Articles and discussion on Roleplaying including Shadow World, Forgotten Realms.
You slowly open your eyes, paint stabbing through your head and your body aching from head to toe. Gradually, your surroundings come into focus. Above, a smooth stone roof dripping cold water. Moving your head cautiously you realize you are in a small stone room blocked by rusting narrow bars. You are not alone. Other …
Continue reading “Shadow World Game Hook: The Lair of Ozymandias”
This is how I want to work the experience system. I am going to treat Skills, Stats and Magic in three different posts, not because there are different rules but because the way I envision them being handled is slightly different. As characters get there cultural background ranks and their 1st level development points to …
Continue reading “RMC House Rules – My Experience System #1 Skills”
One of the great qualities of Shadow World as a game setting is the number of different “styles” that can be found in the various books. No matter what type of fantasy game you play, you can probably find a place or time in Kulthea that can work for you. Cross-genre. SW’s sci-fi elements and …
I like few skills and broadly interpreted. What I mean is, take the Athletic Games skill as an example. Athletic Games: (Ag/Qu or Ag/St) Bonus for playing any one game primarily involving agility, coordination, and motor skills. You see I don’t agree with that in a fantasy setting. In the modern world you will get …
Continue reading “RMC House Rules – Character Creation #6 Skills”
I am not suggesting many changes to the Rolemaster races in my RMC variant but first a bit of background on the long running ‘issue’ of Elves and Self Discipline. Elves and Self Discipline Most elves in Rolemaster based games get a -20 on the Self Discipline (SD) stat. SD happens to be one of …
Continue reading “RMC House Rules – Character Creation #3 – Rolemaster Races”
After decades of GMing one of my greatest challenges has been to consistently invoke the feeling of surprise, wonder, fear and even caution into gameplay. While they may not be “jaded”, my gaming group have seen it all: there is no plot device, game trope or foe that will truly surprise them. We will probably …
Continue reading “In Search of the Unknown: Reintroducing caution to your players.”
Brih has been posting some of his groups house rules or hacks. This has inspired me to put forward some of my proposed house rules for an up coming game. I have alluded to many of these in the past but I have never listed them explictily. So there is Part I of character creation …
Continue reading “RMC House Rules – Character Creation #1 Stats”
A couple of weeks ago Loraedor posted an article called The Virtue Continuum which suggested the possibility of dice rolling personalities for PCs and NPCs alike to either provide a starting point for a new character or to give a psychological profile for an NPC. The criteria were Integrity, Discernment, Love, Respect, Humility, Diligence, Temperance …
Continue reading “Giving an NPC their Psychological Profile”
I have packed up all my game notes and rules and I will soon be on the train to Faerün (so to speak). The biggest difference in the game this time will be that I have adopted some advice I was given last week. For each major NPC I have given them a post-it note …
In Brian’s post [Shadow World Deux ex machina: Gods or Loremasters?] he mentions ‘time-strapped GMs have to rely even more on prepared materials and modules’. It is not only us poor GMs that don’t have the time that we used to. As you all probably know I am one of those GMs that only gets …