Tag Archives: GM’ing
Side Quest: Tangle Bridge
Here is a short side-quest (map included!) designed for low-level characters for any game system where wagons and overland travel would feel appropriate. It works as a quick mission or random encounter that can be dropped into any adventure. To use it in your own game, simply fill in whatever details are needed and set any ability or skill checks that you feel would be necessary. To escalate the challenge, add an enemy ambush, false rumors, more natural obstacles, or increase the danger of falling off the tangle bridge.
Describe Your Death For Us
When a character fails miserably at something during a game, who describes the failure? Is it the GM’s duty – NAY – pleasure to chronicle the crunch of bones, the explosion of electronics, or the graceless fall from a great height? Are we figuratively rubbing our player’s faces in their own flubs? It’s fun for a storyteller to portray pratfalls, but shouldn’t we share that fun with the player who must suffer the slings and arrows of unkind dice?
Heroes Should Show Off
A game of gritty realism is anchored by the gravity of pragmatic choices, logical consequences, and down-to-earth descriptions of a sober simulation. But if you and your players want to roleplay with a more super-heroic central theme, then you need to let them show off. More than that – you need to engineer the game so they can enact the extravagant with ease.
Hill Challenges for Low Levels
Low-level challenges are tricky. Most characters are delicate little flowers that can be accidentally group-wiped with one unlucky tumble of an eight-sided die. They’re underpowered and underequipped. One fumble, failed save, or bad choice might be all it takes to take them out – and even healing up from the less-than-lethal consequences is usually a painful process. You want to give them a challenge – a taste of adventures to come. You want them to learn to use their limited resources and bond as a group over adversities. What small bumps in the road can we throw into their path to elevate the game and help them climb into their characters? I present: the humble hill.
The Case for Collectables
Wizards have united and they’re collecting Weasley’s and Dumbledore’s down at the local park on their smart phones! The Fortnite kids are stockpiling skins and dances (which sounds freaking terrifying if you don’t know what that game is all about). And the Pokemen were apparently such a nuisance that over a billion users had to download the app just to thwart their takeover of the Earth’s augmented surface! What are we talking about? Collectables! Can you use them in your TTRPG’s in between hunting dragons and hunting Cthulhus? Or, are they bound to stay in the realms of video gaming, trading cards, toys, and comics? Oh, and coins. And stamps. And Beanie Babies and Pop Figures… jeez, we collect a lot of stuff.
