Evil Machinations

No scenario survives contact with the PCs … No system survives contact with the GM

Evil Does Not Equal Stupid: 8 Tips for Playing Evil Characters

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 [...]

What Your Players Don’t Need to Know

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, [...]

City Creation: Character Class Demographics

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 [...]

City Creation: Buisness Demographics

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 [...]

Location Worksheet

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. [...]

Character Questionnaires

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 [...]

Character Backgrounds

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 [...]

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