Bwahahahaha

(via Completely Serious Comics)

Dread: Welcome to Night Vale

Lately I've been obsessed with the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, and it occurred to me that it would make the perfect setting for Dread. I got to steal a lot of flavor text, in italics below, from the show itself (specifically the episode "Pyramid"). I also recommended that each player listen to a few episodes if they hadn't already, so they could get a general idea of the background and tone. I'm still working on getting the characters right for this game, but I'm planning to post those later.

The System: Dread is a role-playing game that uses Jenga® instead of dice. Pull from the tower and you succeed. Refuse to pull and you fail. The choice is yours. But if the tower falls, your character will be eliminated from the game!

The Setting: "Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events. Turn on your radio and hide." 

School Daze: BtVS (Characters)

You may think that we GMs pour over rule books to get a complete understanding of game mechanics, then turn to our computer screens and effortlessly produce a compelling interactive story line. What actually happens, at least for me, is that I discover a gaming system that sounds intriguing, check out the rules and some of the sample flavor text, then hit the internet to see if someone has done the hard work for me. It's usually only when I've seen a game in action that I commit the necessary resources to creating a game "from scratch."

That being said, this post is for all my fellow lazy GMs who want to run the BtVS School Daze game I posted previously, and just need the characters. I will say, though, that character creation in School Daze is incredibly easy - you just pick each student's Favorite Subject (+2 to related rolls) and three Ranks (+/-1 to related rolls). Then you add Relationships to NPCs - which is super easy when you're working off an established cannon like BtVS - and a Motivation. I actually left the Motivations blank, so my players could tell me what was on the forefront of their character's mind that week. These characters are set in the early seasons of BtVS, when they were actually in high school, but you can easily adapt them for later seasons as desired. 

One more note... because of my OCD desire for a balanced party, I made sure there were not repeats in Ranks. This is obviously not necessary and may actually not be completely true to the original characters. If verisimilitude is your thing, modify these as needed. Or let your players customize their characters by swapping out a Rank or two, if they can explain to you why a different Rank would be a better fit for their character. And no, "this would be more useful" is not a good explanation.

Ready-to-steal School Daze characters after the jump!

School Daze: BtVS

Hey, friends - here's my latest contribution to Wednesday Night RPGs at my FLGS. It's a game of School Daze set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. Some of this was borrowed from the BtVS RPG. Check out the bottom of the post for my Playtest Notes.

The System: School Daze is a role-playing game in a high school setting. High school is an exciting time. Everything in your life is in flux, and no matter what, nothing will be the same again. What better place to set a story? Each player takes on the role of a high school student, with all of their hopes, dreams, problems, and challenges. The Administrator facilitates the game using Group Projects as frameworks for the game sessions. School Daze is collaborative and functions best when the Students and the Administrator work together, developing the story and the world together.

The Setting: Buffy the Vampire Slayer follows Buffy Summers, the latest in a line of young women known as Vampire Slayers. Slayers are chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. Like previous Slayers, Buffy is aided by a Watcher, who guides, teaches, and trains her. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy surrounds herself with a circle of loyal friends who become known as the "Scooby Gang".

This totally counts as a post.

Existential Dread

Anyone who loves story-driven games and experiences mounting terror while playing Jenga will love Dread, my new favorite gaming system. I have written a couple of games for Dread at this point, and I thought some of them might be good enough to share with y'all.

Attempt Number One: Marvelous Marvin's Circulating Circus. This plot was a bit too railroaded - the actual game play didn't go anything like I planned. The character questionnaires were modified (*cough*stolen*cough) from ones posted online, so I can't really take any credit for them.

Happy New Blog Post

Holy mother of pearl it's been a long time! But never fear, fair reader (all one of you) - I have resolved this New Year to continue sharing my genius with the world. Behold! A post!

As I may have mentioned before, I share GMing responsibilities for one my home campaigns with my best frenemy, Mac. The problem is, he raises the bar on story-telling to ridiculous levels. He even started up a new form of skill challenge via email, compatible with 4E but without the pesky disincentive to participate that is the success/failure system. Check out previous posts for details. Here is my first attempt at doing something similar!