Topics

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / RPPR Review on The Hopeless Gamer

« on: May 08, 2010, 10:24:26 PM »

I just wrote a review for RPPR over at The Hopeless Gamer (surprise: it's positive!), and I wanted to let you all know! Need to point to a third-party review of RPPR for your friends who are (foolishly) on the edge of whether or not to give the podcast a try? Point 'em over here ( http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2010/05/role-playing-public-radio-more.html ) and we can work together to bring them to the dark side that is RPPR!

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General Chaos / Twitter thread Mk. II

« on: December 20, 2009, 09:51:24 PM »

So here's the old Twitter thread: http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=128.0. I was going to post a reply there, but the forum didn't want me to; it in fact strongly suggested I make a new thread. So, here's it is, obeying the internet overlord's order to make a new thread.

I'll admit that I'm a late bloomer to Twitter. I've been following a few people for a while now, but never writing many tweets for myself. That's changing, so here's my twitter account for those interested in gaming/geek things - http://twitter.com/Paul_Vogt

I'm happy to follow anyone that posts their account - the more networking we all do, the more we get out of Twitter (which I often mistype as "tweeter" for some reason  ), right?

This thread could also be used to discuss which famous person is actually interesting to follow and which ones just are no good. For instance, I appreciate Brian Michael Bendis' tweets (he's a big time comics writer for those not in the know). Another worth following is shitmydaysays: http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays which you need to read to believe how good it is.

Any other recommendations are welcomed!

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Play by Post / Thinking about running a Hunter: The Vigil or Geist game...

« on: October 24, 2009, 03:57:04 PM »

Title says it all. I've never ran an online game before, but I'm itching to actually see these games in action. I'm leaning right now towards Hunter, but would be open for Geist as well. Please post if you're interested to begin with, I'm thinking 3 to 6 players, depending on level of interest. I have a couple of different ideas I'd like to think about more story-wise, but the tone of my Hunter game would be similar to the TV show Supernatural, cause those Winchester boys are badasses.

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General Chaos / The Hopeless Gamer is giving away a copy of WD #356!

« on: October 06, 2009, 07:21:40 PM »

The Hopeless Gamer Blog is holding a contest to give away a copy of White Dwarf #356! In the theme of the issue of White Dwarf, which focuses on the new release of Space Hulk, to enter you need to write a space hulk - themed Haiku. Here's the Haiku from my co-writer that inspired the contest:

Brother Zael was screwed
His armor opened by claws
Terminator Treat

(Inspired by this post's picture (http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/09/poor-brother-zael.html#comments) of our first attempt to play mission 1, poor Brother Zael...)

We're also accepting horror/Halloween themed Haiku's because October is the best month of the year. Check out this post (http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/10/contest-announcement.html) for the details on how to enter/win. As long as you follow the rules of Haiku and the themes, you'll be entered in, one entry per person please!

Thank you for your time!

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RPGs / Good GM Habits

« on: August 30, 2009, 03:31:41 PM »

What makes a good GM? Is it hours and hours of prep time or is it good improvisation skills? What do you think for you personally and what has made games you've been a part of particularly great or interesting due to the GM?

This thread obviously comes from inspiration from Ross' Bad GM Habits thread, but I thought we could instead think of what makes GM's do well instead of frustrate and infuriate their players.

I'll start!

The other inspiration for this thread comes from my GM'ing experience from this past Friday night as I hosted a game (our group's first game) of 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars. The game is great because a notebook page's worth of notes and about 10 minutes of my time and I had the entire scenario, or at least enough to get us going, all prepared.

I didn't really know how I was going to end the story other than "big alien swarm attacks them in the end, OH NO!" The players were to land on the planet, make their way to Bunker 6 to reinforce Lt. Carlson's force and help him take out the alien queen. Carlson had gone kind of crazy and not much of his force was left (he was in fact taking one of them out at a time for "scouting missions" and going crazy, coming back alone).

They went off to hunt the queen taking the survivors with them, but leaving Carlson behind to "protect the bunker." They get to a cave and see some of the dead troopers armor with little sticks set around them spelling out "Carlson" and their first thought was "Oh SHIT, Carlson's been infected by the queen and is the host body for her, we gotta go kill her!"

Well, no, not really, he was just a crazy ass military dude, but I went with it, molded the details to fit the story they had all come up with, and they all got a very satisfying final fight of taking out the remaining aliens on the planet on the way to take out that bastard Carlson the queen.

It was excellent, and I've never had so much fun improvising. Basically, this thread is about good GM habits, or I guess good times had as a GM also. 

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RPGs / Geist: The Sin-Eaters review is complete!

« on: August 17, 2009, 09:43:35 PM »

Hey all, now sure if there's crazy big excitement for Geist here at the RPPR boards, but in case there's interest, I've started my Geist review at The Hopeless Gamer and you can check it out here: http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/08/geist-sin-eaters-first-glance-review.html

Feel free to post questions about the game, but realize that it may be a while before I get to the part of the book where I can answer them.

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RPGs / Gencon Indy coverage - help me decide what pictures to post live from the show!

« on: August 08, 2009, 10:52:12 PM »

Obviously the RPPR crew is going to do a great job covering the big event, but I just wanted to let those who can't make it to Gencon know that I'll be live blogging pictures and other odd notes at my blog as I have now mastered the art of instant blogging! So, shameless promotion aside, if anyone wants a picture of something particular to get a better look at Gencon, I'm taking as many requests as I can. Just go to the blog link in my signature and reply to the recent post with the open offer of picture-taking happy times.

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RPGs / Favorite nWoD game?

« on: August 02, 2009, 04:22:34 PM »

Hey, I'm looking for people's opinions on the different nWoD settings and fatsplats. I'm leaning towards Hunter or possible Geist once it's released for my group, but looking for personal opinions on the different games.

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RPGs / Going camping...God give me strength, RPPR Forums give me ideas!

« on: July 22, 2009, 09:29:59 PM »

I'm going camping this weekend and it occurred to me that camping might actually be a really good setting to get some gaming in. I hate camping, but the wife loves it, so she may appease me by playing a game of imagination with me Unfortunately I don't have time to pick up any new ideas or games since we're leaving tomorrow, but I was wondering if any of you have gamed while camping or have good ideas for games that would be excellent when going camping.

This trip's pretty small and I'll have two, hopefully three players along for any of my games. I hope to run a game of Mouse Guard at Gencon, and given it's emphasis towards smaller groups, I'm going to try to run it this weekend, also, any of my players are going to be straight-up noobs to tabletop gaming, so that might be something important to think about.

Anyway, odd topic I know, but any ideas?

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RPGs / Looking for Advice on starting new with New World of Darkness

« on: June 21, 2009, 11:31:17 PM »

A little intro, my group started role playing about two years ago, and before this time none of us had any real tabletop experience. Star Wars Saga Edition was our first game and we added 4th ed. D&D once that was released, and we play both on some kind of regular basis (so basically we're real familiar with current D20 products).

I've really been looking at running a nWoD game for a while now and have been making my way through the core book. I just picked up Antagonists as well, but haven't had a chance to check it out really yet.

I pitched my nWoD game idea to my group friday night and after a little time, they all got into the spirit of things because an ongoing horror, modern game is something we haven't done yet (we have played several games of the jenga-Dread game, but those were all one-shots).

I'm still really new to the nWoD game line and universe in general. My idea for my chronicle is a sandbox game in a fictional city (Parson City, Colorado) that's been cut off from the rest of the world but is quite large on its own and is starting to adapt to a system of limited resources. I'm going to run a mortals game at least to begin with so we can all learn the system and gain a healthy fear of the bad things that are starting to get to the city and leave their mark more and more.

With all that in mind, what other books would be a good place to start with other than the core book and antagonists? None of my characters are cops or military personnel, so I don't think those source books would be helpful. I want to give my guys a really developed, large city with lots of options and tons of hooks all over the place to make them feel like they really are taking the lead and I'm not railroading them even the tiniest bit (which can happen quite often in combat-focused systems like d20 stuff). I've read a little bit about the Vampire book Damnation City, would it be worthwhile and helpful for helping me develop my Mortals city? I'm not necessarily going to have a "Prince" (not sure exactly what that all entails at this point), but it seems like a good book to build NPC's with regardless, is this true?

Should I look at trying to get Armory or Armory Reloaded? Those seem to be neat books from what I've read, but are they really useful or pertinent at this point?

Last thing: I'm looking at eventually having all the characters upgrade themselves to Hunters using the Hunter: The Vigil system on after a little bit of the characters getting to know the newly changed city and giving them a chance to learn that things aren't quite right not just in the bar or park next door, but all over town. In your experiences, is this kind of transition to normal mortal to a super something that's easily doable, or will I have to have my players start brand new characters?

Ok, last question for real: any books in general, across any nWoD line, that has a big or particularly awesome list of antagonists outside of the Antagonists book I should look at?

Thanks for reading my long-ass post! Any general nWoD advice is also welcomed!