Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Afraid? Now what?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I ran a Call of Cthulhu game for 14 years. I guess I depict a pretty scary world in my D&D game. I think to some extent it should be scary. This is dangerous work, stopping powerful, evil creatures from doing their worst. More than stopping horrific monsters but killing them. Perhaps with the seriousness of the situation, fear is able to grow.
In any case, the party in my game is tending toward avoiding danger lately. I honestly did not expect this as the party has regularly gained power itself. But, that's not really my concern, is it? Any suggestions to discuss?

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Supposed To...

In this week’s game, the party briefly met a powerful dude on the road. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say that the party had every reason to believe that the person was powerful.

The party greeted him warily. The man replied, “I have killed many people today, so leave me alone.”

The party of 7th and 8th level characters did so, giving the man a wide birth. The man wore religious symbols of an unrecognizable faith.

The party went on into a large city and asked around at their various temples to see if anyone recognized the symbol the man wore. One popular, legalistic group, one that follows the sun god Atura, did recognize the symbol. They even recognized the description of the man. The Atura group notified the party that the man was “a killer of innocents,” and that “they should have killed him.”

After our gaming session ended, I had two players tell me that they were supposed to kill the disreputable man. I didn’t quite understand this. Their characters didn’t honor Atura so why were they supposed to do anything?

In my game the players aren’t “supposed” to do story elements that I lay before them. They do or they don’t on their own. There is the potential for death and reward in most things that they decide to do. They are adventurers after all, having chosen to be killers of evil creatures and robbers of graves. What they are “supposed” to do, in order to move “my” story forward, doesn’t enter into it. It’s their story.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Some of My Kit

I have collected and constructed quite a bit of stuff that I use regularly in my game. This is the dice tower I use to publicly display my die rolls:


Here are two very inexpensive cases I got at a super-store, and an expensive case actually made for minis:


My friend Hillary got me this, the most luxury item I own, a symbol of my greatest pride: my dice box. Salivate if you will, but it's mine:


I have posted my travel case before but, it's still awesome: