Evil Machinations

What’s My Motivation?

Posted on May 14 2010 | No Comments

Your GM picked out the adventure, did all of the background work, fleshed out the NPCs, balanced treasure and other rewards. Now it’s finally time to run the adventure, it’s up to the GM to find a way to motivate... Read More »

Livin’ the Good Life: More Ran...

Posted on Apr 09 2010 | No Comments

Image via Wikipedia Stumped for a background for your newest character? Why not try some randomly generated ones? Last week, we covered the steps for generating a random background event and the tables for bad things... Read More »

Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fort...

Posted on Apr 02 2010 | No Comments

Sometimes a good background is hard to find. Usually I have no trouble coming up with a full-fledged past for my characters, complete with NPCs, subtle plot hooks, and flaws ready-made for the GM to exploit. Usually, I hand... Read More »

Evil Does Not Equal Stupid: 8 Tips f...

Posted on Feb 26 2010 | No Comments

Whether as a PCs or an NPCs, evil characters tend to get the short end of the stick. All too often, they’re portrayed as short-sighted, reactionary, shallow, and … well, stupid. Frequently, all evil characters look and... Read More »

What Your Players Don’t Need t...

Posted on Jul 03 2009 | No Comments

I’m taking a break from Meadowbrook for a few days; I don’t want this blog to become “all Meadowbrook all the time”. I’m considering starting another blog devoted to world-building that would chronicle my development of Meadowbrook and it’s surrounding world; if this is something that would interest you, please leave me a comment.... Read More »

City Creation: Character Class Demog...

Posted on Jun 15 2009 | No Comments

Generally, I don’t detail numbers for the NPCs of my games. Unless I expect the PCs to pick a fight with one of them, I don’t even created stat blocks. I look at the NPC’s history, role in the game, personality and profession to decide what they can do, which is generally I need them to do in a particular situation. If the players start to interact... Read More »

City Creation: Buisness Demographics

Posted on Jun 08 2009 | No Comments

Okay, now we’ve got an idea of the kinds of business Meadowbrook might have, how many of each are likely to be there? S. John Ross has an article called Medieval Demographics Made Easy, which lists a number of medieval businesses. He gives each of them a “Support Value” — that is, the number of people it takes to support a single business... Read More »

Location Worksheet

Posted on Jun 01 2009 | No Comments

Note: all references in this article to World of Darkness games are to these game’s Second Edition, because that’s what I’m currently running . All but the most causual “beer-and-pretzels” games need locations — cities, kingdome, what have you. Another tool White Wolf included in their first edition Storyteller’s Handbook... Read More »

Character Questionnaires

Posted on May 13 2009 | 2 Comments

I’ve mentioned how useful character questionnaires are to me as a GM. I can draw reams of campaign ideas just from the questionnaires I receive. My questions run the gambit from “What does your character look like?” to “What gives your character’s life meaning?” I ask players to answer the questions in character, except for... Read More »

Character Backgrounds

Posted on May 04 2009 | No Comments

There’s a continuum about character backgrounds. I use detailed character backgrounds in my games; in fact, I warn players that I reserve the right to fill in any character history they don’t. Other GMs don’t bother with backgrounds at all — a sentence or two at the top of the character sheet. It really depends on the individual GM’s... Read More »