Making NPC Decisions with the Mythic GM Emulator

The Mythic Game Master Emulator is a well-known system for running RPGs without a GM, or for providing extra plots twists and scene detail for GMs that lack planning time. It uses an ingenious scene, chaos and table system to spin out answers to yes/no questions and insert plot twists into the game as you play. I use Mythic GME quite a bit, both to inspire myself as I run games or for solitaire play.

Save or DIE!

Saving throws are one of those subsystems that provoke a lot of discussion, sometimes heated discussion. One of the hot-button features of saving throws is the save or die mechanic. Some people like the risk-all nature of a deadly saving throw. Others, not so much. In my opinion the best save mechanic is the one that works for your table, but that's not the main point here.

Geomorph to Dungeon: A Brief Guide

If you've read my blog or any of my G+ postings, you probably know I publish a line of virtual tabletop geomorphs called Dungeons in Blue. I've been using these geomorphs for some of the maps in my play by email game, The Wilds, and I've mostly worked out the kinks of turning a bunch of tiles into a map that's useful for this style of play, so here's how I do it using Gimp. I assume the reader has a basic understanding of digital paint applications, and the concepts of layers and layer masks. I'll be working with Dungeons in Blue geomorphs in this example, but there are plenty of other tiles out there too.

Random Tables II - More Excel

A few days back I posted an ultra-simple example of a random table in Excel. Since I'm making a few tables for another project, I thought I'd do a slightly more complex (and useful) example, and explain how it works. Here's the basic table, which uses a percentile dice roll and has variable ranges for each table entry.

Random Tables - An Excel Quickie

Someone over on G+ was asking about tools to make random tables for RPGs. I mentioned Excel and the poster said they weren't very good at using the spreadsheet. Since quick and dirty tables are pretty easy with Excel, I thought I'd throw together a quick example, so... here:

This is a very simple table with six entries (A2-A7). A1 is a formula which randomly selects an entry from the table using the INDEX and RANDBETWEEN functions. A8 is a text copy of the function used. Each time you hit the F9 key, RANDBETWEEN recalculates its value, and uses it as an index into the table. Here's what the INDEX function means:

• A2:A7 is the array to work on (that's six rows by one column).
• RANDBETWEEN(1,6) chooses a row value between 1 and 6, inclusive.
• The final 1 parameter chooses the first column.

Points to note:

• The INDEX function takes an array, a row, and a column as parameters. You can get fancier and use RANDBETWEEN for both row and column to create a two-dimensional table.
• The RANDBETWEEN function picks a number from the integer values between and including the given low and high.
• The row and column values in INDEX are values within the given array (A2:A7). The first row/column is always one, and the highest value is equal to the number of rows/columns in the array. Don't use spreadsheet row/column values!
• Using an array reference inline like that leads to unreadable spreadsheets. If we were doing a more complex example, we'd apply a name to the data range, and use that instead.
• What works in Excel generally works in Open Office or Google Drive documents. For example you can see the Drive version right here.

OK, that's it, quick and dirty. There's more complex stuff in this post right here though.

Are you sure you want to do that?

Apparently I ask this question too much. I was cleaning up an old mailbox from my Moria game and came across one of the email post-session discussions we had. In the context of figuring out why the group sometimes took a long time to decide on a course of action, my use of this phrase came up. One of the players said it pretty much stopped the group in its decision-making tracks. I was pretty surprised by that reaction, and came back with why I used that particular turn of phrase. I usually say it for one of three reasons:

Tiddlywiki - Stat Blocks

I've been toying around with stat blocks in Tiddlywiki, trying to come up with a better way to lay them out without creating too many tiddly-related headaches with formatting and such. I'm still not sure I've gotten it right, but here are three work in progress versions of the Akinak, primordial minions of Anamika. These are screenshots taken from Firefox, so they're pretty much what I see at the table.

Tiddlywiki - Minor Issue

I generally wax positive about Tiddlywiki as a GM tool for campaign notes, but the session I just ran uncovered out a couple flaws with using it. Neither is a deal-breaker, and both have potential solutions.

Tiddlywiki - Nifty Trick

I'm a fan of Tiddlywiki for GM notes, something I've mentioned of before. I'm currently doing some work for my next Daruna game, and in the process of creating a couple stat blocks for some standard fighter types, discovered this little trick.

TiddlyWiki - A Minor Tip

I use TiddlyWiki for pretty much all my campaign notes these days. The combination of hyper-linking and a single self-contained file (minus images), makes it a very useful tool for my style of GMing. I went so far as to write a couple of brief tutorials on using it in my old RPG Dumping Ground blog:

• TiddlyWiki Tutorial - Part I
• TiddlyWiki Tutorial - Part II

One of the things I mention in part two of the tutorials is transclusion, a feature that allows you to insert a tiddler within a tiddler. Today's tip is an extension of that feature.

Daruna - Corruptive Magic

Wow. This place is dusty. Guess I need to break out the vacuum.
I'm finally doing some work on my Daruna campaign again. We're scheduled to play the first session in a few weeks. One aspect of this game is a bit of swords and sorcery feel, with powerful magic a tool of the big bad guys rather than the player characters. To reflect this I've been working on a system of magical corruption. The how and why follow...

The GM Problem (mine)

I was browsing my youtube favorites the other day and found a perfect example to illustrate why I end up writing so much material when I start up a new campaign.

How about that Weather?

So if you're somewhere in a large portion of the United States, you're probably seeing the same thing outside your window that I'm seeing outside mine. Snow. Weather like this always makes me think about outdoor adventures, travel, and how conditions like weather affect play in RPGs. A lot of games that support outdoor adventures or have rules for travel include lots of tables and exceptions for handling things this sort of thing. I generally don't use them. Let me explain.