Low-prep map-making

The map to the left is a rough map over the city in which our latest campaign takes place. What's special with it is how it was created. Instead of me drawing the map before the gaming session (something that a: would take a lot of time and b: propably not resulting in a particulary interesting place), I tried another thing.

I let the players draw the map. Using the guidelines in Starblazers and Legends of Anglerre, the map was gradually built from nothing. After 15-20 minutes (roughly) the city grew in front of my eyes.

What helped, I think, was that this was actually the second session in this city, and I had been fairly clear with what style and genre the game was (I was aiming for a kind of medeival Venice/ Italy, with loads of conspiracies and intrigue).

My impression was that the players enjoyed doing it. We all got an immediate connection and relation to the city, and I didn't have to spend as much time preparing the game. The players also supplied me with numerous of interesting plot hooks and places that I could add into the campaign. On my evergoing quest towards minimizing prep-time, I think this was a successful experiment.

The year of the super hero

If you, like me, enjoy a good super-hero game once in a while, these last couple of months, and the rest of this year as been a gold mine... or a flood, depending on how you look at it. Let's see.. a while ago Wild Talents 2nd edition was released in print. This was followed by BASH Ultimate edition, Supers! and Icons! As if this wasn't enough, Green Ronin has announced both a DC Heroes license and a third edition of Mutants and Masterminds, to be released this fall.

Man.. so many games, so little time..

Learning a new game, a micro-tip

Recently we started a new campaign using a new system (Reign) that none of us had ever played before. Before this, I was a bit nervous, because it was a game I've been looking forward to try out for a long time, and I felt a little pressure from the rest of the group that it should be good.

So, in order to make it easier for both me and the rest of the players to get into the game, I decided to write a short summary of the game. A kind of cheat-sheet, with all the important stuff written down.

What I wrote down was

• The general dice-mechanic (since it's a bit quirky in the ORE-system) and basic rules. Including the most common exceptions / special cases.
• Basic skill usage, and some special cases
• Healing and dying. (since these are things I tend to forget when I learn new games)
• The combat system (or the most important bits of)
• The different combat maneuvers that can be used in a combat, abbreviated

I left out lists of things, and also character creation, magic and similar. This was because it's not used in the game as such. 

I found this had a number of advantages

• It served as a handy reference sheet for both me and the players
• It forced me to go through the entire game. Since I wanted to write a summary of all the rules, I also had to think them through so that I understood them. This in turn made it easier for me to remember the rules even without looking at the cheat-sheet.

After the first game session it was definately a help, in many ways. However, I also did notice that somethings where missing. But after looking those things up, it was of course no problem adding some clarifications and additions.

I used Google Docs to write it, and also invited the rest of the group to that document, so that they could read it through, clarify/format some bits, and print it out directly if they wanted to.

My only complaint so far is that Google Docs lacks even basic layout-tools. I would like to be able to make the sheet a bit more compressed, so that more elements could be fitted into one page. Overall though, it has worked like a charm, and I'll do that again whenever it's time to play a new game.

Damn Green Ronin!!!

For those of you that read my previous post, I just decided on this years gaming budget. My thinking was that "well, there's nothing more intereting on the horizon anyway".

The following day, Green Ronin dropped this bomb, revealing that they have a license to produce a DC Heroes RPG.

There goes my budget...

My gaming-budget this year

Darn... it's only May (and beginning of May at that), but it seems my gaming purchases for this year are already planned. It has been an interesting year so far, and there are a number of games that will get my hard earned money (and some already has).


Games and game-books already purchased are

• Wild Talents 2nd edition + Wild Talents Essential Edition
• the Day after Ragnarok
• Reign Enchiridion
• add to that a small number of PDF's to the Gumshoe-system and savage worlds (mostly)

In addition to that

• I've preordered Icons! (the new super-hero game by Steve Kenson)
• I will preorder the Dresden Files
• Purchase Legends of Anglerre as soon as possible.

It seems like my new systems of choice are the ORE-system and various Fate-incarnations. So far, I consider them elegant, nice and modern systems that are open to swift and easy playing, without to much preparation time, at the same time as they cover a lot of ground/ areas.