You make eye contact from across the room. Something about their look, their style, draws you toward them, and as you come closer, it just gets worse. Is it gonna be forever, or is it gonna go down in flames? It’s a whirlwind romance, initial infatuation turning into a blissful honeymoon period, followed by a rapid melt-down of bitterness, broken hopes and mutual recriminations. Yep, down in flames.

I’m not just summarizing a Taylor Swift song; I’m talking about what happens all too often when you jump headlong into a new RPG system. It sounds ridiculous, comparing a game system to a romantic relationship; but if you find a system that really ‘clicks’, it can have a major impact, not only on how you spend your money, but how you spend your hard-earned gaming time.

Like relationships with people, sometimes games just aren’t a good fit, and you’re better off cutting your losses early. But with some forethought and patience, you can avoid the pain of a bad break-up and maybe find true love where you least expect it. The current golden age of pen-and-paper RPG’s offers something for everyone, but it helps if you follow a few simple rules in your search for a soul-mate:

1. First Dates Should Be Cheap
Don’t spend money right off the bat. Yes, I know the cover art is awesome, and the description sounds awesome, and just please take my money now! But this is the path to heartbreak.

These days, you can download a free preview or quick-start for almost any system. The advent of the Open Game License (OGL) has encouraged many publishers to release free basic rule-sets for their products. Take advantage of that. This is a great chance to get a ‘first feel’ for a system without investing a lot of time and money.
​
If you can’t find any free resources for a system, you might want to step back and pause. Rule books can cost upwards of $50, and, without a test-run, you’re committing a fair amount of cash based on first impressions and looks.

2. Crunchy or Fluffy?
A quick skimming of the rules should answer your most pressing question: is this system Rules Heavy or Rules Light? Does the system emphasize rules (crunch) or story and setting (fluff)?

Rules Heavy systems generally stress simulation, using charts and stats and tables to accurately model a character’s abilities and actions. Rules Light systems usually provide a few key mechanics to govern the action, but let the narrative drive the details. Some people like tables and charts and handfuls of dice; others put narrative and story arc above all else. Whichever camp you belong to, you can figure out pretty quickly which side a new system falls into by checking two simple aspects:

• How long does it take to roll up a character?
• How long does it take to stab a kobold / shoot a bad guy?

Try the mechanics. Stage a few mock combats. Roll up some characters. When I was floundering with weird dice and mechanics, the GM of my Star Wars campaign told me to “just make a dude, you’ll figure it out”, and he was right. In a class-based system, don’t forget to roll up several characters classes: in a standard fantasy setting, I’ll usually roll up a fighter, a wizard and a rogue to get a feel for how combat, magic and skills are implemented.

3. Hold On Loosely, But Don’t Let Go (Right Away)
So you’ve paid your money and you love your new system and you can’t wait to share it with your group. Awesome! Quit reading and go roll dice. But maybe you paid your money and now you have…doubts. Buyer’s remorse. Cold feet.Don’t give up until you’ve tried it. Some systems feel clunky on paper, but actually play well. Sadly, the converse is also true and what seem like clever mechanics fall flat in actual play. But you never know until you sit down with friends, break out the beverage of choice, and start rolling dice. Give it a session or two. If you still can’t warm up to it, pillage it for ideas in your next game. There’s always something you can salvage from the wreckage, even if it’s just a setting idea or cool character concept.
 
We’ve all been burned by a game we loved at first sight, but just couldn’t get comfortable with. I have shelves of gaming books that are dusty and unused because I bought them based on a quick infatuation with cover art or a cool premise without doing any homework. But with some patience, research, and a little luck, you can find a partner for life: a partner to fill your nights with friends and the rolling of dice, and your days with graph paper and #2 pencils.
Beat that, Taylor Swift.
 
 
Jack Benner is the head bottle-washer and sole roustabout at Stick in the Mud Press http://stickinthemudgames.blogspot.com/.  He doesn’t want to talk about how he knows Taylor Swift lyrics from memory. He’s a total metal guy who would never actually buy a Taylor Swift album. Especially not the last one, no matter how catchy it is. Really.

1) MAFIANAP: An innovative new system that allows for awesome Iron Age style Super RPGs.

2) NEW CORINTH: A fantastic new, dark, rust-belt inspired city setting for use in any Super game.

3) BAD GUYS: Developing Iron Age heroes includes quite a bit of anti-hero type moodiness, but creating deep and effective villains for such morally ambiguous heroes can sometimes be tough. Rogues Gallery will provide a quick fix.

4) LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: Rogues Gallery provides insight into two New Corinth set-pieces, Stonegate Federal Penitentiary and Lincroft Asylum. Both sound great to me.
 


Hello, fellow gamers. Today, alongside the attention grabbing listicle, I’ve prepared an interview with Andy (A.P.) Klosky, writer and designer of the Cold Steel Wardens RPG. I got talking to him after I posted my article on Super-Hero gaming styles a few weeks ago and he mentioned he had a great game I should take a look at. Cold Steel Wardens is an RPG for ‘Super-Heroes’ set in the Iron Age of Comics. You can find a copy of Cold Steel Wardens on DriveThruRpg

What made you choose the Iron Age of comics as the setting for Cold Steel Wardens?
Back in 2009, the Watchmen movie had just come out and I was jazzed to use it as the inspiration for a home game.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t decide on a system.  I ended up settling on a crazy mash-up of Palladium’s Heroes Unlimited with some Call of Cthulhu sanity system elements grafted on.  It was a hot mess, but it got me wondering:  with so many great “generic” supers games out there--Mutants and Masterminds, Champions, etc.—and so many great Silver Age games--ICONS, Supers!, etc—where was the Iron Age game?
​
To me, the Iron Age brought us some of the most timeless storylines in comics; the ones we’re seeing being turned into movies and TV series today began as Iron Age storylines.   That, to me, says there’s still a great deal of respect for the storytelling artistry that began in the Iron Age.  In 2010, I started writing and the game just started rolling from there…

Tell us about MAFIANAP, is that something you see developing into a game mechanic system for multiple styles of games?
The MAFIANAP mechanics really scratch that sweet-spot between a rules-light game like FATE and a rules-heavy game like Champions.  There’s enough meat there to sink your teeth into as a veteran roleplayer, but it also contains a unified mechanic which makes it easy for newbies to grasp.  I often tell new players at my convention games, “You’ll get it within 3 rolls!”

I would love to see MAFIANAP expand into other genres, particularly ones that benefit from a modern viewpoint.  Frankly, I’d love to see a The Walking Dead rpg using the MAFIANAP rules, but that might be a touch beyond my reach!

You list a great set of comic resources in the back of the book p. 266. Do you have a particular favorite on this list?
I’m a huge Ghost Rider fan, so the two Garth Ennis storylines (Road to Damnation and Trail of Tears) I listed are particular favorites.  Batman: The Long Halloween is also a personal favorite.

New Corinth: Rust Belt meets Gotham City, can you tell us a bit about the city and how you developed it as a setting for CSW?
New Corinth has always been a touchstone for my own experiences.  I’m a Rust Belt kid—I grew up just east of Pittsburgh and now live in Dayton.  In fact, my last teaching job was in one of the poorer schools on the west side of Dayton.  I’ve watched jobs leave, warehouses waste away, and crime spring up.   So, in many ways, New Corinth comes from what I see around me.

One of my biggest goals for New Corinth, though, was to provide a pseudo-realistic setting within a comic book universe.  The struggles that the characters in New Corinth deal with are real ones:  race relations, prison overcrowding, underfunded schools, poverty.  Yeah, there’s comic book action and drama, but when your meta-human vigilante takes down a teenager holding up a bodega, there should be a moral question of “Why is this kid holding up a market?  What led us here?”  Those are the important questions that really get to the heart of Iron Age storytelling.

The combat system seems particularly designed to not be lethal for the player characters, but highly lethal for their opponents. This seems to be in line with the Iron Age comics style. That being said, this Strain system is pretty interesting because it seems to represent a lot of the emotional and mental turmoil that this era of comics evoked really well. Will you tell us a bit about how you designed that system and how you see that being expressed by a good player and GM?
The Strain system in CSW was built to be debilitating all around:  I wanted to reflect the fact that heroes get injured and can die; heroes deal with stress, anxiety, depression, and worse. 

The best example I can think of to demonstrate the Strain system would actually have to come from Captain America: Civil War.  In essence, the conflict in that movie came not from the hero vs. hero brawl, but rather the internal struggle of survivor’s guilt.  Both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are driven to their wits’ end by loss and emotional anguish.  These are characters that have been pushed to their psychological limits and, in turn, write their grief in battle.  That’s drama, to me.

There seems to be interest in a POD or other physical copy of the game. Is that out already and where can people get it?
Physical copies are already on sale through Studio 2 Publishing!  In addition, we’ll be offering physical copies of the core-book available as part of our upcoming Cold Steel Wardens: Rogues Gallery Kickstarter.

Tell us a little bit about your upcoming Kickstarter project: Cold Steel Wardens: Rogues Gallery.  What should we expect in this supplement?
CSW: Rogues Gallery is the first of a number of supplements that I have planned for Cold Steel Wardens.  I wrote the draft for Rogues Gallery last July as part of Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). 

Rogues Gallery is meant to expand on the New Corinth setting by exploring two of its most important locations:  Stonegate Federal Penitentiary and Lincroft Asylum.  Further, the book includes write-ups for a fantastic array of mooks, masterminds, meta-humans, and madmen, ready to drop into any CSW campaign.

What sets CSW: Rogues Gallery apart, though, is how the book is set up.  The majority of the text is written by the perspective of Sawbones:  a phase-shifting private eye turned masked vigilante.  Each write-up contains Sawbones’ own notes, observations, and biases, as well as the evidence that he’s accumulated over the years on that criminal. 

That evidence ranges from police reports to psychological profiles, from newspaper articles to clues as obscure as a food truck license or a restaurant menu.  These items are meant to be ‘print and play’—a GM can print off those pages and literally hand them to their players, “Here’s the clue you found!” 

Let’s address a potential elephant, the first KS for Rogues Gallery didn’t hit its goal what plans do you have this time around to help make it a reality?
Most notably, our March attempt was made before the Studio 2 print run of CSW hit stores.  Switching publishers has definitely been a positive move for us, but the additional exposure from Studio 2 will surely help, as our corebook is now in game stores across the country.

In addition, we’ll be mobilizing to ensure the word gets out about CSW.  We’re planning a launch party at The Malted Meeple game café in Hudson, OH on August 1st, then will be running sessions all throughout GenCon Indianapolis.  With any luck, we’ll be able to really spread the word on CSW: Rogues Gallery and get it into your hands!

So, I operate a Facebook group and Twitter (Inclusive Gaming Network) and I am developing a project about Inclusivity in gaming circles, so I want to ask you this question. Could you tell me how you see CSW being a good game for a diverse gaming group?
One of my biggest goals for Cold Steel Wardens has been to create a setting in which our in-game heroes can explore real-world issues within a safe space.  I’ve run games that have dealt with human trafficking, racial inequality, gender and sexuality issues, and much more.  These are real problems that face our world; it just makes sense to be able to explore these issues within the ‘magic circle’ of the game table.

Further, the characters within the New Corinth universe struggle with these very issues.  Within the pre-gen characters I bring to every convention, we have characters struggling with mental health, their sexuality, their cultural representation…the list goes on.  As a member of the LGBT community, I find it important to show humanity as it is:  not whitewashed, not inundated with straight, white, cis-male, heroes.  The real world is a collage; New Corinth is no different.
 
I really hope you check out this game. I haven’t had a chance to play it, but AP was happy to provide me a review copy and I’ll definitely be playing a game before too long. Keep an eye out for the Kickstarter that should go live on August 1st!

With 17 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He recently launched, www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre’s and One World By Nights Vampire LARPs and is running both a Mage game and a Dark Ages: Vampire game at the moment. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a recent graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C.
 

I love to be surprised. In a good way. I love it when a movie has a twist at the end, and deconstructs the narrative I’d been building for the last 2 hours.

I love to hear my brain going "WHAT?? WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?"

Examples in cinema would be too many to enumerate, but some of my favorites would be The Usual Suspects and The Machinist.
 
RPG narratives allow us to use and many times build our own universe, and it is easy to fall into stereotypes and clichés: the grieving human widow, the evil orc, the money mad trader, the obsessed cultist. Usually all human, and/or mixed race, and/or something that would be at home in the Tolkien books.
 
To this, I ask only one word: WHY? Why not defy the usual expectations, and come up with something that would not cost you anything and will not take any extra time, but might make that character or NPC remembered for many moons to come? So here are 6 ways to make your game less predictable and funnier at no extra effort.
 
1. Sex –
Here I need to tread carefully, for it is VERY thin ice. Even in the early 21st century, and I guess due to the medieval feel to some fantasy settings, it is easy to fall into sexist stereotypes, women as evil sorcerers, grieving widows, etc. Defy that. Change the rolls. Maybe the woman is the hunter or ranger in the family household and the husband is the homemaker. If it’s normal in the 21st century, why wouldn’t it be in any other world? (Many so called "less advanced" societies – and I realize this is a really wrong choice of terms – have a tendency to be more even-handed between the sexes. If all elements of the tribe don’t share responsibilities, the tribe dies). So when you’re determining the sex of that character/NPC/baddie (if any), think about it; are you falling into a stereotype? Or could you mix it up and make it more egalitarian, interesting AND surprise your players? 

2. Race –
Race issues are especially true in Fantasy. 50 years of Star Trek have taught us that there are good and bad aliens of the same species (for all your Sci-Fi RPG’s out there), but Tolkien, and now Peter Jackson have made sure to make it absolutely clear that elves = good, orcs = bad. Again, why? This is part of the lazy idea that everyone in the same kingdom/tribe will have the same attitudes and ideas. If you’re prepared to accept that there are other sentient races, you should also be prepared to accept that they should have at least the same range of personalities that we do.

So mix it up. Have an orc scholar, dropped as a baby outside the library, and raised inside as a foundling. Have an elf baddie, obsessed with racial purity. Or a drunk one. Maybe your fighter is a poet. Maybe your butcher is a goblin, your baker is a dragonborn and your candlestick maker is a thiefling. Maybe humans are the minority in that kingdom, living in Short-Ear Quarter. What could they bring to a mainly non-human settlement? Mix it up! 
 
3. Monster Manuals have more than 4 pages –
Monster Manuals are huge, and still people only use – and I’m going to be generous here – 10 species as NPC’s, usually the same as playable races. Why? I LOVE to actually having to show the book for people to visualize the new arrival. Find new and different races for your NPC’s. I’ve used Aarakocra (think humanoid eagle) apothecaries and Ogre pub landlords. My militia sergeant was a Shadowrun-sized Troll and I had a drow selling meat-on-stick (He was very vague about what noises said meat made whilst alive). See point 2, there’s no reason why you need to stick to what has been done before. 

4. The Story –
There are apparently only 7 different stories, and every single tale is a rehashing or combination thereof:  Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. Now most of these will again fall into known and well tread paths. But… Why? Why can’t The Quest be backwards? Maybe the adventure is done, and the ACTUAL adventure is a flashback. Why can’t Overcoming the Monster be the Monster asking for help? Why can’t a dragon ask for help because his/her mate has been captured by an evil princess/prince? 

5. Play with the grey –
Do you know one of the reasons that Disney movies are so fun? They are simple. Not just the plot, the characters. The moment Jafar or Ursula showed up on screen (or if you want to go waaay back, Maleficent), were you in ANY doubt they were evil? Completely, absolutely, irredeemably evil. Disney animations works in absolutes, you don’t have to. Play with the grey. Get some subtlety in there. The ‘evil’ character might feel compelled into evil actions by a secret overarching plot issue, say, a kidnapped relative. The ‘good’ character might choose do evil for the greater good. Say killing a village to stop a plague. Don’t make your characters black and white. 

6. Bring it together –
At the end of the day, everything that I wrote so far are just guidelines. Put pen to paper, write a couple of bullet points. And then, when you finish, go through it again, and change the details. Sexes, races, narrative points, motivations. Subtly, nothing major.

I promise you, that when the minotaur fabric market seller, or the lady barbarian, or the water elemental construction worker show up, people will lean over and pay attention.

Your players will love it, and it will be much more memorable.
 
Also the castle’s garbage disposal is a shaft going into a Gelatinous Cube in the cellar. But you guys knew that, right?
 
Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after a decade doing odd things in labs, became a teacher. Then, 18 months ago, RPG’ing came into his life and he is now happily juggling the two. In the past, he’s lost his voice after caw-ing as an Aarakocra as well as playing every morally ambiguous NPC you could shake a stick at. He lives in England with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants and at least 3 to 4 Adventures across as many rule systems, at different levels of completion. He can be reached at @atomic_rpg

Some of you just had a nerdgasm. I’ll give you a moment. Better? Okay, so there’s a long list of people I would never want to play Dungeons and Dragons with. Not that they’re bad people per se, just that they would not be fun to try to share a gaming session with, at least right now. But they would make great Pokémon creatures! With the world caught up in Pokémon fever, and with D&D on my mind, I’ve compiled a list of 4 Pokémon characters, based on real people (reasons given below), which you could be the first to catch all while playing the Dungeons and Dragons game you love. Never mind that whole “don’t go on your phone” diatribe. That was soooo pre- Pokémon Go*.
 
1 Drowyu
A drow based on the life and times of Mr. Vladimir Putin. Why Vlad? He scares me. In an “I’ll-hold-you-down-until-you-see-things-my-way-through-black-eyes-while-you-poo-yourself kind of way. And he probably eats all the snacks at gaming without bringing shit too.
Profile: Drowyu lives in the snowy mountains of Russia, and in an underground fortress. Diet consists mostly of vodka, self-aggrandizement and borscht
Characteristics: Drowyu can walk on water, resist election competitors, and shoot an AK-47. He can drink jet fuel and spit hot death. Drowyu has scaly skin and an intimate knowledge of Kung Fu. Drowyu can ride any animal, so long as he’s shirtless. Drowyu has KGB connections.
Natural Enemies: Drowyu’s natural enemy is Minlock
 
2 Minlock
A Mindflayer based on the life and times of Mr. Donald Trump. Why Don? Despite the comedic genius that is behind @dungeonsdonald (“Know what a Lich does well? It kills invaders. It does that so good. It doesn’t talk. You’re an invader, it’s over”). I think that the Don would insist on trying to be the DM every session (or challenging them constantly) and would constantly preach to you about what your character should and shouldn’t do, regardless of existing mechanics.
Profile: Minlock lives in the dank corridors of downtown Manhattan and on campaign busses. Diet consists mostly of garbage, propaganda and immigration papers
Characteristics: Minlock can build fences rapidly, throw poison and puke gold. He drinks free American air. Minlock has a winning smile and a magic chest of baseball hats and toupees. He resists hot death and can rage quit any encounter. Minlock has far right connections.
Natural Enemies: Minlock’s natural enemy is Drowyu
 
3 Pimavee
A human based on the life and times of Prime Minister Theresa May. Why PM May? Can you say split the party? She voted to stay and is now in charge of people who voted to leave. Awkward party dynamics much?
Profile: Pimavee lives in the United Kingdom. Used to live on mainland Europe as well. Diet consists mostly of fish & chips, TV dinners and Dr Pepper
Characteristics: Pimavee has a fear of commitment and of hot death. Pimavee can spit slime, breathe poisonous gasses, and puke cabinet ministers. She can extricate all of her friends from a location (or not), provided at least half of them agree. Pimavee has commonwealth connections and can spit scotch & Dr. Pepper (tasty!)
Natural Enemies: Pimavee’s natural enemy is Bririno
 
4 Bririno
A tiefling based on the life and times of Britney Spears. Why Brit? I’m pretty sure she’s a LARPer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… You do you, Brit. You do you. I think its pretty safe to say that the last thing a stink of geeks wants is the Princess of Pop performing an intimate rendition of her new hit single. It would just distract too much from the witty dialogue.
Profile: Bririno lives in the humid climate of Southern California. Diet consists mostly of amphetamines, silicone and candy alcohol.
Characteristics: Bririno has interchangeable body parts. She has a fear of wind and whispers. Bririno can walk on air and float in lava. Bririno mastered sick beats, and can befriend any Pokémon by using her special ‘bump and grind’ ability.
Natural Enemies: Bririno’s natural enemy is Pimavee
 
Maybe you’ve reached this point of the article, and you’re like: “shit, I just wasted 5 minutes reading this crap. He didn’t even convert the powers to 5e format. Where are the hitpoints? Why am I still reading this?” As a reward/punishment for your loyalty, here is a poem (author unknown):
 
My Pokémon brings all the nerds to the yard,
And they’re like: you wanna trade cards?
Damn right, I wanna trade cards,
I’ll trade this, but not my charizard
 
Not my charizard, indeed
 
Dustinopolis
 
*Seriously, don’t stay glued to your phone/tablet during game time. It’s annoying.
 
Dustinopolis is a regular contributor here at high level games. Not on staff, mind you or any formal relationship where there’s an exchange of money or benefits or responsibility for what he writes. He can be found on twitter @devourcheese. But not during a gaming session, unless his character just died and he’s realized that by the time he writes up a new character sheet, the gaming session will be over, anyways he can always finish it at home and email it to the DM for approval, so he may as well check his twitter because maybe there’s something hilarious he can use in his next blog.

​Face it: we’re living in a Golden Age of RPG’s. There are systems to fit every genre, every group, and every personal preference; there are story-telling systems, rules-light systems, crunch-heavy systems, you name it, it’s probably available on Drive-Thru RPG.

But if you’re like me, you play with people who don’t have time to learn a new ruleset when they want to changes games. Sometimes you want to take a break from casting magic missile at kobolds and pilot a big, stompy robot on the battlefields of the 31st century (who am I kidding, we all want to pilot big stompy robots). But who wants to spend the $35 on books and hours of learning new mechanics?

I’m here to tell you, brothers and sisters, you don’t have to! There is another way, a way that incorporates flexibility as its core tenet, a way with a motto of “Fast! Furious! Fun!” It’s called Savage Worlds, and it is ready to be your lifelong friend.

Savage Worlds was originally intended to emulate 1930’s pulp action/adventure plots, and is designed from the ground up to be fast, furious and fun. One very reasonably priced rulebook, clocking in at 191 pages for the softcover (that’s including the index and templates) and some dice, and you’re ready to play anything. New players can be up to speed in a matter of minutes.

I’m resisting the temptation to preach at length about the mechanics and crunchy bits, but here are four aspects of Savage Worlds that really stand out:

1. True Adaptability
I remember playing GURPS back in the day, and had a lot of fun with it. But changing settings generally meant buying a splat book and learning new mechanics specific to that setting. Savage Worlds bypasses all that by presenting truly generic rules for character creation and play, without sacrificing flavor. Skills are generic: the Shooting skill, for example, can apply to a crossbow in a fantasy campaign, an AK-47 in a Weird Wars campaign, or a laser rifle in a space opera. The mechanics don’t really change, just how they’re applied. Powers and abilities like spells, psionics or super-powers, are all mechanically generic: the bolt power covers a wizard’s magic missile, a cleric’s smite or a Cyclops-style eye-blast. The base mechanics are the same. What differentiates them is the Trappings aspect. There are two pages of rules on how to add trappings to powers to make them stand out. Add the cold trapping to bolt and you have an Iceman superpower, or a winter-druid’s spell. Add the necromantic trapping, and it becomes a blast of withering, undead energy. It’s totally customizable, and it’s simple to mix and match to capture the flavor of whatever genre you are playing.

2. Scalability
One facet of Savage Worlds that is often overlooked is the simple sets of rules for minions and mass battles. In game terms, Wild Cards are player characters and named NPC’s. They have more abilities and are harder to take out. Extras are the rest of the world: civilians, henchmen, minions, hordes. They take a hit, they’re down. They don’t get to roll a Wild Die (I’ll get to that later. It’s awesome). They’re the fodder for your hero’s glory. And they’re streamlined so they don’t clog up the game-play. Say your heroes become leaders of the rebellion and set out to free the land of the tyrant king. Both sides square off for a pitched battle, thousands per side, armies and battalions and trebuchets.

In many systems, you’re stuck with four hours of dice-rolling, or breaking out a specially asbtracted rule-set for tactical combat. Not so in Savage Worlds:  it’s as simple as sticking your sword into a kobold. You figure out some modifiers based on the situation (who’s fighting whom, weather, being outnumbered, yadda yadda). The battle is then fought out basically in rounds, with the player’s characters using any applicable skills to add further modifiers. Player characters make an active, marked difference in how the battle plays out. The best part? The rules for mass battles are two pages, not two chapters.

3. EXPLODING DICE!
Remember the Wild Die I referred to above? It is reserved for PC’s and named NPC’s, and it reflects their importance to the story. Simply put, if my gunslinger has a d8 in the Shooting skill and I want to shoot the zombie that just shambled into town from Boot Hill, I roll a d8 and a d6 as my ‘Wild Die’ and take whichever is better. But if one of them ‘aces’ (rolls its max, in this case an 8 or a 6), I can take it and roll it again, adding the extra roll to the original roll. If, by some crazy chance, the second roll aces, I do it again. It’s basically a ‘critical hit on steroids’ mechanic, and it makes for legendary fights. In Savage Worlds, there’s always a chance…never say die…David and Goliath and all that.

Of course, the downside is that if you roll snake eyes (1’s on both your normal die and your Wild Die), you incur a critical failure, and your GM gets to take out all his frustration on your poor character.

4. The People. Seriously.
Savage Worlds has an amazing community. The publisher’s website offers tons of free resources and their message boards are lively and helpful. Google has a thriving community of Savage Worlds fans on Google+ and Facebook is just as active. Savage Worlds makes great use of its licensing: you can make whatever you want, and, as long as you don’t charge for it and will slap the ‘Savage Worlds FAN!’ logo on the front, you can put it out to the world.

And, let me tell you, Savage Worlds fans are a creative and talented bunch. You can get fan-made Star Wars adaptations, BattleTech, Borderlands, you name it, and the quality of these labors of love often rivals professionally published material. The adaptable nature of the rules really encourages tweaking and tailoring the game to whatever you want, from existing fandoms and IPs to crazy original settings and everything in between. 
​
Savage Worlds is a no-lose proposition. You can download quick-start rules from the publisher for free, and be playing in no time. Third party publishing is a strong market, with tons of creative material to explore, and the fan community is an inexhaustible source for ideas and materials. You literally have nothing to lose, and you might find yourself a convert to the fast, furious and fun world of Savage Worlds.
​
Jack Benner is the head bottle-washer and sole roustabout at Stick in the Mud Press http://stickinthemudgames.blogspot.com/
 
 

​Hello, fellow gamers. Today I’ve prepared an interview with Andy (A.P.) Klosky, writer and designer of the Cold Steel Wardens RPG. I got talking to him after I posted my article on Super-Hero gaming styles a few weeks ago and he mentioned he had a great game I should take a look at. Cold Steel Wardens is an RPG for ‘Super-Heroes’ set in the Iron Age of Comics. You can find a copy of Cold Steel Wardens on DriveThruRpg

What made you choose the Iron Age of comics as the setting for Cold Steel Wardens?
Back in 2009, the Watchmen movie had just come out and I was jazzed to use it as the inspiration for a home game.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t decide on a system.  I ended up settling on a crazy mash-up of Palladium’s Heroes Unlimited with some Call of Cthulhu sanity system elements grafted on.  It was a hot mess, but it got me wondering:  with so many great “generic” supers games out there--Mutants and Masterminds, Champions, etc.—and so many great Silver Age games--ICONS, Supers!, etc—where was the Iron Age game?
To me, the Iron Age brought us some of the most timeless storylines in comics; the ones we’re seeing being turned into movies and TV series today began as Iron Age storylines.   That, to me, says there’s still a great deal of respect for the storytelling artistry that began in the Iron Age.  In 2010, I started writing and the game just started rolling from there…
Tell us about MAFIANAP, is that something you see developing into a game mechanic system for multiple styles of games?
The MAFIANAP mechanics really scratch that sweet-spot between a rules-light game like FATE and a rules-heavy game like Champions.  There’s enough meat there to sink your teeth into as a veteran roleplayer, but it also contains a unified mechanic which makes it easy for newbies to grasp.  I often tell new players at my convention games, “You’ll get it within 3 rolls!”
I would love to see MAFIANAP expand into other genres, particularly ones that benefit from a modern viewpoint.  Frankly, I’d love to see a The Walking Dead rpg using the MAFIANAP rules, but that might be a touch beyond my reach!
You list a great set of comic resources in the back of the book p. 266. Do you have a particular favorite on this list?
I’m a huge Ghost Rider fan, so the two Garth Ennis storylines (Road to Damnation and Trail of Tears) I listed are particular favorites.  Batman: The Long Halloween is also a personal favorite.
New Corinth: Rust Belt meets Gotham City, can you tell us a bit about the city and how you developed it as a setting for CSW?
New Corinth has always been a touchstone for my own experiences.  I’m a Rust Belt kid—I grew up just east of Pittsburgh and now live in Dayton.  In fact, my last teaching job was in one of the poorer schools on the west side of Dayton.  I’ve watched jobs leave, warehouses waste away, and crime spring up.   So, in many ways, New Corinth comes from what I see around me.
One of my biggest goals for New Corinth, though, was to provide a pseudo-realistic setting within a comic book universe.  The struggles that the characters in New Corinth deal with are real ones:  race relations, prison overcrowding, underfunded schools, poverty.  Yeah, there’s comic book action and drama, but when your meta-human vigilante takes down a teenager holding up a bodega, there should be a moral question of “Why is this kid holding up a market?  What led us here?”  Those are the important questions that really get to the heart of Iron Age storytelling.
The combat system seems particularly designed to not be lethal for the player characters, but highly lethal for their opponents. This seems to be in line with the Iron Age comics style. That being said, this Strain system is pretty interesting because it seems to represent a lot of the emotional and mental turmoil that this era of comics evoked really well. Will you tell us a bit about how you designed that system and how you see that being expressed by a good player and GM?
The Strain system in CSW was built to be debilitating all around:  I wanted to reflect the fact that heroes get injured and can die; heroes deal with stress, anxiety, depression, and worse. 
The best example I can think of to demonstrate the Strain system would actually have to come from Captain America: Civil War.  In essence, the conflict in that movie came not from the hero vs. hero brawl, but rather the internal struggle of survivor’s guilt.  Both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are driven to their wits’ end by loss and emotional anguish.  These are characters that have been pushed to their psychological limits and, in turn, write their grief in battle.  That’s drama, to me.
There seems to be interest in a POD or other physical copy of the game. Is that out already and where can people get it?
Physical copies are already on sale through Studio 2 Publishing!  In addition, we’ll be offering physical copies of the core-book available as part of our upcoming Cold Steel Wardens: Rogues Gallery Kickstarter.
Tell us a little bit about your upcoming Kickstarter project: Cold Steel Wardens: Rogues Gallery.  What should we expect in this supplement?
CSW: Rogues Gallery is the first of a number of supplements that I have planned for Cold Steel Wardens.  I wrote the draft for Rogues Gallery last July as part of Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). 
Rogues Gallery is meant to expand on the New Corinth setting by exploring two of its most important locations:  Stonegate Federal Penitentiary and Lincroft Asylum.  Further, the book includes write-ups for a fantastic array of mooks, masterminds, meta-humans, and madmen, ready to drop into any CSW campaign.
What sets CSW: Rogues Gallery apart, though, is how the book is set up.  The majority of the text is written by the perspective of Sawbones:  a phase-shifting private eye turned masked vigilante.  Each write-up contains Sawbones’ own notes, observations, and biases, as well as the evidence that he’s accumulated over the years on that criminal. 
That evidence ranges from police reports to psychological profiles, from newspaper articles to clues as obscure as a food truck license or a restaurant menu.  These items are meant to be ‘print and play’—a GM can print off those pages and literally hand them to their players, “Here’s the clue you found!” 
Let’s address a potential elephant, the first KS for Rogues Gallery didn’t hit its goal what plans do you have this time around to help make it a reality?
Most notably, our March attempt was made before the Studio 2 print run of CSW hit stores.  Switching publishers has definitely been a positive move for us, but the additional exposure from Studio 2 will surely help, as our corebook is now in game stores across the country.
In addition, we’ll be mobilizing to ensure the word gets out about CSW.  We’re planning a launch party at The Malted Meeple game café in Hudson, OH on August 1st, then will be running sessions all throughout GenCon Indianapolis.  With any luck, we’ll be able to really spread the word on CSW: Rogues Gallery and get it into your hands!

So, I operate a Facebook group and Twitter (Inclusive Gaming Network) and I am developing a project about Inclusivity in gaming circles, so I want to ask you this question. Could you tell me how you see CSW being a good game for a diverse gaming group?
One of my biggest goals for Cold Steel Wardens has been to create a setting in which our in-game heroes can explore real-world issues within a safe space.  I’ve run games that have dealt with human trafficking, racial inequality, gender and sexuality issues, and much more.  These are real problems that face our world; it just makes sense to be able to explore these issues within the ‘magic circle’ of the game table.
Further, the characters within the New Corinth universe struggle with these very issues.  Within the pre-gen characters I bring to every convention, we have characters struggling with mental health, their sexuality, their cultural representation…the list goes on.  As a member of the LGBT community, I find it important to show humanity as it is:  not whitewashed, not inundated with straight, white, cis-male, heroes.  The real world is a collage; New Corinth is no different.
 
I really hope you check out this game. I haven’t had a chance to play it, but AP was happy to provide me a review copy and I’ll definitely be playing a game before too long. Keep an eye out for the Kickstarter that should go live on August 1st!
 
With 17 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre’s and One World By Nights Vampire LARPs and is running both a Mage game and a Dark Ages: Vampire game at the moment. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a recent graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C.
 

So a few months back I got together with a couple of guys I know and we decided we were going to give Mutants and Masterminds a try. I was pretty pumped to GM a few modules as I had just come off a long stretch of running a Shadowrun campaign and was what could only be described as “rules weary." I needed something new to me, something I hadn’t tried before, and it need to be a little less heavy-handed when it came to crunch content. So we got together and picked Mutants and Masterminds. We all loved comic books and none of us had really felt like playing the old  Marvel RPG at the time, and I am so glad we didn’t. Mutants and Masterminds from Green Ronin turned out to be a blast and even though we’re currently on summer hiatus my thoughts still wander back to how fun those sessions were, how great Emerald City felt, and how the city’s heroes were utterly magnificent in their play. So here are 3 things that really shone in Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition:

1) As a GM I hate looking in books all the time.
While the quick-start rules aren’t a quick as Green Ronin would have you believe, they’re still fairly quick. My players decided on a magical hero themed campaign and were able to lay down characters fairly quickly with minimal meddling by me. Mutants and Masterminds provided a wealth of pre-generated characters to build upon and customize without a lot of hassle. The only difficulty we really had was defining a magical array for one character and conceptualizing exactly how speedster powers had limitations - OK, we're still not totally sure about that one. The rules were easy to pick up after that with just a few sessions and nobody seemed to have any complaints towards my end of the table.

2) You’re a Super Hero right out of the gate.
I think that the players really enjoyed not being level one or experience light to start out with. They were able to do some pretty spectacular things within the first few pages of the Emerald City Knights module. Despite being a man short of the number requirement of the module the game seems to be easily negotiable to their power levels and skills sets. Sure they might not have any super-geniuses on the team or the have the power of a paragon backing them up but the game allows the players to come in at a level where they’re more like Batman than Robin.

3) Player Agency
So here it is; Hero Points make the game more enjoyable to everyone at the table, including myself as a GM. I’m not my player’s enemy, I want them to succeed, I want the story to carry forward. Sure this role-playing and sometimes players will fail, but there have been many a time as both GM and player that I wished that I could see myself or someone else just call a shot and make things happen.

Mutants and Masterminds Hero point mechanic does this fantastically. I’m not claiming that things can’t go wrong for you in-game but being able to use a Hero point to overcome negative effects and statuses comes in pretty handy in the midst of battle. Hero points aren’t free either; they have to be earned usually by something going wrong for our super team. Evil is alive, afoot, and well written into Emerald City, subsequently the best use of the Hero point can be when players use it to directly influence on aspect of the story for a single result. I think it allows for greater player agency within the game. Allowing them to achieve and experience those last minute epic saves and wins without being bogged down with continually bad rolls.

Take heart! Evil may be stalking the streets of Emerald City but you and your caped crusaders are definitely up to the challenge. Mutants and Masterminds proved to be on of the highlights of my spring and I recommend it to anyone looking for a few fun short sessions or long lasting campaigns. The 3rd edition, quick start rules, as well as supplementary material are available here at Green Ronin online. 

About Ryan: ​So I try to read about 50 comics a week, depending on my ability to pay the power bill. I try to read as much new and independent works as my tried and trusted favorites, and I’ve been doing this for years. Thus, I can roughly say that I am pretty decent at comicology, however I hold no formal degree. Luckily, degrees are no substitute for common sense and that’s how I got this gig.   

​My current campaign is just about ready to wrap, and so I find myself at the great crossroads of any narrative. How, I ask myself, will I end this story? How much will the players’ actions dictate the conclusion, and how much control am I willing to exert in order to make the ending truly memorable? Since I find this to be quite the conundrum each time I run a campaign, I thought I might give voice to my thoughts on five major types of finales, and share them with you.

1 . The Big Reveal
Holding out against the spirits that encircle the party’s hideout, the assembled players gather around a fallen comrade. His wound could be the death of him should they not survive the night. Desperate, he beckons for one of his friends to lean in close. Just before he loses consciousness, he tells them, “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but it was forbidden. Your brother has been with you since you began your journey.” His eyes change to a familiar color as his glamour fades. His sibling embraces him, their tears mixing before dropping onto the floor.

This one requires a little bit of planning and forethought. As early as possible, start planting the seeds of a surprise twist that will keep your players guessing. I recommend watching plenty of Shyamalan films for lessons in both the right (Sixth Sense) and wrong (Signs) way to forge a twist. Your surprise should be exciting and shocking, but also feel natural. If your players are saying, “man, I can’t believe I didn’t discover that sooner,” then you know you’ve succeeded. If you time your reveal correctly and scatter the vague hints well enough, you can find yourself with the perfect “I am your Father” ending that’s sure to surprise and delight!

2 . The Heroic Sacrifice
The party finally sets out to destroy the arch demon. Their supplies are stocked and their spirits are high, when suddenly, the heroes are waylaid by an army of lesser demonic creatures. Your party fights valiantly, but it soon becomes obvious that, even if they prevail, they will most assuredly be finished off by the big boss just up the hill. With a great battle cry, one of your compatriots charges into the center of the army, crushing an alchemical substance that detonates into a flash of holy light. Her skin glows and burns, and she looks back on your group with a proud smile. The army, and the heroes’ valiant friend, vanish forever. With renewed vigor, the party forges a path up the hill, and annihilates the arch demon in the name of their fallen comrade.

Make certain, before you ever work the sacrifice of a player character into your narrative, that you consult first with the player in question. Tell them how the story could play out should they choose to end their character’s story this way, without giving too many hard details away. Should the player accept, you’ll find that your players will be talking about the climax of your campaign for years to come.

3 . The Vile Turncoat
The group of mages stands just before their hated adversaries in a ruined cathedral. Each wears the sigil of their order and has been adorned with great and powerful magics. Their enemies smirk wickedly from across the chamber. One of the party of mages begins working a spell, and his comrades take that cue to do the same. Before any enchantments can be cast, the lead mage turns his attention to his allies. His hands reach up high as bolts of dark lightning strike at his former friends. As they fight for their lives, the party can only ask, “why?”

Similar to the previous style, this ending requires a brief discussion with one of your players. Sometimes, the offer of power in exchange for one’s allegiance or ethics is too tempting. In the event that the player accepts your offer to betray the party, make certain their identity is concealed for as long as possible. This ending proves to be effective only with seasoned players who are no strangers to a little PvP. Be certain to consider the player character’s motives and personality when choosing your turncoat. If it does not make any sense for that particular character to fall to darkness and treachery, then pick another character or another ending.  If it is planned and executed correctly, the ending will cause some wonderful intriguing intra-party conflict at the climactic resolution to your campaign.

4 . The Terrible Tragedy
The party travels back from a long journey, defeating a powerful and devious foe. As the crest the hill on the road back to their home, they notice smoke rising into the clouds. A few more steps later, and now they know the foul truth. The city is burning. Sprinting as quickly as possible, the party works their way into their homeland. Some start to put out the fires while others search for survivors. When they realize that all hope is lost, one of the party members hears the weak coughing of the old barkeep. The player runs to his good friend. Shouting madly for a healer, he grips the barkeep’s hand in his. Just before he expires, the man says, “Malgas.” The party holds a funeral for their friends, their town, and their past.

Many great writers and creators know that the most emotionally powerful ending to a story can often be a great tragedy. Shakespeare made special use of this style of ending to drive the point of a story home. Sometimes, the heroes don’t win, love doesn’t find a way, and good people die. Before implementing the tragedy, take the temperature of the table. If it seems like the players would be particularly upset with a conclusion that doesn’t go entirely in their favor, then you may prefer our next entry. If, however, they seem to handle negativity in stride, don’t shy away from injecting a somber event at your climax. This ending works especially well when you plan on revisiting the setting and characters at a later date. Players can then seek sweet vengeance or apply the hard lessons learned to their characters’ personalities.

5 . The Grand Epic
Despite their best efforts, the party could not prevent the summoning. The ancient outer god will arrive on the planet’s surface within the hour. Armored and armed, you and your comrades gather one last time before the fight. You stand and face them; your face as hard as steel, your eyes filled with righteous purpose. You give the greatest speech of your life, which is met by resounding cheers from the assembled heroes. You take up your weapons and lead your friends into a fight for the ages. Choirs of angels echo their songs across the battlefield. Some of your party perish in glorious combat, but those that remain fight all the harder. Finally, and against all odds, you triumph over the adversary, your gleaming sword buried in the skull of the terrible deity.

Several games of high (or even low) fantasy lend themselves well to this style of ending. This last confrontation should be planned well in advance, take place over the course of an entire session (you don’t want to be rushed), and leave the players with a victory they will never forget. It should be dangerous so that those who die will not feel as if their death was in vain, and those that survive enjoy a victory that is all the sweeter. I highly recommend setting up a playlist of powerful tracks that enhance the experience, but that do not override it. Let your players feel like they’re the main characters in fantasy movie or novel. With a well-planned fight, good music, and just a little bit of luck, your players will be recounting the session effusively for hours after the campaign finally ends.
 
I’m certain I’ve left a few great endings off of the list. Please share them, or your favorite campaign climaxes, with me on Facebook or at my website listed below. For now, I must go to plan the end of my campaign. But which style to choose?
 
David Horwitz is a gamer and freelance writer with an obsession for exploring new forms of leisure. If you’re looking for an inquisitive mind and a deft hand, or just want to chat about gaming, check him out at www.davidhorwitzwrites.com
 

Before you stands your foe, a burly giant of a man wrapped in steel and brandishing a battle worn blade with both hands. Blood drips from the blade down his gauntlets, landing on the bodies that litter the road before him. With a mighty voice he commands you “Be gone or thou shalt face mine wrath!” You wonder for a second why in this world, where everyone seems to speak normally, this knightly character suddenly sports this bad Elizabethan style of speech. No matter, at least the DM is trying. Do you think you can take him? Probably AC 22 tops? 40-60 hit points? That’s what, seven or eight good stabs in the chest? Bury an axe in him with a good hit as many times? A level one pleb only needs to be shot in the chest with an arrow once to die, but this guy? He’s ready to take a dozen shots, and that’s only if you find a gap in his armor! The simulationist cringes at this mechanic and storyteller rolls her eyes at the absurdity of the combat system. Clearly Hit Points in most fantasy role-playing games are broken, or maybe we’re just doing it wrong.
 
Many game systems have tried to improve upon Hit Points, they are present in every type of role-playing in one way or another. In doing so, some end up re-inventing the wheel with complex layers of different damage categories or conditions, some do away with the concept altogether but in doing so certainly stray from role-playing orthodoxy. No matter what the rule book describes, and how your other stats do or don’t change based on that important measure of life, below are five options you can apply to your game to help turn a number into a narrative that the simulationist and the storyteller can both appreciate.  
 
1) HIT POINTS COME FROM EXPERIENCE POINTS
Leveling up; the joyous and wonderful reward we give your characters for staying alive, will turn the timid level one noob into a seasoned level 8 veteran. Through XP we attempt to simulate the increase in skill that comes from doing that particular activity. In the case of adventurers, staying alive is a big part of daily life. It’s the experience of staying alive that makes us better at staying alive next time. Practice makes perfect.
 
2) HIT POINTS ARE A SKILL, NOT A PHYSICAL TRAIT
Did your paladin slowly grow kevlar skin and carbide bones as his career progresses? If the answer is yes I really want to know the name of that game and where I can buy a handbook. That sounds awesome. Probably the reason Sir Paladin von Bravenstein stands toe to toe with a Hill Giant is that he is so damn good at protecting his squishy body, even from the literal tree trunk of a club his foe is smashing him with. This is because a blow that would crush any other man glances off the hero’s shield doing only minimal damage, shaking him but not killing him. Remove 16 hit points, but remember, that’s only 20% of his total pool. He’s so good at this you could do it all day!
 
3) HIT POINTS ARE STAMINA, NOT A WOUND THRESHOLD
Ok, maybe our hero can’t do this all day. Eventually the punishment is just too much to endure. Why after being smashed 6 times did the 7th finally fall our hero? Was having a seventh rib break just one rib too many and he gave up the ghost? Well probably not, a few hours to a few days of rest (depending on your system) would have had him in tip top shape again. It’s likely the initial damage he endured was less bone fracturing and more muscle fatiguing. It seems more plausible to say that deflecting blow after blow pushed him to the point of exhaustion; he dropped his defense, couldn’t get the shield up in time, and the final hit made a real pretty splat.
 
4) HIT POINTS ARE HOW YOU AVOID INJURY, NOT A MEASURE OF YOUR INJURY
Every hit leading up to that last one left a superficial injury at most, the final hit was full-on lethal damage that would dispatch any man (or no-man if we want to be Tolkien about things). Being at 10 hit points away from death didn’t necessarily mean our high-level hero was a bloody mess, whatever kind of mess he was could have been cured with a good night sleep. But oh man was he in danger! A player cannot feel their hero’s pain, but hopefully the numbers help them empathize with their hero’s sense of danger.
 
5) HIT POINTS CAN BE THE BLESSING OF THE GODS
Ok, ok, so what about healing? What about a nice cure critical wounds, prayer of mending, healing touch, or whatever your system calls it? (This could be an article in itself- How to role-play a healer without resorting to spell casting surgery: 4 simple descriptors to make your healing mystical and mythical). If our heroes aren’t actually receiving critical wounds, then how do we go about healing them? You’ve gotta get the Hit Points back up somehow!
 
History shows us that it is very easy for humans to believe that the outcome of a battle was based on which army had their gods’ favour and whose god was stronger. Cool, evoking this favour is your cleric’s job. Instead of erasing cuts and bruises, channel the divine spirit into your fellow champions, thus granting them the strength and wisdom to keep their defenses true. Allow that mystical prayer that was uttered to become a divine bulwark that mechanically is really just restoring those hit points. DMs, throw in some cool effects to bring this to life. Have the glimmering flashes of angels appear in the corner of your players’ vision. Have the druid’s prayer cause a cooling breeze to blow that refreshes our hero’s body and spirit while the clouds allow the sun to only shine in the monster’s eye. Have that bardic tune actually just give us a mental edge that restores some of that ability to avoid damage and to dig deep inside for more stamina to continue deflecting the incoming blows. By the end of the fight have the surviving enemies cower not just before us, but before the might of our god(s); our cosmic aegis, not our cosmic Band-Aid.
 
Certainly Hit Points, by their design, are supposed to convey some level of injury and the result of your weapon hitting its target. The above ideas are not meant to totally overrule all that that, but I presented them as counterpoints to show that we can indeed look at Hit Points in a very different way.
 
Anthony is lifelong dreamer and hobbyist who approaches role-playing as one part storyteller and one part rules lawyer. Role-playing interests include world building, back stories, character accents and voices, and trying to keep his inner simulationist in check. Other hobbies include raising reptiles and playing World of Warcraft.

​I’d heard of Ravenloft, and Strahd, years before I’d ever read one of the novels written in the setting or even read one of the setting books. I was already a huge World of Darkness gamer, so the idea of a horror Dungeons and Dragons game held a lot of appeal for me. I’d played D&D a little bit at that time, but I’d never really fallen in love with it the same way most gamers do. (I would eventually, but I resisted for quite a while) In the end, it was Ravenloft that helped to break me of my dislike of the fantasy role-playing game. I remember walking into a game store, in S. Portland, Maine where I lived at the time, and seeing this brand-new book on the shelf. It was wrapped in plastic under a sign that said Limited Edition.

I immediately bought it.

I don’t usually do that, usually I wait and I peruse a book for a good half-hour or more before I put money down for it. Even being a bit careless with money like I was at the time ( I was making good commission at the Radioshack), I still was surprised I bought this book without really knowing much about it except it was for D&D and that it was Ravenloft. That was enough for me. I knew the book would be mine and I didn’t want to miss out on an LE edition. My copy is 1052/3000.

                I considered keeping it wrapped up and not reading it, but I threw that idea out of the window quickly. I wanted to read it, I wanted to see what the setting was all about, and I threw caution to the wind. I read the book cover to cover hundreds of times. This book was like a companion to me for years. Even before I got a chance to run a campaign, I read it regularly.

These are the three things that drew me deep into the bosom of Ravenloft, and one thing that kept me coming back:

1) The Mists:
The first mention of the dreaded mists is in the copy of Ravenloft I have is in the second paragraph, “Somewhere, lurking deep within those ethereal mists, a dark and nameless dimension is ruled by dark and nameless powers.” In the 3rd paragraph the Mists are suddenly capitalized, and I knew quickly that they were not simple mists, these were not banks of harmless fog that hung by the river bank. No, these were The Mists. Almost a creature or a god, or some force of their own. The Mists evoke the fear in most Stephen King movies, the unseen forces hiding just out of sight. The Mists carry travelers into the Realm of Dread, they trap the Dread Lords, and at the same time… they protect the Lords from the heroes that would seek to destroy them if they could. The Mists were a great tool as a Game Master of Ravenloft. They evoked the mood of the game, and the players would jump and shiver whenever I took more than a moment to mention them. They were the biggest, most pervasive, untouchable enemy of the games I ran in the world.

2) The Dark Powers:
These entities are mentioned in the same breath as The Mists. However, unlike the Mists they are never truly explained, enumerated, or even seen. The Mists pervade, but the Dark Powers lurk in the ur-Shadow behind the world. The Dark Powers lock the Dread Lords in place and at the same time they entice heroes into the world to face them. Is the Domain of Dread a prison for the Dread Lords… or is it a place set aside to torture good? Are the Dark Powers truly Dark… or are they beings of light offering hope in the darkest of darkness? Why did they expand the land beyond Castle Ravenloft? Why would they continue to extend tendrils into other planes and steal portions of those places? There are no secrets answered here or really, ever. Ravenloft holds many secrets for those that seek them.

3) The Lands Within the Mists:
The creatures that dwell within the Domain of Dread are horrendous, but often they are reflections of humanity. The land they live within is a series of reflections of our various forms of horror. From the Stone Age, to the high Victorian there are Dread Realms that reflect various forms of horror that have plagued humanity. The creatures that dwell within these lands can be genteel or savage. Even the most genteel hide an inner savagery and the most savage on the outside sometimes hid a powerful inner light. From Darkon to Dementlieu, from Barovia to Lamordia, all of the various lands within the book were alive with various chthonic evils. These were lands with gunpowder and swords, these were places with Vampires, and Werewolves, and various creatures of every sort. In the Ravenloft games I’ve run, I’ve never been afraid to have my players face every level of darkness that I could muster.

The 1 Thing that Keeps Me Coming Back
Hope. Ravenloft is a realm of darkness and horror. At the same time, as I’ve said above, there is a light within the darkness. There are always heroes that try and fight back against the darkness. There are fires, and songs, and joy hidden within the horrors. Hope keeps me coming back to the Dream Realms. Hope that the heroes will choose to continue to fight, hope that I can continue to tell stories that evoke a shiver and at the same time present a spotlight on the best of humanity. Hope is always best seen in the darkness, because in the light hope sits in harmony with other positive features. In the dark though, Hope shines forth as it is sometimes the only good that is left.

Hope is what I hope to see in my games, even at the darkest of hours, there is hope for joy to return for good to overcome evil. I’ve recently bought the new book, Curse of Strahd, you should too.

Come, the Domains of Dread are calling us, we must answer the call.

With 17 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook, is running both a Mage game and a Dark Ages: Vampire game at the moment, and is an advocate for inclusive gaming spaces. He's also a father and a recent graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C.
 
 

I’ve recently started re-reading the novels that launched me in to role-playing. They weren’t my first fantasy novels, but they were the ones that took a young boy with an interest in the fantasy genre and made him into a full-fledged role-playing geek. Now that I’ve got over 20 years of GM’ing under my belt my reading experience is a little different and I find myself noticing new things; for example, why does the little guy with the top knot survive all of his misadventures? Out of the entire party he is the one who reached death’s doorstep, or should have, the most – (spoiler alert) but he survives, and thrives.
 
We’ve all seen it before, characters who should be dead or who were never supposed to be part of the story come alive and not only thrive but grow to legendary proportions. One of my most enduring characters was brought in to the campaign because the GM told us we needed a healer. So I wrote a partner character for my Ranger, he was more of an NPC than anything, really bad strength, dexterity, and constitution, lots of phobias and weaknesses, designed to hang out in the background and provide healing support and some occasional comic relief. Well the campaign was harder than we thought and more often than not Father Trebonius was required to make his Will save and wade into battle, which usually involved throwing a well timed and well-aimed rock at an enemies head. He had limited spell use, restricted mostly to healing and charms and had only one weapon proficiency (rocks, I’m not joking). To make him interesting I gave him a fun back-story and in the end, he saved the day more than anyone else and outlasted my Ranger. Father Trebonius was brought out of retirement for two other campaigns at later dates because he was a fan favourite and we couldn’t get enough of him. So what was it about the goofy, and limited Trebonius, that allowed him to survive when everyone else around him was more “epic”, and to that point why did that little Kender from those novels outlast almost everyone else?
 
1. Fun for the GM:
Lets face it; the fate of your character is solidly in the hands of the DM. You don’t see the stats of the baddies, and you don’t see the DM’s roles so no matter how bad you role or how many blunders you make – if the DM wants them alive they will be. Here’s a secret, we fudge the roles – a lot. Role-playing is about shared story telling; it’s about advancing the plot and growing the characters and like any good novel or movie a strong protagonist, or protagonists, is essential. The story cries out for it and any character can fall into the role. There is nothing we DM’s love more than an interesting PC that we can write into the story. I try to write all of the characters into the campaign, but sometimes it’s like the player was reading my mind. With interesting characters we start writing encounters based on them, giving the players an opportunity to flex their role-playing muscles or show off their new sword, characters that bring out our creativity last longer – we just don’t want to see them go.
 
2. Fun for everyone else:
If you make a character that is fun for you to play but rubs everyone else wrong, they won’t last. I’ve seen it often – some well-meaning player makes a character that cause party conflict, either by design or by some cosmic accident and they die, usually horribly. We chock the conflict up to role playing their character but it brings the whole party down and when their hanging from the cliff face in the heat of battle, no one is coming to save them. That makes things very difficult for the GM, even if they want to save you. Now I’m not saying that the silent brooding types can’t become legendary, they have a place in the party as well (think the red robed, hourglass eyed mage), and sometimes they are just as engaging for the GM as the loveable Kender. In fact party conflict is a good thing, it happens, and it should – because all good characters have things they love and hate and when you bring together a group of three-dimensional PCs they should get on each others nerves every now and then; but there is a difference between brooding or depressed and purposely causing conflict. Here’s another little secret GMs don’t like that, we want some conflict but when it starts taking away from the story it gets annoying and suddenly the monsters start rolling really well against that one PC who’s always causing fights.
 
3. Engaged in the story:
When you look at that little guy with the topknot, the Kender that everyone loves, he was engaged in every part of the story. He had his little fingers, literally and figuratively, in everything. He was front and centre when interacting with NPCs, he was always at the front of the line exploring and trying new and exciting things, and even though he wasn’t a good fighter he was involved in every battle – often in unexpected ways. Quirky Father Trebonius was the same; he was a joy to role-play so whenever NPCs showed up he took centre stage and the other PCs would step aside to watch. When we had down time he always found something interesting to occupy the parties time, and when battle happened I was either finding interesting ways around his phobias or I was finding creative uses of his spells so he could still be involved in the fight, in some way.  Here’s the short and dirty: if you have designed a character that does not want to, or cannot be involved in the story, someone who is just along for the ride, then the GM won’t engage with them, and won’t save them when they role a 1.
 
4. Able to contribute to the whole story:
Let’s go back to the Kender, he really illustrates this point well. As a character he was designed to have some skill or attribute that could contribute in almost every situation, his race helped with this. Kender are immune to fear and are insatiably curious. But when the party was taken prisoner and locked in a cage for days on end, without his lock picks I might add, he was useless. He couldn’t bend the bars or magic their way out. No one would blame him for sitting sullenly waiting for an opportunity to apply his now useless skill set. But he didn’t, he called upon his racial heritage and talked everyone’s ears off, he told tall tales and he asked incessant questions about the other characters backgrounds, and most importantly, he engaged their captors – or one of them in conversation, which led to a friendship of sorts. He annoyed everyone, but he also kept their morale up and the story moving forward, he took the time to bring out other people’s back-story and he created a new, and likely novel, story arch involving their captor. In other words, he was contributing – and he was designed that way. As a GM I would love nothing more than for the PC’s to take some time to get to know each other while they are being held hostage, to tell tall tales and ask questions of one another. I would gladly take hours out of our story for that opportunity, because it creates a complete story, making the PCs more relatable and more genuine to the rest of the party. Those are the characters that I want to save, and as a GM I would have done it exactly the same way Margaret and Tracy did, by having the befriended captor break the lock. This might sound like I’m advocating for a party of generalists; I’m not. I’m also not saying specialists aren’t necessary and engaging, but when you design your specialist make sure that there are aspects of them (e.g., personality or past) that can contribute to other parts of the tale. Make sure that when your undead slaying knight isn’t slaying zombies he has something else to offer or they will become boring and disconnected very quickly.
 
5. The back story:
A PC’s back story is the foundation that their involvement in the campaign is built on. How they engage with NPCs, PCs, and the story is, like you and me, built on their past experiences. It doesn’t have to be a 50 page novella, you don’t even need to write it out, I didn’t write out Father Trebonius’ back story, after all he wasn’t supposed to survive for long after we found some healing items. But I knew it, and I knew it when I built him. His was simple, he was raised a gypsy by loving gypsy parents; he was a talented storyteller and very charismatic. He loved to drink and dance and flirt and tell stories. But he also had a longing in his heart for more knowledge. When he has a young man he joined a priestly order devoted to knowledge. He learned some spells and he absorbed books and languages like nobody’s business, but ultimately his love of partying got him kicked out of the order. Which is when he joined up with the party. Simple – but it defined how he interacted with the world and it gave the GM something to work with, it made it possible for the GM to easily write in something that would engage my back story and pull Trebonius in even if he was afraid, which he was… all the time…. The GM was thankful.
 
6. Weakness and vulnerability:
The best characters are the ones that can fall apart, the ones who have fought through life and have the scars to prove it. A GM loves a character with a weakness; I don’t mean Superman’s kryptonite, but some character flaw that can be used against them. Maybe a phobia or an obsession, maybe they think it’s their strength like the moustachioed knight who lived his life by a very strict code of honour. That code nearly got him killed as much as the Kender’s curiosity! Giving the GM something that they can use against you will make your role playing experience more fulfilling and will bring them a great amount of joy. Watching the players squirm when you force them in to an ethical dilemma dragged out of their past is one of the most satisfying moments in a GM’s experience – because we know their engaged and we know they care.
 
Hopefully these reflections can help you make a character that your GM will refuse to kill, no matter how badly you role, or how many bad decisions you make. Also, maybe it will inspire you to pick up those amazing books, if you haven’t already, and fall in love with that little top knotted rogue and his companions.
 
Bryan Sali is a gaming enthusiast and geek, also a professional coach. When not playing D&D, or thinking about it, or writing the next adventure, you can find him playing board games or online games, or watching movies, or spending time with his wife and dogs.
 

​I love cities in fiction, especially if they are well written and realistic. And in this respect, I always come back to Sir Terry Pratchett. If you’ve never read any of his Discworld novels, please stop reading this and go and read one. Now. Yes, please.
I’ll wait.

Back? Amazing, wasn’t it?

But back to Pratchett. He said, and I paraphrase:

‘I always got tired of fantasy cities. They were simply like set designs. They appeared at the start of the story and were gone at the end. When I created the city of Ankh-Morpork for the Discworld, I wanted a city that looked like it was always THERE, working in the background. You just caught it at some particular moment, but it was there before and would be there after.’

Now if you’re designing an RPG adventure and simply want a bunch of streets, a tavern and a palace, fair play to you. It would be simple, and almost instantaneous to make. Now me…. I love my cities. I like to know the roads, the history. I like to know why that alley is dangerous. I like to come back to them, again and again, to have the players have their base there, to know it more. And when I build them, in my mind, these are the 10 questions I have to answer:
 
1. How old is it?  -
A population centre’s shape relates directly to how it grew. A Martian sci fi colony might be based around the original landing area. A modern built city might have all roads at right angles. A medieval/fantasy city will usually have grown organically and will be a warren of random alleys and narrow roads. A contemporary city, if it’s old enough, might have a convoluted ancient centre, and more regular outskirts, built later, as it grew.

2. Who runs it? –
If you want to open a shop, who do you talk to? Is there a regent? A prince? Then there might be a palace. A ruling council? A council house. How did they get there? Is it based on tradition? Money? Family?

3. Who keeps the peace? –
This might seem simple, but it isn’t. Before police departments, cities made do with city militias. As a rule, the more modern the setting, the more organised the peace keeping organisation. If you punch a pickpocket for taking your money, do you get in trouble?

4. Where does the poo go? –
By far my favourite question. Yes, I like to think about the infrastructure. Why? Because it’s the reason why it takes months and millions of dollars to make CGI skin look authentic. If it’s too clean and tidy, your brain rejects it as false. Same with my question. You don’t HAVE to address where all the poo goes, or how the citizens get water, but this NEEDS to pop into your mind during the making process. Because if it’s not there, your brain will subconsciously realise this city is a fake one.  A couple of sentences, and there you go, you have a sewer all the way to the docks and a network of aqueducts. And now you can have chases in the former and your elf can climb the latter. For elf reasons.

5. Who lives in them? –
This can be as broad a question as what races are accepted in your town. Trolls aren’t that welcome? Fine, maybe they’re banned. Not that bad? Ok, so then they have their own neighbourhood, call it Fang Square, and they keep to themselves. This might help you get the neighbourhoods developed further.

6. How did it evolve?  -
Does it have an old quarter in the middle, and new outskirts (see point 1). Or did it expand around a port or river and had a more linear growth? Did it start with a fortified position? Maybe it’s still there, or its ruins are, lost somewhere downtown.

7. What do the citizens eat –
Another Terry Pratchett/infrastructure question. This one mostly regards the outskirts of town. It takes A LOT of food to make a metropolis work, we’ve simply forgotten about it in the supermarkets of the 21st century. So is the town linked to others by trade? Are there fields around it? Hydroponic farms? Growing vats?

8. What’s legal? –
A very quick and simple one, linking with point 5, what’s considered to be acceptable or not. This question leads you to design subterranean gambling dens and huge slums, where legality is more a set of guidelines.

9. What’s in a name? –
The name of your town is important, as you will come back to it again and again. Feel free to throw a bunch of Scrabble tiles into the air and see what lands. Also, try and find less known names of towns and places with the same background/culture of your city. These will give you a massive head start.

10. How it all fits together -
On the Pakistan-Indian border, in an area called the Indus Valley there are a set of ruins of an ancient city. It is called Mohenjo Daro, it's about 5000 years old, and its complexity would put most towns up to the late 20th century (and in some parts of the world to this very day) to shame. It had roads and streets (some with asphalt), boxed in between pavements. It had defined neighbourhoods, broad roads and what might have been squares or markets. My point is this: we've been building our cities in the same way for millennia. It works. We're happy with the layout. 

 
And this is what your town must be. Something you’d recognise as a town. Something that works. Something that breathes. Something that will continue to work and live, long before and long after your adventurers venture into it.

Now all you need is a shady trader, a tavern, and some heroes.

Look, here they come now….
 
 
Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after a decade doing odd things in labs, became a teacher. Then, 18 months ago, RPG’ing came into his life and he is now happily juggling the two. He’s designed two major cities, the cyberpunk metropolis that is New Hades (www.welcometonewhades.blogspot.com ) and the interdimensional steampunk nexus that is Thyra (http://cityofthyra.blogspot.co.uk/ ). He lives in England with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants and fictional maps. Quite a few of them.
 

​Some people in this world are real go- getters. They are generally seen by others to be classy, efficient, thoughtful, confident and decisive. They’re the type of person who can’t be happy unless they are planning a fantastic vacation, juggling 2 perfect jobs and maneuvering for their retirement with the millions they’ve made on the stock market. When role-playing, these people are the same type of gamer who perfectly navigates a complex storyline with well thought out and efficient actions, all the while making clever remarks and bonding the party together in ways that DM’s can only dream. Fuck them. I’m here to tell you, reader, to embrace your lazy, haphazard and self-doubting side. Here are 4 ways to not accomplish anything in role-playing.
 
1 Plan every action in agonizing detail
Statistically you need to minimize your chance of failure, by planning, planning, arguing and then planning some more. You’ll notice that the perfect gamers will likely join you for a short session of planning, but their weakness is that they don’t see it through to its dragged out, discouraging and frustrating end. The good gamers plan for a while and then seem to arbitrarily decide on one clear, logical and decisive action. Don’t get sucked in. You can hold up the group for hours by asking “what if” questions, and humming and hawing about possible consequences. A bad gamer will remember to imagine the worst-case scenario every time someone suggests a course of action, but never offer possible solutions. After all, it is waaaay easier to tell someone what not to do, than it is to encourage him or her to do something they want to. The tendency to find faults in logical planning is nature’s way of telling you to slow down the pace of decisions being made in the game. With practice, you can stretch the planning stage out until everyone is good and uncomfortable and willing to half-heartedly commit to any old course of action, just to do something. Despite the naysayers you will hear in response to this tip, boring and bogged-down-in-details is how role-playing was meant to be.
 
Ok, so the plan is that the rogue looks left, THEN right, as the warrior peeks through the keyhole for 1.3 seconds and slowly opens the door 2.7 inches, so as not to trip any wire that may or may not be hidden, meanwhile…
 
2 Be a dick
Nothing breaks up party cohesion more than one character being a royal ass-hat. Sure the party loves the cool guy who introduces his character as a brash and uncouth scoundrel, but ultimately is someone with some endearing traits that the party can work with. This is where these “quality” characters go wrong. My advice for getting nothing done in role-playing is to make sure that your character is impossible to work with. Keep all your character motivations hidden, with not even a suggestion about what might be going on in their head. Roll your eyes often (both in and out of game), and tell other characters that their plans are stupid. You don’t need to explain more than that, but if they insist you do, drag up shit that happened like 3 years ago and be super vague about it, with maybe the odd really specific (and ideally minor) instance sprinkled in. If the party is in chaos, they can’t expect to make logical and confident decisions now, can they?
 
Ok ok ok so I killed everyone in the tavern because I overheard someone say that something smelled rotten. I can’t help it if that’s my sleeper agent phrase! Great, now you all know my secret sleeper agent phrase. Ugh!
 
3 Be passive aggressive
I can’t help but wonder if I’m being passive aggressive by vaguely complaining about other people’s passive aggression. Oh well. When in game, don’t communicate with your fellow gamers clearly or directly. If you try to be nice and clear then you run the risk of your party actually accomplishing cool shit. By continuing to be maddeningly unhelpful and whiney, you can almost guarantee confusion, frustration, anxiety and a certain degree of hopelessness in the party. They may even just give up their current quest- all because of the stink you made about someone getting all the magic items your character wanted (and was best suited for!) from the treasure chamber. But it’s fine! Whatever! Be visibly upset, but refuse to acknowledge it with anything more than a fake smile, and changing the subject. If you do this step right, people will become more focused on not setting you off, then they will on accomplishing any cohesive group goals.
 
I’m not passive aggressive…unlike some people I know
 
4 Don’t fall for the DM’s hooks
Too many perfectly rotten gamers spoil a good waste of time by grabbing on to every little plot hook the DM throws their way. Yeah, it progresses a cohesive storyline, sure it brings the party to new places, and introduces them to new folk. But trust me, your own haphazard leaps from goblin fight to kobold fight back to goblin fight will get a lot less done in terms of worthwhile storylines. A word to the wise is to beware of DMs trying one of their wily tricks to insidiously have the party build momentum and story arcs. A famous trick many DM’s will use is having an NPC befriend the party. The solution, my terrible gamer, is simple: kill this puppet tout suite. Nip that sentimental shit in the bud, and claim that you had a reason to believe they were going to screw the party over. Build on the party’s fears, nurture their paranoia, and they may even take out a few of these blabbermouths themselves!
 
Don’t forget to sense motive when you look in the mirror each morning
 
So there you have it. A quick and dirty guide to limiting the effectiveness of any RPG group. It’s applicable to all levels of gamer experience, from rookie to cagey veteran, and it’s translatable across all gaming systems. If you follow these rules, you will greatly reduce the fun and epic-ness of your gaming group…although I can’t guarantee that you won’t get kicked out of the group shortly thereafter…
 
Until next time, don’t look up what effect your spells have, or the components they require, until everyone’s eyes are turned on you and waiting…
 
I aim to disappoint.
 
Dustinopolis is actually a fairly nice villain. He enjoys walks on sharp-rocked beaches, eating rare and disgusting things, and traveling the world on a budget. You shouldn’t follow him on twitter (@devourcheese) as his posts really aren’t that interesting, and following him will only serve to inflate his ego.
 
 

The epic death or near-death experience is a rite of passage for the role-playing crowd. How we react to it is immortalized forever in the psyche of that campaign, that two-bit town, and your surly group. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each reaction to your comrade’s fall.
 
Reaction 1: Do SOMETHING!!!!!
 
This is the plan to react directly off your character’s emotions. No time to think or process, just act accordingly.
 
Pros: This solution can be more natural. People do weird things when their loved ones get hurt. Some people gather some super strength and resolve and save the day. Others melt into a puddle at the sight of their loved ones falling. Along with being authentic, this reaction can define your character and their relationship with the fallen.
 
Cons: Often, people’s reactions to ‘do something’ are terrible, uncoordinated, and strategically unsound.
 
Reaction 2: Let the healer figure it out
 
When you have some sort of healer in the group, it could easily fall to that character to always head to those who have fallen. This can be either a spoken plan of action or working on an assumption.
 
Pros: This can be often be the most clever plan for your group. Sending the person who may be able to save your comrade is a great plan.
 
Cons: Letting someone else ‘figure it out’ is often a cop-out of the role-playing responsibility. This may cause your character to not react (even verbally or emotionally) to the gravity of the situation. Just be aware that a friend’s body falling should not be shrug-worthy, and you should be fine.
 
Reaction 3: Assume that they will be okay
 
Pros: Virtually no work involved.
 
Cons: In a harsh fantasy world where many things can go wrong, those things will go wrong. The strategy is bad. The story suffers. And bodies will hit the floor.
 
Reaction 4: Shoot them and put them out of their misery
 
Pros: Could be more humane than watching them suffer (eeerrrr…. Sorry this one is a stretch.)
 
Cons: This isn’t the best way to build trust within your group. And isn’t the best solution for player retention either.
I have examples from role-playing of many of these reactions. I have been the one left on the floor dying and eventually dying from reaction 3. After all, all I have to do is roll the dice and eventually I will stabilize.
 
Which ones do you usually use within your group? What are some of the tragic ends you have seen?
 
Vanessa is a sarcastic, 30-something wife and mother. She likes things and stuff, but not simultaneously. When she isn’t involved in things and stuff, she teaches middle school math and art. She sometimes bothers her friends to help with her blog articles and other times it all comes from her head… scary... She is also trying out this new twitter handle at @sarasma_nessa 
​

                I have always been a big comic book geek. When I was a kid, my godfather would take me to the store to buy comics. I initially bought them for the obvious story reasons, but I eventually became highly invested in the idea of comics as collectibles. I’d read the comic once, and then I’d store it away with the hope that I would eventually have a complete story arc or comic series that I could someday sell to a rabid collector. That being said, I didn’t have the opportunity to play a superhero role-playing game until a small convention in Plymouth, NH at Plymouth State University now called Game-on-Icon. The game was Aberrant, and as it was a one-shot game we were encouraged to make outrageously powerful and odd Novas. My character was from the “Luckiest Town in the Mid-West.” Two people had won the lottery in town, business was booming in an economically depressed region, and the town was renowned for great things happening to it. All of this was due to my character, who didn’t realize he was super powered. He had the ability to impart luck (both good and bad) upon those around him. He was traveling in New York and saw a group of Novas fighting one another. Not really understanding who was who, he went back and forth imparting luck upon one side or the other. I loved the character and the short game was incredibly fun. That was a strange way to play a Super-Hero game, but what follows are a few other great ways to play Supers’ games in a lot of awesome and various systems.
​
First though, I want to give a shout-out to games in this genre that I recommend checking out. First is Aberrant: this game is a part of the Trinity Continuum and was originally published by White Wolf games and uses a variation of their rules’ system. Aberrant is a customizable super-hero game that features Novas (basically mutants) and allows for a lot of variation and story-centered gaming. Trinity is a group of three games, future sci-fi horror (Trinity Aeon), gritty realistic modern Super-Hero (Aberrant), and pulp action turn of the 20th century (Adventure). Onyx Path Publishing is currently in the process of reviving this wonderful universe and I really recommend checking out the original version of the game which is available on Drive Thru RPG. Also, keep an eye on the new edition that is being developed. I’m super* excited for this to be coming out in the somewhat near future.

Mutants and Masterminds: this game was created and developed by Steve Kenson. Kenson had previously worked on Aberrant and you can see some of the influence of that game on M&M. M&M is a D-20 based game but allows for a seriously awesome amount of customization. The world created to support M&M is amazing and if you are looking for a game that is pretty quick to jump into, Mutants and Masterminds is a pretty great option.

These are the two games in the genre I’ve played the most, but there are some classics and new options out there as well that I’m going to list for people that are interested to check out. Marvel Super-Heroes was published by TSR in the 80’s; newer versions of FASERIP are still being published and if you are interested in that system I suggest doing a quick Google search. Savage Worlds has a Supers’ setting and there is a lot of support for this gaming system at the moment. Monte Cook recently published the Cypher system which is a customizable setting that includes Super-Hero options. There is also Godlike, Scion, DC Heroes, DC Adventures, and many more that I don’t have time or the memory to list. If you like Super-Heroes, there are seriously a ton of options.

Now, onto the list of style options:

1) FOUR-COLOR
The four-color term comes from the older style of coloring that comics had during the Golden Age of comics. This term derives from a form of coloring the page using four color dots. When talking about genre, four-color refers to the over-the-top style of some early comics. These sorts of games might include scenes where a hero turns back time by spinning the Earth backward or where a character hurls an island at another character with no consequences from such a world splitting action. Four-color games can be a lot of fun and they often resemble the discussions people have about which superhero can beat up another. I’ve played a few games that were pretty close to four-color, one thing I’ve noticed is that the technical aspects of the role-playing system tend to come up a lot more frequently, so running a game like this might work best with Mutants and Masterminds or one of the other more mechanically focused systems I mentioned above.

2) GRITTY, DARK, SUPER - MEETS THE WORST OF HUMANITY
Imagine Watchmen or Preacher, or any of the other comics produced by Vertigo over the years. These are the type of games I’m thinking of here. These are games that examine the intersection of super-power and the darkness inherent in humanity. There are cross-overs between concepts like the World of Darkness, but instead of being monsters the characters are usually humans with slightly extra-human abilities. These games are often the polar opposite of the Four-Color campaign and though rules and mechanics are important to any good game, they sometimes take a back-stage to the personal investigation into the psyche of the characters. Aberrant is a great world for these games in some ways, but Mutants and Masterminds and even DC adventures can be used if you really want to use those rule systems.

3) THE LOW POWERED BUMBLING HERO LEAGUE
The 1999 movie Mystery Men is a great example of this type of game. The players make characters that are very low powered ‘super-heroes’. These types of games are much more focused around the idea that humanity can make changes in the world, even if they are not incredibly powerful.    I’ve found the times I’ve played this style of game that it is great to juxtapose the player characters with a more powerful group of more traditional heroes. The players might feel inadequate but this is a good opportunity for them to realize that they might be better people, or more capable of doing and going places the more well-known supers are unable to venture. I’ve yet to see a system that this type of game can’t work well with.

4) HUMANITY IS FLAWED, BUT THERE IS HOPE
This type of game is somewhere in between all of the other styles presented above. Imagine Spider-Man, or most of the modern Marvel movies. The world has dark influences and powers that work against humanities best interests. At the same time, there are heroes that are truly trying to do their best to not only save people, but also make the world a better place for everyone. Players are often mid-strength supers, but you can play anywhere from mildly powerful to Hulk level in these games and give your players a lot to work with. You can mix and match some world smashing action with more gritty and real stories at the same time. This is usually where I like to play and when the new Aberrant rules come out I’ll be looking to get a crew together to play once more. Heck… I might not wait that long, the game still holds-up with its 90’s era rules pretty well to this day.
 
I sometimes get the sense that people don’t see Super-Hero RPGs as great options for role-playing, but I honestly have loved them. Like comics, they can have as much or as little depth as the writers (players) want them to have. Check out the game lines I suggested above, with the popularity of the Marvel movies right now… I’m kind of surprised that RPG companies aren’t jumping on the marketing bandwagon a bit more for their games.

With 17 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre’s and One World By Nights Vampire LARPs and is running both a Mage game and a Dark Ages: Vampire game at the moment. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a recent graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C.

(*I see what you did there. – VP Quinn)

Plastic, metal, wood, bone, semi-precious stone, million-year-old fossils…
 
What do these all have in common? That’s easy; They’ve all been used to craft various types of dice over the years. Ah, dice… Those wonderful bits of number-randomising goodness that can make or break your end-all, be-all negotiation with that nigh-unstoppable Lich looking to lynch the entire planet…
               
#tumble-tumble-roll-1#
 
                Dammit, Carl, I said anything BUT a 1!!!
 
I’ve been around this scene long enough to realise that dice are some of the most prized possessions a role-player has. Character Sheets you can generate in heaps, you know your character’s stats anyway. Yeah… of course he had three 18s rolled to start with, I wouldn’t lie, would I?
               
Remember that one die that got you a proper crit at just the right time all those years ago? That one’s locked up in a vault that rivals Gringotts on security, including rollercoaster entryways, dragon guards, and menacing goblins making sure nobody else touches that beauty until it’s sorely needed again – according to The Prophecy™.
               
Here are a few noteworthy dice-related habits that either I or others I’ve played with have exhibited over the years. Brace yourselves, weird geek things are coming!
 
1 – Don’t touch them or I swear by Nuffle…
 
So let’s start off with a ‘lighter’ one, shall we?
 
I’ve been guilty of this one. I currently own a select group of dice that nobody but myself has laid a greedy paw on. Except for the guys at the factory, and the guys at the store, like when they emptied the factory bags and spread them out in the display case, and other people who’ve looked them over without buying…
               
I think I just made myself sad.
 
OK, nobody else has touched them after I bought them. That’ll have to do.
               
Be it for reasons of luck-stealing or extra-care for those plastic lovelies, some people won’t let others even look at their dice funny, (keeping them secret, keeping them safe). As The Producers’ own Leopold Bloom put it, it’s just a minor compulsion, I can deal with it if I want to. Now keep your hands and other body parts a minimum of 30cm from my inner polyhedron sanctum and bear in mind those are military-grade lasers and not just pretty lights, thank you!
 
2 – Plastic piggies in a row
 
Quite possibly one of the most common themes I’ve come across is the gamer’s desire to keep everything organised.
 
While this may extend to character sheets, pencils, erasers, pocket knives, chairs, tables, and even the bloody house itself, relative to standard wind direction in the Northern hemisphere, it’s dice that people use to exemplify this bit of obsession the most. From the D4 to the d20, and everything in between, the dice are set in a neat, ascending row, lined up with the edge of whatever straight line object lies handy. These habits range from just a fun thing to do in your down time to army-level rigor and retaliation.
               
Find someone with the latter focus and switch their 10s for 16s when they’re not looking. Just make sure the table is bolted down, otherwise, you’ll be spending the next few weeks scanning for d4-caltrops all over the living room.
 
3 – No, this IS how physics works! Really!
 
This one has been used by one of my friends for a while now, and somehow some people ended up actually believing. We were playing a d6-based system; then he’d line up his dice 6-side up so that the ‘weight would drop to the bottom and increase his chances of a crit.’
Let that one sink in for a bit.
 
Talk about a weight-watcher… I know, I know, I stooped too low for that one.
               
In all fairness, bad puns aside, and taking into account other weird superstitions people have on a daily basis - black cats and Friday 13th anyone? - This one isn’t half as bad and definitely worth a chuckle.
 
It’s the ones that take it seriously you need to keep an eye on.
 
4 – Nobody move, breathe or even blink too hard…
 
Treading some pretty unique ground here, and again courtesy of one of my players, this one combines the piggy-row effect with Jenga for some pretty wild, passionate effects. This superstition entails is creating a pillar out of a regular 7-piece dice set at the start of the session.
               
So far so good… It’s the continuation that had us watching ourselves for the first part of our game.
               
Should the pillar fall within the first hour of the session, its owner would all but break down and cry, living in fear of their character dying for the rest of the evening. And all of this while we were all actively trying not to bump the table or even shot the doors too hard, knowing what a crumbling dice tower would entail for our poor friend.
               
On the other hand, once we beat that 60-minute mark, the dice pillar was fair game for knocking stuff down, beating people up and even TPKs.
 
So the GM (yours truly) acted accordingly.
 
5 – No, I already rolled the ones out of it!
 
There are those that take dice odds and pseudo-science way too far.
 
They say that dice have memory, or something to that extent.
 
So these kooky individuals like to prep, prime, program, and perfect their chances before a roll by enacting various dice-rolling procedures that are supposed to mitigate any results of 1 during the following in-game roll.
 
Right up there with the weight-at-the-bottom trick, this is either good fun or simply annoying, as these people will actively roll their dice dozens of times until they’re 101% sure there is no chance of getting a critical fail the next time their character needs to pass a test.
               
Of course, by that time most people are probably done with the game, have moved on to the next item on their to-do list and have also kicked the memory roller out of the group… I kid, of course, but I have seen some wild examples of this behavior, with one player rolling more dice in one hour than anyone else in the group combined over the stretch of the entire session. There’s only so much of that sweet tumbling noise I can take before I turn into one of the Snickers commercial people.
 
6 – One die to rule them all… At the exact precise time!
 
This is another one yours truly is guilty of, this belief has – at least in my case – gone beyond superstition and tongue-in-cheek-ness and well into the realm of fact-based information.
               
There’s a set of red dice in the Pathfinder Beginner box of which I’m very fond simply because they are a little different in size and shape to the usual Chessex pieces on the market.
               
The 20-sided one in that set is something else. It has now successfully pulled 5 of my characters away from the brink of death multiple times, sometimes even giving them a boost while doing so. Any other dice I’ve used have ended up in the bin after killing off my lovely background-laden elves, cyberpunk hackers, and war heroes.
 
That red little beauty though… It only gets used in those precise circumstances: a near-death situation when I need to know I can bank on an all-or-nothing roll. It never comes out for anything else, never gets rolled, never even sees the light of day unless the need is dire.
It is mine, my own precious! The dice itself probably cost less than $1 to make, but you can’t put a price on plastic loyalty!
 
All in all, habits range as wide as player types and I’m sure there are many more examples to share here but these are some of the ones that have stood out to me.
               
I’m always on the lookout for revamping this list. Maybe my precious will stab me in the back at some point in the future and maybe we’ll finally see the weight bit work to create a 5-die roll of only 6s.
 
But plastic piggies might fly before that happens, if you ask me…


Writer, gamer, and - provided he's got the time for it - loving husband, Costin does not rule out sacrifices to the Great Old Ones in order to get into the gaming industry. He's been roleplaying for the better part of 6 years, but has been a joker, gamer and storyteller for as long as he can remember.

His greatest pride is once improvising a 4-way argument between a grave digger, a dyslexic man, an adopted child and a sheep, all by himself. That moment is also the closest he's ever come to giving himself a roleplaying aneurysm... thus far.