I like to sometimes right a short story as part of my character backgrounds. Usually only a scene or two, like the first chapter of a novel or something similar. I find this really helps set the scene for the play to come, even if it’s something way back in the past, such as the following example, it lets me and my DM help lay some foundations for the character in question.

Memories

My earliest memory is from the age of five. There is nothing before that, just a deafening blindness.

It is not like most children’s earliest memories, lost in misty half remembering. It is vivid and almost physical. Fading shafts of late-evening sun pouring through the many arches along the balcony. The chill of the shadows under the bed where I lay quietly. The brush of soft footsteps approaching across the polished floor.

All of these memories began in this one single moment, as if someone had lit a lamp in darkness, or whipped away the drapes, rudely awakening a late sleeper.

The pastel designs of the marble mixed with the bright and still warm colour of a spreading pool of blood. Two bodies lay twisted and broken on the cold floor, faces frozen in death, gripped by masks of surprised pain. I don’t recall being scared, as perhaps a five-year-old girl should have been. I felt nothing for the dead bodies, not knowing, or being able to recall, who they were.

Soft shoed feet approached my hiding place. Suddenly the bed was lifted away, thrown against the wall, banishing the shadows and revealing me.

Shocked by the sudden noise and movement, I flinched and shrank into the corner. Fearful now, I looked up and saw a face masked by wrappings of dark cloth, only two shadowy eyes were visible.

I could not tell if it was a man or woman, but they examined me intensely for a number of seconds, as if pondering some great question. “Even for House Philarlan, I will not kill a young child,” they said in a low voice. The masked killer continued to stare at me thoughtfully, before continuing, “You have been orphaned today, but do not think harshly of me, you may learn, in time, that I am simply doing my duty.”

And then, twisting on one foot, the killer turned and ran towards the balcony and leaped onto the stone rail, settling there in a crouch, before slipping off and disappearing from view, dark cloak billowing behind.

Left with a feeling of sudden loss, which I couldn’t fathom, I stood up and walked to the bodies, avoiding the glistening pool of sticky blood. So these were my parents, and I was now an orphan? I bent down to look closely at them, yet I still had no memory of them alive.

I heard soft moaning from the open doorway. It appeared to be coming from the room opposite mine. Frightened I quickly ran and slammed shut the door to my room.  I did not want to know who or what was making the noise, or whether they were alive or near death.

My eyes began to water. I felt nothing and instinctively wiped tears away with my sleeve. I was confused, not at all sure why I was crying. Overcome by a sudden exhaustion, I lay down, my back against the sturdy wooden door, and fell deeply asleep.

~***~

I awoke abruptly, it felt like the floor had moved under me. I looked about, realising that the door behind me was being forced open. I gathered my limbs to myself and tried to be as quiet as possible.

“Anyone in here?” a voice spoke softly from the open crack of doorway. Terrified, I did not answer.

The door pushed against me again, slightly harder. I let out an involuntary gasp, and clasped my hands over my mouth.

“Someone’s alive in here Oliith!” the voice from the door shouted. The door was then pushed fully open, being behind it I could not see who stood in the doorway. “I know there’s someone in here, come out, there is nothing to fear.”

I kept my hand still tightly held over my mouth, trying not to even breathe.

The door closed a little and a woman’s head peered around the edge, “Why hello, it’s a little girl, are you okay?”

Conclusion

It’s a fun technique and gets me practising my writing skills. Anyone do anything similar?

Comments: 2 comments

Tags: Character Building, Ideas

Last year our regular D&D game fell on April 1^st, so I decided to try and see if I could con my player’s characters out of some gold.

I’d been reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, a worthwhile read which features a number of con tricks. The book inspired me to head off to the internet and research the art of hustling. This is what I came up with, I hope it inspires you to do something similar this year!

Missing, One Glass Eye

The Glim Dropper is similar to the  more famous Pigeon Drop, or Fiddle Game cons, and relies on the mark being convinced that something of no value has much greater value. In this case a glass eye.

Continue reading…

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Tags: Articles, DMing, Player Choice

I’ve just discovered a really cool combat tracker. I’ve very fond of iPlay4e, and use it for all my characters and players PCs.

Now today I found inCombat (http://laughterforever.com/inCombat/) a fine combat tracker that incorporates characters from iPlay4e nicely. As well as the ability to add monsters from the compendium or monster builder.

It just works to be frank, and it runs in a browser, as well as off-line through Adobe AIR.

Nothing bad to be said about it so far, can’t wait to start using it in anger.

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Tags: #DnD, 4e, Resource

And the results are in. Our guest judge, Greg Bilsland, has chosen a winner.

(This also came in in level 13, 18, 23 and 28 varieties with suitable increases)

Here’s what Greg had to say about the winner:

There aren’t a lot of low-level items that let you escape death like this, so I like that this item gives you a way to do it, but at a cost. It also is well balanced, because even though the power is unlikely to come up very often, the property still gives it a benefit that any undead-slaying hero can appreciate.

Putting the item at level 3, 8, etc. is exactly where I would place it. I’d probably keep the range on the ongoing necrotic damage static rather than allowing it to increase. I like that the designer included some story. I’d like to see the story text as a separate section (like in Adventurer’s Vault 2) so the flavor text can give me a description of the item.

Overall, a good job, though. The designer has an eye for balancing mechanics, usability, and creativity.

So congratulations go to Granger44! Who had this to say:

Hey, thanks!   As a side note, I just had a daughter born at the end of last month myself, so I’ll claim her as my inspiration to which I added the evil twist.

Steve’s necklace of death deserves a mention as Greg it as the most creative item:

I liked the necklace actually being a garotte. Shows thinking outside of the box. The item would need a little adjustment on the property’s damage output and on the automatic death in the daily power. Also, bringing down the level would be good so more players would have access to it.

Congratulations to the overall winner, and thanks to all those that took part. And finally thanks to Greg for being our guest judge. For more from Greg check out his new shiny blog, http://gregbilsland.wordpress.com/.

Comments: 1 comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e

Thanks to everyone who entered the PH3 competition. Entries are now closed. All entries have been packaged up and are ready to be sent to Greg Bilsland. Now you’ll just have to wait.

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Tags: #DnD, 4e

I suspect that’s skewed somewhat by the human tendency to complain and whine! What do you think?

Comments: 8 comments

Tags: Cartoon, DMing, Drawings

You’ve got until 23.59 GMT today to enter the PH3 competition.

http://buccaneersguild.com/players-handbook-3-giveaway-2/

Judged by our guest judge, WotC’s Greg Bilsland.

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Tags: #DnD, 4e

For our next campaign, we’re going Sci-Fi. We’ll be using the Alternity ruleset. Written by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker it was published by TSR in 1998, it had a short but bright life.

The covers of the two core books butted up nicely to create a single piece of artwork.

There’s stuff in Alternity that worked it’s way into d20, although not the central dice mechanic of course, which is a bit different. Heading in the direction of D&D 3e and d20 were things such as:

• Skills instead of non weapon proficiencies
• Skill points and ranks
• Perks were the same as feats
• A unified mechanic for all conflict resolution

I like Alternity because it’s does for sci-fi what D&D does for fantasy, it’s a generic ruleset rather than a ruleset bundled with an implied setting. For setting purposes we have always based our Alternity games upon the Elite series of games by David Braben, most specifically Frontier First Encounters.

This is great for me as GM, I can fire up FFE on my laptop and use all the gorgeous detail on planets and systems without me having to make anything up or remember anything. Also FFE keeps track of the time and date for me handily, as well as the party’s ship details. Here’s some of the handy info I’ll be using.

A tiny section of the enormous 3d starmap

The star map is huge, this is just a small view of only 9 sectors, there are 67 million sectors in the game, covering the whole of our galaxy. Sol is at sector [0,0], the bottom left sector is [-5192, -5412] and the top right is [2279,2779]! The star map is huge indeed. There are in total exactly 513,982,470 star systems. This is more data on a setting than a GM will ever need!

Details on the Sol system

As you can see from the image of Sol above all the human explored systems have details on their planetary bodies, starports and orbital stations. Major story important systems have a bit of blurb as well. Every explored system has orbital paths as shown below.

Orbits in the Sol system

Of particular use to me if the players start to trade goods between systems is the imports and exports that are available at each inhabited system, as well as things that would be illegal to trade in.

Imports and exports

Overall using the computer game in this way gives me as GM access to a very rich resource of detail and setting fluff. Also since some nice Russian chaps have created a DirectX update of this 15 year old game then I can also generate some nice visuals for handouts.

An Asp class 2 man ship

My players have started to write character backgrounds and I can’t wait to start soon! If you’re in our area (West Herts, UK) then we have open slots for players! For more information see http://whrpg.com.

Comments: 6 comments

Tags: Alternity, Campaign, Sci Fi

There’s only one more week left to enter the Players Handbook 3 contest!

All you need to do is design a magical item to complete the Magical Minds series. The best item as chosen by our celebrity judge, WotC’s Greg Bilsland (@gregbilsland), will win a copy of the Players Handbook 3 upon release!

So to complete my daughters list of items, the last item name, along with my her brief notes is as follows:

Necklace of Death (Notes: You put it on and you die)

Rules

1. Stick to Dungeons & Dragons 4e
2. Stay true to the item name, include necklaces and death somewhere.
3. Don’t stay true to my daughter’s notes, make it balanced!
4. Only one entry per person, although feel free to replace a previous entry if you suddenly come up with a better idea.
5. Email entries to blog@buccaneersguild.com.
6. Tell other people about the competition, post on Twitter or Facebook for example.
7. Closing date is March 9th 2010.
8. The winning entry will be announced before March 15th.

Good luck!

Comments: 3 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e