Monday Motivations #1

Article #1 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.

ANY CLASS

1.  Slaughter - You were left for dead by the raiders who slaughtered everyone in your village.  You nursed your wounds and survived the cruel winter which followed fueled only by thoughts of revenge.  Now you must find out who orchestrated the raid and how you can destroy them. 

2.  Bastard offspring - On your mother's deathbed she told you that your father is a wealthy / powerful man who will never recognise you as his rightful heir.  You can't accept this and have vowed to either prove to him that you are a worthy heir or his equal.

RANGER

1. Track a foe beast  - You are the best tracker from your village and after a few of the villagers were killed by a savage beast you were tasked to hunt it down and slay it.  You have passed through many towns and villages along the way and have stopped to help the locals in exchange for food, lodgings and a little money.The beast's territory ranges for thousands of miles and you have been tracking it for months but it always seems to be one step ahead of you...

THIEF

1. Retrieve an heirloom - On your father's deathbed he gave you his signet ring, confiding in you that it was central to his fortune.  Stricken with grief you were drowning your sorrows in a local tavern where you were mugged.  After cursing your foolishness you returned home and in the following weeks creditors appeared from every corner claiming to be owed money.  It was not long before the business collapsed under the weight of it's debt.  Perhaps your father's ring held more significance than you originally thought so you vow to track it down and regain your family's fortunes...

2. Escape from poverty - After your family fell on hard times you decided to lessen the burden by going out on your own looking for work.  It was then that you realised how unfair the world is, the rich have far more than they'll ever need and are consumed with the need to gather more and more wealth whilst the poor go hungry and spend every waking moment trying to survive.  You decided to partake in a little wealth re-distribution of your own...

Happy New Year and Roleplaying Resolutions for 2011

Happy New Year to you all.

And, as sure as eggs follow bacon, the time has come to make some New Year Roleplay Resolutions:

1. Take more notes - Over the last few years, with respect to note taking, I have become just plain lazy and has often resulted in me taking a back seat in games as a player when I should be taking the lead. When DMing, I've been relying on my player's memories and notes way too much and I need to start driving the scenario rather than it driving me. This has got to stop!! My new campaign starts in a week's time and I want to start writting session resports again.  I find they invaluable in helping me record the improvised detail I generate in-game that you don't get during normal worldbuilding activities.  If I don't record it, type it up and publish it on the campaign website, it will be lost forever.

2. Build a weekly blog series - Frankly I'm jealous of the likes of Dyson Logos: Geomorphs and Land of Nod: Deviant Friday and thought it was about time I created a weekly(ish) series which might possibly be gathered together into some sort of publication perhaps.  Ideas so far are:

• Monday Motivations: Inspired by the excellent Campaign Mastery: Character Hooks, this series of articles gives some suggestions for PC Background Motivations, why does a PC become an "adventurer" or embark on a "career class" in the first place?
  
  
• Tuesday Trailer: I get a lot of my inspiration from movies and TV although I rarely lift a plot from a movie.  It might just be a single object or a character or it may even be something as intangible as the art direction which gets the creative juices going and I want to share that with you all.
  
  
• Dramatis Pictura: I hate reading NPC descriptions which don't have a character portrait to go along with them, in fact I find it hard to visualise a fully rounded character without one.  Shouldn't be too hard to find some good NPC portraits in deviant art
  
  
• Serious Locations: On my travels round the interweb I stumble across some amazing photographs many of which inspire RPG locations.
  
• City Geomorphs: There's enough folks doing dungeon geomorphs to last me a lifetime and most of my adventures take place in urban environments so I'm going to take a crack at cities.

3. Blog in advance more regularly - At the moment I blog when I have an idea it's a cause and effect relationship.  I'd like to get in the habit of writing in advance and maybe even set articles to publish on a time delay.

Anyway, I think that's enough to be getting on with, if you have any preferences for series ideas let me know.

1884 - A New Terry Gilliam Project

Just in time for Christmas comes the news that Terry Gilliam is producing a steampunk puppet movie.  No details (or IMDB entry) on the production schedule, cast or release date but two videos are available:

Animation Test Video

Teaser Trailer

Makes me want to dust off the old Forgotten Futures rules and get writing.

D&D is 3rd Greatest Toy!!

Jonathan Ross

Last night's marathon 3 hour rundown of classic toys on Channel 4, presented by Jonathan Ross, saw Dungeons and Dragons see off the electronic revolution and come in at number 3.

A reasonably sympathetic review of the game featured the usual stock footage of contemporary geeks and live roleplayers in plastic ears.  The highlight being a short piece from Ian Livingstone OBE (Co-founder of Games Workshop and CEO of Eidos) and the outing of comedian Marcus Brigstocke as a D&D player.

It was a shame that it's high position in the chart was marred by a comment that the poll was rigged by thousands of geeks, and the show's complete disregard of D&D's influence in other fields like computer games.

Gygax Game Collection for sale on ebay

E. Gary Gygax
(July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008)

Gary's widow, Gail Gygax, has started to put his games collection up for sale on e-bay with help from Collectors Trove, with proceeds going to the Gygax Memorial Fund.  Auctions end between the 15-16th of December so there's still time to bid and perhaps you too could own a piece of history from Gary's own collection.