How to Craft a Campaign for your Table Top RPG

Ok, so I am back after surviving another game day on Monster Island vs. an evil Nazi tank that was exposed to radiation in which the crew were never able to leave the tank again, though it remains functional and with some unusual capabilities.

Anyway crafting a campaign can be long depending on just what you are looking to do.  A game can last one session, or two, or you can have it run a lot longer.

Here's the thing about a campaign, it is made up of several story lines that forms an over all story about your characters and their adventures.  A campaign ends when the group is ready to move on from their characters to others and to not give the old ones a glimpse again.


#1 - Jump On Point

A jump on point is a term used in comics that describes a point where new readers can "jump on" and join the story with out having to worry too much about who and what is going on.  This is often done in the form of "Issue #1" sort of stories or origin stories.  When you craft a campaign you need to figure out where to start a story and you have to ask yourself some questions:

• How skilled should the player characters (PC's) should be?  In this you should know how powerful they should start.  Are they just starting on their adventure, or have they already seen some action, or are they veterans of many battles?
• Just how will you bring them together once you figure out how strong to allow the PC's to be?
• And once you figure out how strong the PC's are, and how they should meet, you need to decide on how the first adventure in the campaign will go.  How challenging should it be for a starting adventure?

The next thing of course is the story.  A story is what gets your group to come each week to play.  You have to figure out what combat opportunities will come up, if they can be avoided in anyway, and just give the players a way to flesh out who their characters are and what they can do.

Once you have your first story in place its all about setting up encounters by following a script.

Like writing a the script for a movie you will have lines of dialogue outlined for certain encounters in your story, but its the players who will direct where the story goes.  Players have a habit of doing things you weren't planing for, so keep this in mind when writing your game up.  Keep things loose so that if the players go in a different direction than expected or wanted then either shift things around to get them to where you want them to go, or allow them to go off track a bit and let them get back to what you had planed later.

#2 - Flexibility

One of the best things you need to learn as a GM is how to be flexible.  And I don't mean by doing yoga.  No what I mean is like what I stated above, players will do unexpected things and you need to be ready and expecting for them to do that at any given time.

When you write up a game, come up with a few side missions, or short little points of interest that allows your players to have their moments away from the group, like developing a love interest.  Its up to to the player to go down that path should they find it, and if not its ok.

So while you may have your main story in place, having a few sites to see is always a good thing to have that adds layer to the story even if it doesn't add to the story.  And sometimes the side things may give little clues as to what is really happening in the main story if the players are willing to take a risk and look into things.  These are good ways of getting players who go off track to get back on track a bit.

For example:  Jason Greyholme, (aka Agent Greyholme of the FBI, aka the super hero known as Torrent - my character) is in the office filling out paper work.  The GM tells me, his player) that its lunch time and asks what I will do.  I decide to eat in the office cafe because I'm behind on paper work and the boss isn't happy with me right now.

Here I decided not to go with the hook the GM offered me to do something, instead the GM is forced to let me stay in the office and catch up on paperwork which my character needs to do, but its a minor blip on the radar of things that can be done.  My character could have gone and met a girl and started a relationship.  He could have gone out, gotten involved in a robbery where he steps up and takes down the robbers on his own earning him some accolades from the public.  Or any number of things could have happened.

A GM has to anticipate things like this.

Another good example is the recent one that occurred with my friend Ian and his character Jack-be-Nimble.  Now I talked about players doing things the GM doesn't account for and Ian did just that during our time on Monster Island...in fact I've probably mentioned it before.

So during an encounter we came across VIPER agents attacking some lizard men.  We attacked the VIPER agents and gave the lizard men, who were loosing, time to escape.  We also figured that since they were likely more indigenous to the island than the VIPER agents that we would aid them in hope that they may turn a blind eye to what we were doing.  Jack took it upon himself to take on the one VIPER agent who wore a higher quality red and gold uniform who seemed to have more skill than the other agents she was around.  Alicia (as we learned her name to be) was their commander and Jack not only started to disarm her, but also was hitting on her at every turn.  Being our speedster he is nearly impossible to hit most times, and he proved that easily with Alicia, or Boot-Alicia as he has come to call her (as she was indeed fairly attractive).  He disarmed her, blocked her attacks, thwarted her attempts to evade our group when she chose to flee, and was knocked out by him.

It then continued on as we went back to the UNTIL base on Monster Island where he visited her in the holding cells they have (which are meant for holding dangerous monsters - not people - but they work), and chatted with her all night turning her death threats into signs of love for him.

This was not something the GM could have anticipated in happening, but he used it.  She has sworn t make Jack pay for her disgrace and is thus his first Nemesis (which he is quite proud of).  Torrent/Jason - my character - told him to come talk to me when he's got two (like mine has).  It was a weak burn, but my character doesn't get a lot of times to do playful banter as he is often the butt of jokes as he is a government agent.

Now to get a bit off track...

Also an odd occurrence with my character is that he tends to get blown up a lot more than anyone else in the group.  I've rolled this unusual occurrence which the GM doesn't plan to happen, but it does, into my character complaining about it happening too often to him.  In this one in game day alone my character has been through 3 separate explosions.  The first was when he got hit by an a 20mm shell (admittedly, Valnovas took 3 hits from the same gun...but he's tougher than my character).  Then we faced off against the Nazi tank which shot a round at the ground to catch me in the explosion it would make since it had no turret and its cannon barrel could only adjust its aim so much - and I am flying...and holding a satchel charge to plant on it and blow it up.

First I get hit with the explosion of the first shell.  Then the satchel charge goes off in my arms.  I was lucky with the first hit that I was high enough off the ground that I reduced the damage taken enough to be survivable.  But then the second round of damage came and that was that, then there was the knock back and fall damage.  I survived but was knocked out (thanks to the GM rolling fairly low for damage = 32 Stun/11 Body, and 34/12 Body, and 24 Stun/8 Body).  Now luckily it was all separate occurrences which my defenses could apply to each separately.

Before this I think I was blown up at least 2 or maybe 3 other times.

Now because this has been an unusual occurrence of regularity for my character, which the GM has acknowledged, I can possibly buy some defensive powers to have against explosions because it has worked out in the game to allow for it.

Its things like this as a GM that you need to be sure to keep an eye out for and acknowledge when they happen.  Benefits can be something you just allow a player to get when they have the XP for it (like with Torrent), or maybe you give a reward of some other sort, like if a PC is always working out when not adventuring...maybe for their continued dedication to doing this in character you award them with an Ability score point or a free feat, or talent, or  something else that is appropriate.

#3 - The Next Game

The last thing you want to keep in mind is how to roll into the next game.  Where is a good cut off point in this game?  Are the players having fun?  Where do you go from here and how can you keep the players engaged?

Always look to the things you like for inspiration for games.  Books, video games, TV shows, movies - all can inspired idea's for game sessions.  And don't be afraid to deliberately borrow some things and make some tweaks here and there to make it your own.

And yes, there is "A Song of Ice & Fire" RPG for all you Game of Throne's fans.

Again if anyone has any questions or need help with an adventure, let me know and I'll assist in what ever way I can.

In the mean time, I got an almost 2yr old little boy on my lap right now who just does not want to fall asleep (its 10:11pm).  Time to play some video games because that always seems to work for some reason.

Later everyone.

Star Wars Teaser Trailer and Being a Game Master

Ok so the new Star Wars trailer is out and there is already some controversy about one thing that appears in it.  The Sith lightsaber that is ignited near the end.


[Yep, this one.]

The argument is that its impossible and that the blade hand guard wouldn't work unless the hilt was made from a lightsaber resistant material.  However another argument is this:  its intimidating.  The Sith draw their power from the dark side of the Force.  And what will a person do when they see this thing?  Their going to freak out a bit - fear.

Also the blade hand guard allows the user to punch with the hilt and do damage that way rather than relying on broad swings.  So I see this argument against it as invalid as people clearly haven't thought through all of the uses of the cross guard.  Also the blade's beam looks unusually long too.  Yes the grants better reach in a fight, but once inside one's guard that long main beam blade becomes a liability, so that can also be why the shorter beams are present in the cross guard.

But enough on those aesthetic problems.

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Being a Game Master
Ok, so this is mainly for anyone new to being a GM, as well as for some more seasoned GM's who may have problems that they need a new perspective on solving.  So lets start with the basics in what I call the Rules on GMing.

Rule 1
Its just a game, you want everyone to have a good time.



Now I've been in a few different gaming groups over the years and every GM has a different way of running their games.  And one key thing that I've seen that is often forgotten is that it is just a game.  Yes you could have been playing a campaign for years, and a character or two die through no one's fault but unfortunate die rolls.  As a GM you have to understand that yes people can become emotionally involved with a character, and when you take that character away or make drastic changes to them its best to take the player aside and chat with them a bit before you play out the event for everyone to see.

Now in some cases you can't do this because what you have planed is supposed to be a secret.  But you have to take time with the player affected and chat with them.  I've seen where a GM killed a character off and just said - go make a new one and I'll work you back in some how.  Not a good way of doing things at all.

When you take something away you have to give something back.  For example if a character dies you allow a new character to be brought in at the same level as the character that died, but minus the XP that the rest of the group has; unless they are all really close to leveling, in which case you could offer the new character to start 1 level above everyone else when they come in, but when XP is gotten for the adventure that would level everyone up they don't get to add any in XP to their character until everyone is at their level, so extra XP that flows over could be applied still.  This also could allow the new character to start with better gear than what their previous character may have had as higher level characters tend to have more money to spend for buying starting gear.

In Hero System we do the same thing.  We set land marks in point totals, so when a new character comes in they come in at that land mark. We started our adventures with 350pt characters.  We're now at close to 450pt characters.  Now if my character died, I could bring in a new one either at a point value equal to my lost character or at our land mark of 425pts (this would put me behind everyone else, but because of the nature of the Hero System its not a big deal).

In the end remember that as a GM your purpose is to make sure that the players - your friends - have fun, and yes you should have fun too.


Rule 2
If it takes away from the fun then is it really needed?

So one thing that can slow a game down are some of the rules.  And lets face it there are sometimes rules that just leave you scratching your head.  This is where House Rules come into play.  House Rules are something that not just your, but the entire group decides on.  They are rule changes and additions that are meant to improve on your gaming experience.  If you don't like a rule - cut it out and use something else in its place.

Now there are some players that are "Rule Lawyers".  They know all the rules, often by heart, and dislike changes.  The first thing you want to do is identify these people and talk with them about changes and why you are changing them, and get them on board with accepting the changes.  Make sure that you write down any changes you make though.


Rule 3
Problematic players can be handled.



One big thing that you have to remember as a GM is to communicate.  The problem you may face is the communication from the other way.  Some players can be problematic in this regard.  They tend to do what ever they want and not work with the group.  They create chaos and they tend to think its fun to get on the nerves of everyone.

This is why you talk to everyone in the group about their characters, get everyone on the same page.  If several players are going to be playing characters of dubious morals, then it is a good idea to have the other players and their characters on the same page - or close enough to it.  Just letting everyone play what ever they want with no communication is not a good idea.

Also its not necessarily a good idea to make everyone's character's for them...though an exception for this is if your trying out a new game system for the first time.

And even with all aspects of communication being used with the troubled player, they can still choose to be a complete and utter a-hole about things.  Its when you've tried every nice way to get them to be apart of the group and not have it work that you have to take a harder edge.  Here they have to know that they need to get on the same page as everyone or they need to move on.  And I understand that sometimes this means that you can loose two players because the problem player is the friend of someone else.  And if this other friend cannot get them to play along then you need to suck it up and accept that they need to go.

Letting a player go should be the last act for dealing with a problem, and your other players need to know what your thinking of doing.  You can get new players, they can be found.  Its never easy but think about how easy it was putting together the group for the first time to begin with.


Rule 4
Shooting the Breeze shouldn't dominate your time, but should be allowed.

So out of game talk happens a lot and it does detract from the game.  Something comes up in the game and it makes you think of a joke or maybe an odd occurrence for the game and you or someone else makes their thoughts known which derails the game a bit.

Here's the thing.  Its going to happen, make peace with it, have others make peace with it. Its part of the whole "getting together with friends to play a game" experience.  Of course you don't want the entire game session to be just this.  That's why as a GM you will want to let it go, but get people back on track in polite ways.

On the other hand make sure that if the player is saying something to get clarification on if its the player or the character talking, or thinking for that matter.  The player may decide that a funny comment made about another NPC may need to be said out loud as its just apart of who the character is - regardless of the consequences - which can lead for good role playing opportunities.  On the other hand an internal monologue may be better.

An example of this is a story my groups Champions campaign GM likes to tell.

He had a group of heroes facing off against the Dr. Destroyer.  Now Dr. Destroyer is over 1,000pts in his build.  He is a master villain like Dr. Doom.  Now Dr. Destroyer warned the heroes that if they interfere with his plans he would "smite them".

Then in a brilliant moment, and in character, a player decides to say: "Smite, who the hell say's smite?"

Now his character was a very tough brick, and yes he did learn what the word smite means when used by a master villain.  But it was one of those moments where he chose to say it rather than keeping it as internal monologue.  It resulted in a great scene.

Another moments like this was when a guy in my group was facing off against a Minotaur.  The GM warned us that saying "moo" to the Minotaur would be a bad idea.  But my friend threw caution to the wind and told the GM his character deliberately says it to the Minotaur to piss him off.



So be mindful of what the players are saying and if it gets out of hand institute the "in character/out of character rule".  This rule means that anything you say is in character unless you deliberately tell everyone you say it out of character.  Some GM's have use this rule to reign in on excess talking that seems to dominate a game session and slow things down.  But remember to talk to your players about why your doing it and ask them to be better about it next time.


Anyway it is now 12:00pm here in Oregon and I need to get going to my group.  Will we survive Monster Island?  Will Jack-be-Nimble get a kiss from the lady VIPER agent he has been courting (and by courting I mean harassing), will our lives ever be the same after Monster Island?  Can we live without Godzilla being no more than 20 miles away?

Who knows, but its time for the great escape from the Nazi lair of doom on Monster Island.

I'll be back later to talk more about building a campaign.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well happy turkey day to everyone.  I am currently with family and using my shitty tablet to make an entry for the day.

What tablet am I using that would invoke such dislike?  It is an ASUS Transformer T300.  It runs off of crappy android OS and is slow as heck.  If I could get a windows tablet I would but I still have no job and just have to make due.  It has a keyboard/back-up battery that does work...but it no longer holds a charge for its battery as my kids dropped the tablet while it was charging and the charging port got broke.

On the video game front I have finished out Chapter 2 in Far Cry 4 and unlocked the North now.  So just gotta push on in that front.

I am still planing on posting something on how to be a Game Master for new people, but I'll do that when I get home and a computer in front of me where I can easily add pictures.

Anyway thank you everyone for reading my blog and please get your friends to read it to and follow.  And if you have any questions on any table top RPG's that you would like to ask, please do so, I'll call you out and make a post to help.

(NOTE - On my computer now; has been updated with pics)

Where the time goes...

Right so for the past few days I've been playing:



I gotta say that this has been a really fun game with some interesting and fun characters...though two particular characters (Anita and Sabal) could use more personality, and more missions that could paint more sympathy with Anita, or make Sabal into more of an a-hole.  Instead Anita is on a path of becoming a drug lord or something worse.  Sabal however is apparently trapped in the past (according to Anita), but has a lot better moral standards.

For example in your first "choose one side or another" you want to side with Sabal to save the lives of freedom fighters, but Anita makes an argument for having good intel.  Now in real life having good intel can save more lives than 9 people.  But the next mission definitely put into perspective how Anita wants to work, and how Sabal works.

Now I am playing this on the X-Box 360 and I've seen gameplay for the X-Box One and PS4, and so far the game play isn't too far off from what I've seen in the higher quality versions.

But the game is a lot of fun and if you haven't played it, get your hands on it.  I've just finished up the 3rd Choice-a-side mission (in case anyone wants to know where I'm at in the game.  I've also met Willis and finished his mission in the alps.

Also riding an elephant...the best for causing utter chaos.  Nothing better than an elephant throwing cars around like they were nothing.

So what else is there to say.  Its a good game, get it and enjoy.


Next time I'm on here I'm going to chat about GMing for people who are new to being GM's for their table top games.

Star Wars - Edge of the Empire RPG

So its been a while since I've played Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.  When I played it I was the GM and ran my group through the introductory adventure in the beginner's set.



For those who have played other Star Wars tabletop RPG's before, but not bothered to look into this one, should keep an open mind.

The game rules are setup to provide pretty balanced characters, though the rules do take some getting used to.  First off the only major issue that anyone will have is one that alot of people seem to have with Fantasy Flight and their games - you gotta use their dice.

That is to say you can still use normal assorted dice (d6, d8, d12).  But you have to spend time referencing a conversion chart.  Thus its a good idea to fork some money out for their dice.  The problem is - what if no one else in your group wants to buy some.  I ran into that problem with my group so I forked out some bank to get a few sets of dice for them to use.  As for me I got the app on my smartphone which works well enough, though there was also a sheet of stickers you could put on any other dice you have.


I also only have the BETA book too but that was ok, we made do and weren't looking to get too involved yet.  But the starter set had all we needed which was fine.

The nice thing about the rules is that they allow for some liberty in deciding how a success plays out.  Sure you can succeed at a task, but depending on what you roll you can get an advantage or a hindrance.  A good example of this is when Luke Skywalker was with Princess Leia on the Death Star.  Luke blasted the controls of the blast door to cut them off from the Stormtroopers following them.

Here the GM sees that having Luke slice the controls to keep the troopers from just opening the door would take too much time.  Luke makes the skill roll anyway and is allowed to add a bonus die to his roll for using his blaster to shoot the controls.  Luke rolls and succeeds, but he also generates a complication for him and Leia in that while he succeeded in blasting the controls and sealing the doors locks he also destroyed the controls that extended the bridge.

Now that could have played out differently where he did shoot the controls and the resulting effect could have caused the bridge to extend.  Or maybe the door didn't lock if he failed.  Sure he blasted the heck out of the controls but it just destroyed his controls and did nothing for his opponents.

This is the sort of thing that happens in this new game system.  There is alot more interpretation and storytelling involved in this new game system.

Classes are still a thing in this game system but they serve only as an initial jump on point, and you can take on stuff from other classes - for an inflated XP cost.

And now we move on to the topic of classes.

Each class is something you are set into and cannot change.  They give you access to 3 different talent trees which grant your character a number of different bonuses.  Now when you buy talents from your class trees they cost only the amount shown...but you can buy the use of talent trees out side of your class from any class.  The cost is higher but beneficial to help you craft the character you want.

Now the rules state that you can only have up to 3 talent trees at a time for your character so there is a limit on how much you can get.

Combat damage can run in a few different ways, low or high, depending on how dangerous the GM wants things to be for the group.

I am thinking of running another game in the future if my group wants to as its an interesting system.  Now I do plan on getting the other books in the future too.



My only gripe with the system was that character creation isn't really laid out in a step by step process like in other RPG's.  So it does take a some time to figure out.

So if your interested, give the system a try.  They don't exactly have any mini's out yet for the system...but that's only a matter of time.  On the other hand there already is a surplus of Star Wars mini's out there from Wizards of the Coast.


Anyway hope you all have a good week end and let me know if there's anything else you want to know about some of these RPG's I am talking about.  I'm more than happy to help out with any questions anyone may have, I'll answer as best I can.


And in case anyone is curious.  I used to have a web site years ago called "Possibilities Unlimited".  It was a website where I devoted doing conversions for RPG's.  Conversions were where you took something and converted it for use in a game's rules.  An example of this would be Dragon Ball Z.  I remember putting a ton of time and effort into crafting each conversion for DBZ and turned out 4 Editions of the game with rules made up of close to if not over 150 pages long.

I did other stuff that folks really liked, but that was a really long time ago and I don't have any of my old work saved.

As time goes on I'll share some work that I'm doing, adventure ideas and so on for folks to use.  I'll even try and set up other pages for me to hash these things out on.

On an ending note, if your curious you can still find the website in the internet archive.  Just know that I think I spelled "Possibilities" wrong in the sites title, but I was young and spell check wasn't what it is today.  We're talking 1999 or so...yep that was along time ago - I'm 35 now.

Better times really compared to some of my more recent trials and tribulations, But what can you do but keep moving forward.