Gone Gaming

Scheduling & Where to Go: Part I

maliseraph — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:56:26 +0000

So, I find that I may not be able to post for a bit, starting Friday and continuing for about a week and a half. I also may be moving to a 5 per week schedule to avoid writing lots of drivel filler. I may try to plan out posts so that I split them over a couple of days, but I don’t want to guarantee it.

But now for the good stuff: location, location, location.

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Verbal and Body Language of Memorable NPCs

maliseraph — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:32:59 +0000

When creating NPCs I try to find ways to make them memorable to the players, and often I’ll do that by the choice of language they use. Accents, funny pronunciations, tone, and strange speech patterns all come into play. Today I want to focus on some of these ways to make characters memorable.

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Screw you guys, I’m going home

maliseraph — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:26:18 +0000

So, McCain decided to suspend his campaign so he could deal with the economy. I guess he’s decided that it’s finally time for him to brush on what the economy is, go back to the Washington he hasn’t been to in ages, and stop the campaign events he’s had for the past week and a half during this crisis. Oh, and it has nothing to do with him being afraid he’s going to get creamed in the debate on Friday, and he wants to have some sort of little trump card in his pocket to pull out and divert attention from his lack of understanding on the issue to be able to point at a meaningless gesture which the other candidate was unwilling to join him in the stupidity of. I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem if Obama had just agreed to the town hall debates. Which, of course, McCain wouldn’t have found excuses to avoid when his poll numbers tanked and it became clear his view on an issue was wildly unpopular.

Riiight.

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I can’t hold it in any longer…

maliseraph — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:44:42 +0000

One sentence rant, I promise.

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Kung Fu Fighting, Part: I?

maliseraph — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:58:06 +0000

So far I have yet to find a role-playing game that viscerally “got” a real feeling of martial arts combat, allowing blocks, dodges, and counters, and integrating that with grappling.

I feel like Jade Empire kind of got it, but that’s a video game, which allows real time fighting you just don’t get in a pen and paper. How do you capture the rolling flow of a brawl at the table top?

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Power Gamers: Evil or Malicious? Or, Maybe, Misunderstood?

maliseraph — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:17:07 +0000

Almost without fail I have found that Power Gamers have been the death of any attempt at role-playing. They refocus the game away from story, plot, and character depth, instead focusing on systematically trying to destroy the game world’s coherency. I honestly have no idea quite how to deal with an honest-to-badness dyed in the wool power gamer. However, I think there’s a dirty little secret that we don’t like to admit.

We’ve all got a little power gamer in us.

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You CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

maliseraph — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 02:53:50 +0000

I may cause a heart attack in those who know me, but lately I’ve been trying to teach myself some things about basic html, fiddling around with some of the tools in Word for doing nifty things with your documents, and generally teaching myself a few new things about basic computer “stuff”. Between this blog and a little side project I’m developing, I hope to learn a couple things here and there.

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John Locke and Robin Laws’ “Robin’s Laws”

maliseraph — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:05:18 +0000

In politics there are some fundamental treatises that everyone should either have read, or at least skimmed the Cliffs’ Notes version of, such as Plato’s Republic, or John Locke’s Treatises of Government, or the Federalist Papers. It’s hard to have a discussion about the fundamentals of a polity without having them as touchstones to refer to.

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All things to all people, all in good time.

maliseraph — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:27:18 +0000

I have a weekly Changeling game, with five characters, some of whom share similar tastes and interests, some of whom are wildly divergent. Inevitably, some characters will receive more focus during a session, as there is only so much plot one can fit into any time period, and only so much moving of the spotlight that go on without making things hard to follow. Often I go into a session knowing that this week’s plot will focus on some characters and not others, and that some characters will have more of a chance to shine or just show off.

This is ok, as over the course of the game that focus will shift, giving each player a chance to have their turn in the spotlight.

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“This is the only part of the Buffalo we DON’T use.”

maliseraph — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:39:35 +0000

The title of this post refers to an old Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, where an old Indian is showing the little Indians the only piece of the buffalo the Indians don’t use, a joke off of the often repeated bit of myth that “Indians used every part of the buffalo”. The reason I focus on this is that in a well told story nothing should go to waste. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t waste time having fun, but rather that even the “throw-away” bits can serve a part in moving the plot forward.

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