Article #6 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class. I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.
What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.
RANGER
2. The King's Deer - Your family were starving and even though you knew it was wrong you shot the King's deer to survive the harsh winter. Your Father was livid when you returned with the carcass, you explained that you were careful to clean the spot where you gutted it and bury the entrails but he didn't speak to you for weeks. When the King's Warden posted bounty you knew that in order to protect your family you would have to leave your home and go on the run...
3. Sacked - You were one of the Baron's huntsmen until the day the castle was sacked by a Goblin horde. You had no love for the Baron, who was a blundering oaf when it came to tracking and stalking, but it was the beatings he personally administered to you as a stable boy which made you hate him. You did little to help him when you chanced upon him in a clearing, soon after the castle had fallen, trapped under the weight of his dying prize charger. The sounds of his screaming when the Goblin's found him still haunt you across the many leagues you have travelled since...
4. Trophy Hunter - The old ranger to whom you were apprenticed taught you many things, the woodcraft necessary to stay alive in the wilderness, how to differentiate and track prey from their prints and stool, how to set traps and lure the prey to them and how to butcher your kill quickly so the meat does not taint. These challenges would satisfy most rangers, but your lust for knowledge is insatiable. The day came when the old ranger told you that he could teach you no more, with some swallowing of pride, he admitted that your skills had far surpassed his own and that he had been learning more from you than he had been teaching you for the last year or more. His advice to you was to travel to distant lands and to find new prey to hunt and new teachers to learn from...
5. Big Fish - Your skill with the bow is legendary in the province where you were raised and your success in local tournaments earned you your freemanship. However, in the last tournament you entered you were soundly beaten by a strange bowman with sun darkened skin from the desert lands. His accuracy and speed drew gasps from the crowd and incredulity from you. Your friends did little to help your dark demeanor that night in the inn, barracking you with taunts of "big fish, little pond". To save face you brashly claimed that you would travel to the home of the black bowman and learn his secrets. Their taunts echo in your mind as you pass through yet another backwater village on your long journey south...
CLERIC
3. Missing Relic - Your order was founded in a time of war, its' first and most revered Abbot was killed on the battlefield in a distant land as part of a crusade to bring the word of your God to the unbeliever. Your Abbot has decided that your final test as a novice is to retrieve the lost foot of the founding Abbot and return it to the reliquary where it belongs. You have been furnished with a map showing the approximate whereabouts of the battlefield and a scroll which Scrollmaster Deach has created at great personal cost to help you located the missing remains...
Monday, 7 February 2011
Saturday, 5 February 2011
The Lands of Dual - A Dirty Dungeon Bash
After an introductory scenario my new campaign kicked off proper in Session 4 with a bit of light dungeoneering in the sewers. The full session report can be read on my dedicated campaign site but my players seem to have enjoyed their first real taste of of Castles and Crusades.
I've been decorating at home recently and uncovered an abortive attempt to build a Worldworks style gaming board which promptly got canibalised for custom floorplans. These seemed to go down well but the small rooms and even smaller corridors got the party stacked up in single file, resulted in two characters being involved in melee and blocking the entrance for others to assist.
This may be symptomatic of the 5' square concept for floor plans which I've always thought that however "materially" necessary it does lead to very cramped dungeons. It may also be as a result of my players being a bit rusty at dungeon bashing.
Still I enjoyed DMing the scenario immensely (even though I hadn't spent too much time actually reading it) and can't wait for the next instalment.
 |
| Part of the sewer network of the town of Ayfal |
This may be symptomatic of the 5' square concept for floor plans which I've always thought that however "materially" necessary it does lead to very cramped dungeons. It may also be as a result of my players being a bit rusty at dungeon bashing.
Still I enjoyed DMing the scenario immensely (even though I hadn't spent too much time actually reading it) and can't wait for the next instalment.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Monday Motivations #5
Article #5 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class. I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.
What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.
ASSASSIN
3. New Sheriff in Town - When a new Sheriff arrived a few months back, things just started to take a turn for the worse. He ferreted out some of your Assassin's Guild colleagues and the jobs started to dry up. The final straw came when the Guild Master decided to close up shop. You decide to strike out on your own, perhaps another town's Guild will have need of your skills...
4. Set-up - That last job you did went South pretty quickly, those bodyguards knew you were coming. Someone in the Guild is either supplying false intelligence or someone's put out a contract on you, but who? and why? One things for sure, you can't go back to the Guild a failure, they kill failures...
WIZARD
3. Magical Runt. Being a wizard runs in your family your mother and father and your little sister are all wizards and they're far more accomplished than you will ever be. Which is why you decided to run away and set up yourself up as a hedge wizard in a far flung corner of the world...
4. Army deserter! - Around your twelfth birthday your powers manifested themselves. You were promptly registered with the local magistrate and you forgot about it completely as you buried yourself into your new studies. Nine years later you shouldn't have been surprised when the kings letter arrived drafting you into the Mage corps of his army. It wasn't long before you couldn't take anymore of the endless drilling so one night you escaped the compound and made a break for enemy lines...
BARBARIAN
3. A Legendary Blade - Whilst out hunting one day your prey darted into the relative safety of a small copse of trees and you hunter's instinct told you to follow. The copse was deceptively dense and soon you needed to hack a path through the tightly knit trees. You slash your way into a clearing and discover a pair of large boulders and lying at their foot a skeletal warrior holding a finely wrought blade. The warrior has clearly been dead for many years, his disintegrating armour is of a strange design, the like of which you have never seen, however, the sword he carries is untarnished and as you slide it out of it's scabard you marvel at the keenness of the edge as it reflects the light. After taking the blade back home your sleep is disturbed by strange dreams and a voice calling out to you. Each morning as you strike out to catch the day's pray you feel compelled to keep walking and leave your dreary tribal hunter's life for that of adventure and distant lands...
What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.
ASSASSIN
3. New Sheriff in Town - When a new Sheriff arrived a few months back, things just started to take a turn for the worse. He ferreted out some of your Assassin's Guild colleagues and the jobs started to dry up. The final straw came when the Guild Master decided to close up shop. You decide to strike out on your own, perhaps another town's Guild will have need of your skills...
4. Set-up - That last job you did went South pretty quickly, those bodyguards knew you were coming. Someone in the Guild is either supplying false intelligence or someone's put out a contract on you, but who? and why? One things for sure, you can't go back to the Guild a failure, they kill failures...
WIZARD
3. Magical Runt. Being a wizard runs in your family your mother and father and your little sister are all wizards and they're far more accomplished than you will ever be. Which is why you decided to run away and set up yourself up as a hedge wizard in a far flung corner of the world...
4. Army deserter! - Around your twelfth birthday your powers manifested themselves. You were promptly registered with the local magistrate and you forgot about it completely as you buried yourself into your new studies. Nine years later you shouldn't have been surprised when the kings letter arrived drafting you into the Mage corps of his army. It wasn't long before you couldn't take anymore of the endless drilling so one night you escaped the compound and made a break for enemy lines...
BARBARIAN
3. A Legendary Blade - Whilst out hunting one day your prey darted into the relative safety of a small copse of trees and you hunter's instinct told you to follow. The copse was deceptively dense and soon you needed to hack a path through the tightly knit trees. You slash your way into a clearing and discover a pair of large boulders and lying at their foot a skeletal warrior holding a finely wrought blade. The warrior has clearly been dead for many years, his disintegrating armour is of a strange design, the like of which you have never seen, however, the sword he carries is untarnished and as you slide it out of it's scabard you marvel at the keenness of the edge as it reflects the light. After taking the blade back home your sleep is disturbed by strange dreams and a voice calling out to you. Each morning as you strike out to catch the day's pray you feel compelled to keep walking and leave your dreary tribal hunter's life for that of adventure and distant lands...
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Tuesday Trailer - Summer Wars
The virtual reality world of OZ is a huge and highly embedded social network, it has millions of account holders who have given it control of many aspects of their modern lives. Unfortunately "Love Machine" an AI starts to take over OZ with catastrophic results. As the boundary between reality and OZ becomes blurred, the only person who can stop Love Machine is a high school teen mathematician, Kenji Koiso.
Possibly more relevant to today's Social Generation than the Tron franchise with it's melange of different artwork styles reflecting the diversity of user generated content which inhabits todays social networks like flickr or myspace. Is this the future of facebook... only time will tell...
Monday, 24 January 2011
Monday Motivations #4
Article #4 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class. I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.
What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.
ASSASSIN
1. Revenge from Within - A loved one was murdered by an Assassin, the only way you can wreak your revenge is to become an Assassin yourself, gain access to the Guild's records and find out who hired the killer and why your loved one had to die...
2. Assassins Orphanage - When your parents died in a tragic accident the city's council made you a ward of the city, as is the law, and placed you in the care of the city orphanage whilst a search for your relatives was undertaken. Only a select few are aware that the orphanage is a front for the Guild of Assassins. They select the brightest orphans to undergo the complex and arduous training to become a silent killer like yourself...
WIZARD
1. Royal Edict - some people say that the King is paranoid, but most keep their tongues in their heads lest the tyrant pluck them out. Worst still are the many heinous persecutions he has exacted on those who possess magic. From the mere hedge wizard to the master of guild of wizards he has imprisoned , tortured and executed all those who show even the slightest sign of thaumaturgical ability. What drives him is a mystery but his edict banning the practicing of magic on pain of death resulted in you being spirited away from your mother and father, as a child, by your crazy old grandfather to his tumbledown tower just outside the king's reach on the other side of the border. Your life has been one long lesson interspersed with drudgery, your reward being able to bend arcane forces to your will...
2. Power Awakened. Your idyllic childhood on a smallholding in a peaceful part of the kingdom was shattered when you almost killed your brother with a lightning bolt. When your magical powers were awakened, your families' attitude to you changed, where once there was love now you found fear. One day your father brought a strange old man to the house who poked and prodded and waved his hands around you. After a short discussion with the man your father took you aside and with tears in his eyes handed you a backpack full of your things and told you to be good and do everything that azusul tells you. And as your home disappeared from sight among the trees you knew that you would not see your family again for a very long time, until your training as a wizard was complete...
THIEF
5. Kleptomaniac - Some people say that even as a child you couldn't keep your hands out of other peoples pockets, but they don't know what they're talking about. It's like there's a part of your brain which is autonomous and just picks up other peoples things which they've left lying around. With that kind of natural ability it was only a matter of time before you started to actively looking for opportunities for profit...
What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.
ASSASSIN
1. Revenge from Within - A loved one was murdered by an Assassin, the only way you can wreak your revenge is to become an Assassin yourself, gain access to the Guild's records and find out who hired the killer and why your loved one had to die...
2. Assassins Orphanage - When your parents died in a tragic accident the city's council made you a ward of the city, as is the law, and placed you in the care of the city orphanage whilst a search for your relatives was undertaken. Only a select few are aware that the orphanage is a front for the Guild of Assassins. They select the brightest orphans to undergo the complex and arduous training to become a silent killer like yourself...
WIZARD
1. Royal Edict - some people say that the King is paranoid, but most keep their tongues in their heads lest the tyrant pluck them out. Worst still are the many heinous persecutions he has exacted on those who possess magic. From the mere hedge wizard to the master of guild of wizards he has imprisoned , tortured and executed all those who show even the slightest sign of thaumaturgical ability. What drives him is a mystery but his edict banning the practicing of magic on pain of death resulted in you being spirited away from your mother and father, as a child, by your crazy old grandfather to his tumbledown tower just outside the king's reach on the other side of the border. Your life has been one long lesson interspersed with drudgery, your reward being able to bend arcane forces to your will...
2. Power Awakened. Your idyllic childhood on a smallholding in a peaceful part of the kingdom was shattered when you almost killed your brother with a lightning bolt. When your magical powers were awakened, your families' attitude to you changed, where once there was love now you found fear. One day your father brought a strange old man to the house who poked and prodded and waved his hands around you. After a short discussion with the man your father took you aside and with tears in his eyes handed you a backpack full of your things and told you to be good and do everything that azusul tells you. And as your home disappeared from sight among the trees you knew that you would not see your family again for a very long time, until your training as a wizard was complete...
THIEF
5. Kleptomaniac - Some people say that even as a child you couldn't keep your hands out of other peoples pockets, but they don't know what they're talking about. It's like there's a part of your brain which is autonomous and just picks up other peoples things which they've left lying around. With that kind of natural ability it was only a matter of time before you started to actively looking for opportunities for profit...
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