Player agency is a critical element of role playing games to me. One of the things that greatly dissatisfies me about most series of modules is how much they tend to need the story to progress in a certain direction. The label ‘Adventure Path’ itself rings player agency warning bells …
I’ve been asked on Google+ if it is really necessary to do all of this work making graphs and thinking about things far away from the adventure I’m actually working on. My answer is, I suppose, a mix of “not really” and “it can help”. Not Really If I want …
Yesterday I started moving from macro scale to micro scale, outlining a set of possibly-related campaigns. Now I’m digging for some more detail in Donnerkonig Heirs. I’ll start by working on the graph for the campaign. I know I’ve got Keys of Heraka-at and four adventures to acquire the treasures …
In Layers Upon Layers in the Sandbox I described how things can be linked together. Now it’s time to put it into practice. First, I’ll map out some potential campaigns. I know of two already, The Donnerkonig Heirs and Return of the Donnerkonig, and can imagine several others. Some are …
The campaign and scenario design methods I use encourage nonlinear design and play. They are fractal in nature, applying to many levels and degrees of scope. This can lead to a rich and complex campaign setting. At the adventure level, it is pretty easy to devise encounters that hold nonlinear …
Just as well I slept on it. The Keys of Heraka-at looks like it went from “single adventure” to “opening of a two-campaign bundle”. I don’t have all the details yet, I’m feeling for the shape of it, but here’s what I’ve got so far. It will be building on …
I have talked in the past of how I dislike linear scenarios and adventure paths. A friend has described strongly-linear games as “walking in a painted tube” because you can see what you are presented, and your only real choices are to go forward or maybe to go back. As …
About ten years ago I played in a campaign based on the Warhammer setting. We were operating out of Mordenheim, nominally working for a “Mr. Graf”, a businessman with broad contacts within the community and an almost-explicable amount of wealth because of it. My first character, Jerris the Toolsmith… well, …
I have a very structured mind. I have been told that I am remarkably adept at organizing information and making sense of things. I never been told I have a great imagination, and honestly, I don’t think I do. It’s a bit of an inconvenience when designing things — I …
Emphasis on the wrong word there. Lusus Naturae — Freaks of Nature — is a book of horrific monsters. However, being ‘H’ day, something had to give. I’ve been a fan of Rafael Chandler’s RPG work for a while now. I’ve reviewed his Teratic Tome, I’ve posted about what I learned from it, …