• @newbiedm Sunken Empires http://bit.ly/cZa2Fi may be inspiring. Aquatic rules, gear, race/class variants and a half-sunken city #pathfinder
• RT @Dice_of_Doom Cthulhu, the god your god could smell like… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc90UhV6hJA http://fb.me/EmyWJxpi
• Light from the setting sun filters through darkening clouds, bathing the world in sepia. Wind-chimes tone as an old timey storm threatens.
• RT @GreenRoninPub The open mechanics playtest for Dragon Age Set 2 has begun! Go to http://tinyurl.com/267lm3y to participate.
• RT @paizo The MAGUS Open Playtest has now begun! This new playtest Pathfinder class mixes martial skill and magic in a… http://fb.me/tm9MrhFK

I think we’ve stumbled across RPG rules before that we really wished worked differently. And everyone loves free stuff, right? Playtesting RPGs is a great way to get a nearly complete game or supplement for free. It also allows you to provide feedback directly to the creators of the game so that they can consider the problems you find.

That’s the great thing too, it’s not just typos and calculation errors you can report on, it’s how powers and abilities work, how a certain rule plays out in game, how things are balanced, and so on. Right now there are some great free playtest PDFs you can get your hands on, letting you try things out early and help shape the way the final products work. Let’s take a look.

Let’s face it, some players don’t like writing backgrounds for their characters. Parents? Dead. Friends? None. Hobbies? Fighting. What if you could flesh out their backgrounds through play instead of having them write it all down at the start? Well, with mini-flashbacks you can! And they’re not just a good tool for background-phobic players. Players who are into writing pages and pages of background can still benefit from this technique. It can also help link the players into the world and the immediate situation.

• #FreeMarket just arrived! Here’s a photo of the unboxing http://twitpic.com/2nxdkd
• My limited edition copy of #FreeMarket is no. 171. Haha, check out the tech malfunction! Thanks @projectdonut http://twitpic.com/2nxftp
• Barring a door from flaming zombie horde, the sorcerer rolled a… ZERO! (Critical miss with -1 to Strength). Lucky he’s got Action Points!

Avast maties! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day! To celebrate we be postin’ a piratical article about the colourful characters ye be likely to meet if ye be so bold as to venture into Haulshore: a treasure-hunter’s paradise in the Demonsea campaign settin’. We’ve even got a big campaign seed for ye, and hooks for each o’ the captains. Ye could also use this here article for some other world, but if ye arrren’t privy to the secrets o’ the Demonsea, cast ya eyes yonder to read of a world of demons, pirates and adventure on the high seas!

I don’t know how it happened, but I got this idea for a campaign setting in my head recently that wouldn’t go away.  The basic premise was Pride and Prejudice meets Jurassic Park. I just had this image of a parasaurolophus pulling a slightly steampunk carriage through Victorian London. This is a London where regular animals have died out and genetically resurrected dinosaurs have taken their place, both as pets and in the wild.

When the PCs eventually encounter a monologue-spewing villain or a weighty Tome of Exposition, instead of them sitting there listening to you – the all-knowing GM – reading it, why not have them play out the events through flashbacks? It’s not something you want to be doing all the time, but every once in a while it can really make an impact, highlight the importance of the information, and even give players a chance to play a different character. It gives a different perspective and allows for unusual outcomes and situations.

• Master Plan – Phase 1: post GMing advice, NPCs, mini-plots etc here and at http://www.pyresofvam.com Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: World domination!
• What magic is this? It sends missives worldwide? Excellent… I shall issue tweets of doom to recruit minions. Prepare yourselves.#fromvam

Inspired by Critical Bits, I thought now that Vam and I have started tweeting I would post here each Sunday with a summary of the week’s tweets. I find that stuff can get pretty easily lost on Twitter and I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. These posts should be a way to get the information we’ve tweeted across to readers of Pyres who don’t read Twitter.

Not everything on our Twitter will be RPG related, but most should be and I’ll definitely be tweeting mini plots, npcs, items and so on – in fact, I’ve already some already. I’ll also be posting short thoughts on RPGs that might not be things I would spend a whole post on here. You’ll be able to keep track of what I’m currently interested in, thinking about, reading, watching and playing.

I hope you enjoy our Tweets of Doom!

You might also be interested in reading...

• Why We Pyre
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-12-05
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-07
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-10-31
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-10-10

Wow, can you believe it? This is our 50th post! I know we don’t have a lot of readers yet, but I’m working on that and I am eager to welcome visitors – please, add a comment, shoot us an email or tweet us. I’m always willing to talk roleplaying, worldbuilding and GMing. Now, seeing as this is our 50th post, I have something pretty special planned that I’ve been workigfnsogsl…

…

Ahem… now that he is subdued, I interrupt your irregularly scheduled drivel for a vastly more important announcement.

Too long as Mockingbard held the reigns of Pyres of Vam. It is I, Vam, who created this website and it is about time it start serving me. To that end, I usurp this post – it is, in fact, our 50th, but that is hardly momentous. What is momentous about this post is that it marks the founding of the Vamguard.

What is the Vamguard, you ask? It is the most illustrious of armies and will one day be recorded in the history books as the army that conquered the world. However, to make this a reality, I require minions to bolster the Vamguard. In light of this, I have created a recruitment page and an official Vamguard shield for use by minions.

Click here to read about and join the Vamguard, in 2-3 simple steps. Together we shall rule the world. Well… not really, but I will use you as I see fit to further my agenda then discard you when you become useless, if you survive that long. Just know that you will be helping shape the superior future of this world.

I leave you now to go to the recruitment page, join the Vamguard and bask in the vicarious glory of being loosely associated with me, Vam, your future Supreme Overlord.

You might also be interested in reading...

• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-07
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-10-03
• Kobold Quarterly #14 for Free!
• Why We Pyre
• IAYC: Fantasy Newspaper (Free Download)