Jade | February 26, 2010
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 act the same, like they are clones of one another. Which is a real shame; after all, what’s [...]
Category: Building characters, Musings |
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Tags: alignment, backgrounds, character creation, evil, players
Jade | July 3, 2009
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. Now, [...]
Category: GMing philosophy, Working with players |
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Tags: backgrounds, PCs, players, secrecy
Jade | June 15, 2009
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 [...]
Category: Campaign creation, Meadowbrook, Worldbuilding |
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Tags: backgrounds, Campaign creation, Meadowbrook, NPCs, towns, world building
Jade | June 8, 2009
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 [...]
Category: Campaign creation, Meadowbrook, Musings, Worldbuilding |
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Tags: backgrounds, Campaign creation, GM tools, Meadowbrook, towns, world building
Jade | June 1, 2009
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 was a city worksheet. [...]
Category: Campaign creation, GM tools |
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Tags: backgrounds, Campaign creation, cities, GM tools
Jade | May 13, 2009
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 [...]
Category: Building characters, GM tools |
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Tags: backgrounds, character contributions, character creation, questionnaires
Jade | May 4, 2009
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 [...]
Category: Building characters, GMing philosophy, Working with players |
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Tags: backgrounds, character creation, NPCs, PCs