on the group would help as well. I had to delete the whole group and start off if I misspelled or wanted to change the name. 

The program also does start to be a memory hog when I was working on the pregame preparations. I didn’t notice a slow down when using it during game, only when adding all of the PCs, NPCs, and the different groups.

The reason why I fail this program is that I am not able to make that quick of adjustments when all of the sudden the players want to use a PC that couldn’t make it that night to step in during combat, so during the game I ended up putting my phone down and just scribbling out my notes to ensure I didn’t miss anything. I will look at bringing it back into play further down in some other game, but for now I’ll go back old school and either jot the information down or try a card stock over the DM screen trick that so many others are raving about at the moment.