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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Breaking out of a Rut

Well, not that big a rut really. More a shallow groove.

I've been spending far too much time thinking about my upcoming Moria game lately, and I've decided I've become... predicable. Now this isn't completely surprising. I've been gaming with some members of my group for more than 30 years (yes that puts me squarely in the old school camp) and after that long, your tricks of the trade are pretty well know.

I'd like to shake that up a bit and for that I'm asking for help from you. I'd like to hear about a standout element from one of your games, be it a memorable NPC, a dramatic combat scene, a dangerous foe, or an unusual trick. Ideally it'd be something matching up with a dungeon-y fantasy game with Tolkien-ish elements, but that's not critical. I'm just looking for some inspiration from outside my regular circle of players.

If you feel like contributing, just drop a comment on this article. I look forward to reading the results!

7 comments:

Norman J. Harman Jr. said...

> standout element from one of your games, be it a memorable NPC, a dramatic combat scene, a dangerous foe, or an unusual trick.

Read RPG Blogs, they are filled with stuff like that.

Wilson Theodoro said...

Have you ever read Joseph Campbell`s "The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Pantheon Books. Princeton University Press 1968: ISBN 0-691-01784-0; Bollingen 2004 commemorative hardcover: ISBN 0-691-11924-4; New World Library, 3rd Edition, 2008: ISBN 978-1577315933" ?

This book has helped me a lot in designing new and inovative content that yet has a firm ground on epic mithology structure and logic.

satyre said...

Well if nobody else is going to start the ball rolling here's one that's just come to mind from one of my more loved campaigns...

A pit with two animated smilodon (sabre-tooth tiger) skeletons in it and a three-inch wide wooden beam across the centre.

Crossing the beam slowly and without armour is easy - crossing in armour or at speed is much trickier and likely to result in falling.

Incentives to cross in armour and quickly are down to you to provide; arrow traps and sliding blocks are possible suggestions.

Alex Schroeder said...

A historian interested in stone tablets sends the party to an old temple to find them. If the party researches on their own, they'll hear that the lower classes worshipped an elephant god, whereas the ruling class worshipped a god of death. My party did not research this. They travel overland, arrive at the temple, find a giant elephant (Ganesh) statue, a secret door, a rolling boulder trap, a small grave chamber with walls made of stone tablets, a secret door leading to a small chamber with urns and zombies ready to attack. They spend a lot of time copying the stone tablets and return. The historian says: "Huh, that is all!? Did you not find the secret temple behind the slave temple!?" The look on my player's faces…

They then returned, found a secret door beneath one of the floor stones, descended into a secret temple, fought shadows, found more stone encravings, copied those, took a very good look around, and found yet another secret door to a third secret temple. Glorious smiles all around…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kensanata/3532593545/in/set-72157594406870853/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kensanata/3532593551/in/set-72157594406870853/

Mark Thomas said...

@Wilson - I've read it, but it's been a long time, I should put it back on my reading list. Thanks for the recommendation.

@satyre - Nice idea, with lots of chasms and nasty falls, I could see goblins or other smaller creatures setting up larger foes this way!

@Alex - you know in 30 odd years of GMing I don't think I've ever run a straight up 'go get the McGuffin' adventure. Food for thought! Those are some great maps in the links, were they the player's creations or the GM originals?

Mark Thomas said...

@Alex - Great quote from your links (I browsed a bit): "People falling through extra-dimensional crap-traps. Most will die here."

Alex Schroeder said...

Thanks. These maps are my prep notes. A while ago I decided I wanted to better document how ordinary people run their games. The recent posts regarding "Gary's Megadungeon Notes" on Grognardia et al. made me realize how few of these are actually out there. Now I just need to write some awesome blog articles using them. Soon. Maybe. Hehehe.