Author: Stan Shinn (Page 84 of 113)

This weekend I ran a game called ‘The Starship Rescue’ at Texicon in Fort Worth using the ENnie award Nominated Savage Worlds rules. Gamer and freelance writer Mark Chance did a  review of the game on his Spes Magna blog.

The game was well received with some players asking for a continuation of this game and setting at the next Texicon. I’m making plans to do just that. 🙂

Several folks have asked me how I created the visual props for the game.

I used both figure flats, starship schematic handouts and a nice starship map that were visually impressive and really helped set the tone of the game. Below is a list of resources to create your own ‘Starship Rescue’ type game — but really, any system set in a Sci Fi universe where you would like nice maps and inexpensive paper miniatures would benefit from these resources.

Read the full article over at DFWRoleplayers.

Technology for running traditional tabletop RPG games using online software has been around for a few years now, but I’ve noticed we seem to be reaching something akin to Critical Mass in the use of these tools to supplement face-to-face gaming. For example, this weekend in my game group we’re using Google+ to video conference in a distant player while the rest of our group game meets around a physical table. Kickstarter and online ‘virtual’ conventions also point to the surging interest in online virtual tabletops.

Kickstarter

There’s been a lot of buzz on Kickstarter regarding two very similar new tools: TabletopForge and Roll20. Both have had very succesful Kickstarters. Of the two, I’m more familiar with TabletopForge which has the promise of being perpetually free, with features like 3 D dice rolling in the works. Their Kickstarter metrics were as follows:

Roll20
1,580 BACKERS
$39,651 PLEDGED OF $5,000 GOAL

TabletopForge
1,926 BACKERS
$44,413 PLEDGED OF $5,000 GOAL

Virtual Conventions

Now comes online ‘virtual’ conventions. Of the five below, Indie+ and Aethercon seems to be the best organized and offers dozens of games over several days.

1. Indie+ July 9th – 15th, 2012
2. Fantasy Grounds Virtual Gaming Convention July 20-22, 2012
3. Concurrent Aug. 15-18, 2012
4. MonkeyCon October 19th and 20th
5. Aethercon Nov. 16-18, 2012

Have VTTs (virtual table tops) come of age? What has been your experience with virtual table tops? Are these tools beneficial to your game group?

Over the last year I’ve been focused on running ‘episodic’ games than have a clear story ending in 4 hours in my home and gamestore games. These same skills are very helpful if you want to run a 4 hour con-style game.

Here are my tips for running 4 hour games:

For all types of games, have a clear quest or goal so the character know exactly what their mission is, with the mission something achievable in 4 hours. (In campaign settings, I have the players be part of an organization which gives them missions).

In non-Dungeon games:

• Plan for 5 scenes, with at least 2 or 3 of those scenes involving combat.
• I like to have a red herring or twist be part of those stories, with a big reveal in the final Boss Fight scene.

In Dungeon games:

• Have 12-20 rooms prepared. Usually you’ll only cover 7 to 12 rooms total.
• Of the 7 to 12 rooms you’ll actually explore, 5 to 7 rooms will have combat or extensive roleplaying. The rest of the rooms (2 to 5 non-combat scenes) will be empty or have puzzles, traps or something minor to explore.
• Throw in a combat by the 1.5 hour mark if you haven’t already had one.
• Be prepared to move rooms around in the dungeon so they will always happen to get to the key parts of the dungeon (especially the Big Bad Boss at the end). Usually I just have 2 or 3 ‘key scenes’ which I will make sure they hit, with the rest being optional. This means you don’t give the players a map as you may change the map on the fly.

If you’re running a campaign in a home setting, I’ve found having the players have a ‘home base’  where they will be or will be en route to at the end of each session to be invaluable. This way when you have absent players you can explain that they didn’t come on this mission. If you have a society, have the society have bases in several key cities. If you running a space campaign or ship campaign, have the vessel dock to a port at the end of each game.

I’ve recently started using a 5.5×8.5″ binder from Staples to organize my RPG notes for Savage Worlds and other games.

These binders are truly something special — Staples has produced a binder which has a rugged rubber edge. As such it won’t crack and wear out as easily.

They come in several colors — I like white and black the best.

More importantly though, it gives a certain weight to the binder which makes it sit snugly on the game table with little chance of tipping over accidently. Below you can see it in action sitting nicely in front of the GM (me!).

From the player’s side, the clear covers allow you to insert a picture — making it a sort of mini-GM screen. The small form factor means it doesn’t get in your way. It gives the feel of running without a GM screen with the convenience of having what amounts to a full 8.5×11″ page of content visible.

In the inside, the left flap lets you insert some documents — I like to stick 4×6 notecards with my NPC stats there. For dividers, I create my own using a paper cutter to cut heavyweight paper to 5.5×8.5″ size, and use Avery tabs on them. You can buy commercial tab dividers at this size if you prefer though.

Below is a screenshot of an OpenOffice template I use to write up my adventures. I then print them out double-sided, and cut off the extra space and hole punch it to fit the divider. I’ve developed a template to support RPG scenes, box text, and character stats blocks.

Download the OpenOffice 5.5×8.5 RPG Planner Template here. OpenOffice is available for free download. To get it to look just like my layout, you’ll need some free fonts: Open Sans and SF Fedora.

Has Savage Worlds replaced GURPS as the generic RPG system of choice for this decade? ICV2 columnist Scott Thorne says this:

With the release of Beasts and Barbarians, a fantasy supplement from Gramel Publishing, Savage Worlds moved one step closer towards its apparent goal of replacing GURPS as, well, a gurps.  By my count, so far, Savage Worlds has a horror supplement, a couple of fantasy supplements, a superheroic supplement, two versions of Martian high adventure,  science fiction horror, a zombie outbreak supplement and, oh yeah, let’s not forget Deadlands.  While certainly not as comprehensive as Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS (especially the Third Edition, GURPS Robin Hood anyone?), Savage Worlds is the only print RPG I have seen making use of its core system to expand into other genres, as Chaosium has its Basic Role Playing System but hasn’t expanded it much beyond Call of Cthulhu and, during the last presentation from them I caught, Steve Jackson Games didn’t even mention the fact that they publish what was at one time one of the top selling RPGs. Source

With GURPS moving to a PDF only model for more new materials and Savage Worlds being under very active development (including several recent Kickstarters) it seems that Steve Jackson games has ceded the generic RPG market to Savage Worlds, choosing instead to focus on more profitable efforts like Ogre and Munchkin.

While I have no doubt GURPS will remain entrenched for some time (note how popular it remains at Con games), I’m seeing a shift to Savage Worlds which will only continue in the near future.

What do you think?