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

Over the past few days I’ve been turning my young daughter’s magic item suggestions into usable Dungeons & Dragons items. Earlier we had a Wedding Dress of Resurrection and Earrings of the Sidhe. Today I’ve skipped over the troublesome Necklace of Death, which I’m considering using for a competition, and moved onto the Feather Boa of Beauty.

You know, even though I was at first doubtful what to do with this, I think I like this one the best so far. I’ve got a character that might literally kill for one of these.

I should really do a post on how to make character portraits such as the one above, with no artistic skill required! What do you reckon?

Comments: 1 comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Ideas, Resource

Ever since my six year old daughter helped me with 100 post apocalyptic junk items, she’s wanted to do more lists of things with me. So this weekend, as she lay in bed suffering with chickenpox, she decided to create a small list of magic items for Dungeons & Dragons.

It’s from that list that I’m taking inspiration for a short series. She came up with names for items and a brief description of their powers. I’m trying to make balanced game sense of them one by one, and today I’d like to present the first of them.

Wedding Dress of Resurrection

When I asked my daughter why this even existed she said a powerful mage was due to be married to the love of his life, but she died on the morning or their wedding, so he created this powerful arcane item to raise her from the dead. The only problem is she had to wear it for the rest of her life.

This can be worn by either male or female characters. Even if worn under your armour it should still show a little at the cuffs and the long trailing dress. Drawing strange looks should be part and parcel of not being dead!

More from Magical Minds later, if I can work out how to make some of the more mental ideas even close to playable!

Please let us know what you think in the comments and I’ll make sure that I pass them on to the young creator.

Comments: 6 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Ideas, Resource

The work of building a world is usually left to the DM. DMs can spend large chunks of their life building the perfect world for their players to play in. They create maps, histories, classes, races, continents, nations, power groups, and plots.

It’s a lot of work, and often thankless as well. Even once you’ve handed out the condensed campaign introduction document, the players will never be as deeply immersed in your personal world as you, as writer of it, is.

Build a bare-bones world

In our last campaign I tried something different. I wrote a very quick bare bones history of the world. Here’s the original entry from my design notes. This campaign was following from a failed Shackled City campaign, where a gate to hell was opened at the end of the campaign.

The Great Gate opened and Demons enslaved The World That Was. The powers of the Astral Sea won the millennia long war, at great cost: The world was catastrophically flooded, and the population decimated. Now, a few generations later, the people of the New World are recovering, spreading out across the vast archipelago that The World That Was has become.

This led to a map, upon which I slapped some hurriedly invented names. I then presented this to my players as a post apocalyptic pirate infested archipelago.

A quickly imagined archipelago

Now it was time to get the players to join in…
Continue reading…

Comments: 2 comments

Tags: Ideas, Player Choice, World Building

Here’s an interesting handout I did for our now paused/retired Luquin Sea campaign.

The whole handout simply didn’t mean anything, it was one huge red herring! I used a Wacom tablet and pen to spend part of my lunch break scribbling as much nonsense as humanly possible.

Click to see all the nonsense in detail.

Excuse the blood but it came from the corpse of someone that had just tried to kidnap the party’s Dragonborn fighter.

The background, paper, blood and shadows account for about two minutes of time. A half hour of scribbling later and I’ve got a handout that my players keep coming back to. They were convinced that there must be something in it, why would I have spent time drawing it otherwise?

I would recommend the odd red herring now and then for your campaign. Never before have I had a handout that has been discussed more, it was hard to keep a straight face at times. Well they know now if they are reading!

Has anyone else had fun with an evil red herring?

Comments: Leave a comment

Tags: Hand-drawn, Handout, Ideas, Photoshop Tips

In a similar vein to Coffeebreak Cartography, here’s a series of Hurried Handouts. Examples of what can be done by a busy DM in the few minutes available during breaks at work.

Today a handout that is specifically designed to drive a fair chunk of plot in one PCs story.

I recall the joyful moment when the player in question asked, "What does exsanguinate mean?"

The top time saving tool here has to the library of blood spatter brushes I used. Both libraries I regularly use are here:

http://vexingart.deviantart.com/art/Blood-Splatter-Brushes-11819573

http://peterpson.deviantart.com/art/50-Blood-or-Splatter-Brushes-35281558

Comments: 2 comments

Tags: Fantasy, Handout, Ideas

Today I found a great post by Alric of The RPG Athenaeum, a list of one hundred street scenes that are the perfect thing for a fantasy DM to keep tucked away in the ideas file.

http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com

Not only are they great ways to add flavour to your towns and cities when players ask what they can see, but also if your players bite they can also serve as plot hooks.

One of my favourites:

A cart selling “roasted rat on a stick” is on the corner. The proprietor looks surprised as someone dressed in noble attire strolls up and orders one with honey sauce.

Thank you Mr.Dibbler.

The list is available as a nicely formatted PDF in the downloads section, where you’ll also find one hundred topics for tavern chatter!

Comments: Leave a comment

Tags: DMing, Fantasy, Ideas, Resource