The Inspire Creativity series will require folks to work their creative muscles a bit. For clarity’s sake, these posts will be heavily moderated and anything that goes against the rules posted with every Inspire Creativity post will be deleted.
Anyone who half-knows me will confirm : I love noir.
And not cute, platonic love, either.
I’ve always been a major fan of the hardboiled detectives, the femmes fatales and the quadruple-crossing so commonly found in the genre. Thus, as this week’s “Inspire Creativity”, I present you a little noir story I’ve written, and that I want you folks to continue for me.
The rules are simple : you just have to follow up the last comment bit of story while firmly holding a “Yes, and…” mentality. Everything is allowed as long as you write in the style and mood that has been imposed, and of course, actually continue the story of the first post. Have fun!
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I wanted to take this opportunity (and by opportunity, I mean “Abuse of the fact that you are subscribed to my RSS and will read this anyways) to congradulate the Chatty DM for his soon-to-be-published adventure.
The 4E adventure should be published this summer by Goodman Games.
For more information, or just to give him some love, see this post on his blog.
I link you way to much, Chatty.
Have you ever felt the holy might of the FATE system, from Spirit of the Century? Apart from that book having one of the strongest GM section (suggesting, for example, to “Send in the ninjas”) I’ve seen in a book in my short and mostly uneventful life, it brought a few interesting mechanical concepts to the table.
The core of the FATE system is what they call “aspects”. Although we won’t be studying the intricacies of “aspects” (although you can find the SRD here), I’ve found that they’re fairly easy to implement in any game with a little house-ruling and a tiny bit of time to add a layer of depth to your players’ characters.
Aspects
Aspects are a word, an expression, a quote, that represents something a character is skilled or talented in. For example, a character with the “Daughter of a seamstress” aspect would be pretty skilled in the fine art of sewing.
The exact bonus such an aspect would give depends heavily on “What is decent, following the spirit of the system”. In DnD 4E, it could be an extra +5 on a skill check and not be that ridiculous (the equivalent of a specialization, or skill training, or what-have-you) or in a White Wolf, it’d be, say, one dice, same as a specialization (Hey! Look! A trend!) (more…)
This is one of two posts I’ve submitted on Musings of the Chatty DM, under the pseudonyme Kitsune. If you didn’t enjoy them back then, please feel free to do so now. Thank you, that will be all.
Please note that this essay is incredibly experimental and is to be taken as food for thoughts rather than a serious collection of amazing tips. Except for the John Woo Principle. That’s freaking genius.
“When in Doubt, Blow EVERYTHING up!”
Hello, blogosphere, how I have missed you! It’s Kitsune again, self-styled apprentice of the dark side of RPG blogging, here to steal Chatty’s thunder until I can make my own. Like Thor. Thor’s cool.
Today, we blow stuff up up.
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This is one of two posts I’ve submitted on Musings of the Chatty DM, under the pseudonyme Kitsune. If you didn’t enjoy them back then, please feel free to do so now. Thank you, that will be all.
Even though I don’t get Japanese and somehow manage to guess that Utada Hikaru did not sing about the GM’s condition (if you don’t get what I’m saying, brush up on your J-pop, kids), her title says it all. As Game Masters, our one worst enemy is not that one player who keeps screwing with your plans, but the fabled GM’s Blues.
It’s that time of year, and I’m not talking about Christmas, but that 3 months time-span during which the winter blues hits some of us (probably more then we all think) and kills our well-earned creativity. So, my friends, readers, minions of The Great Chatty DM, I come bearing gifts! Weapons to fight the blues (at least +1, guaranteed).
The problem
When under the blues, most GMs try to open their minds as much as possible with hopes of grabbing a stray idea. They would use anything that they could get their kobold-like little claws on, but end up laying around in creative catatonia (stray ideas, ridiculous grapple bonus, don’t even bother). While searching for a general idea, looking aimlessly for awesome, one grows weary and bored, loses interest and further kills his or her own creativity. It’s the classic “Kill, revive and kill some more” torture, but self-inflicted. Needless to say, it’s not good for your brain.
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