Spoiler: I’m gonna keep posting but change how I do it a bit. Read on for why and how.

I always intended to make this site for myself, for fun and to get my creative juices flowing. If it attracted readers and they found anything useful or interesting, then that was excellent. All of these things have happened and I’m very happy about that.

Fun is one of the major goals of this venture. Two things I don’t find fun: going out of my way to constantly actively promote my site and forcing myself into a regular schedule of posts even when I don’t feel creative or that I have anything to offer that week.  

I’m not saying I don’t want people to read my site; I do. I like creative sharing and I love when others read and make use of what I post here. But I don’t plan to take over the interworld (though Vam might) and I’m not in this for the page views so I’m just going to take it easy.

I’ll post when I have a brilliant idea or something I just can’t wait to share with the world (however small that portion of the world is). I’ll post to get my creativity ablaze and I’ll post when I feel like it’s fun or that I have something cool to offer. I’m not going to force the creativity or blog out what basically amounts to filler posts just so I can have a post each week.

I plan to post about stuff I like and when I want. I won’t post anything I wouldn’t use or find interesting. I’m guessing that if I like this stuff, someone else is bound to as well. I hope anyone reading this has found something of use or interest on the site already and I hope that I can continue to provide you with roleplaying, gamemastering and worldbuilding tidbits.

Now, you remember Vam, right? The cursed immortal spirit piggybacking on my soul? Well, he made this site and then I never let him out much to post. I always say that’s about the change, but this time I think it actually might. Vam is the villain – his words, not mine – and that’s his area of expertise. You don’t see a whole lot from the villain’s point of view and I think Vam can fill that niche. His posts will focus on monsters, lairs, villains and so on. He is basically planning on helping GMs out there make adventurer’s lives miserable challenging –  he swears his advice is for in-game use only.

So that’s it. It’s not a big change, but it’s an acknowledgement of what’s going on and how I plan to continue. For you, things should be basically the same as before, but the irregular posting schedule won’t make me feel guilty any more, I won’t talk about upcoming posts unless I know for sure I’ll get around to them, and you’ll hopefully see more of Vam.

You may have also noticed a few changes to the site. I’ll be tinkering with it a little over the next few months to make posting to and reading Pyres of Vam as easy as possible. Thanks for reading. I really do appreciate it. Hit up the RSS feed or follow our Twitter for updates. We also have a new subscription option that will email you every new post, so check that out too if you’re interested. You can opt out later if you like.

I hope to see you again around the Pyres.

For regular readers, I apologise for the extended radio silence. Lots has been going on in my offline life. But all is well, I’m back and I have several posts on the backburner that I’m pretty excited about. If all goes well you will hopefully see a steady stream of posts for a while.

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up:

• I’ve reached the end of two campaigns in the last few months, so I’m going to suggest ways to wrap everything up and end your long campaigns memorably.
• I will post some musings about creating a character on the fly, during play.
• Worldbuilders build lots of worlds, more often than not; I’ll try to share some of mine and some ideas for organising your thoughts when worldbuilding.
• I’ll present a tool to help you generate quick and simple motivations for your NPCs, on the fly.
• Vam will reveal the truth about some classic monsters you thought you knew so well.
• I’ll translate the tropes and concepts of some new blockbuster movies into setting and adventure material for your fantasy roleplaying game (featuring X-Men: First Class and The Rise of the Planet of the Apes).
• And much more…

I Am Your Champion has been an awesome, exciting experience. I recommend it to everyone. Everyone has something to offer. Here’s how the week went for me.

For many years I have supported Act for Peace at Christmas through their Christmas Bowl appeal. I knew I could always donate more, but this was the first time I had felt like I could do something more with my skills and gather donations for this worthy cause.  And it has inspired me to donate more to the charity. I’ve contacted them to see how else I can help, but I’ve got the feeling they won’t have a lot of opportunities. If that’s the case, I’ll set up a regular monthly donation. I had been meaning to do this, but IAYC gave me the motivation I needed.

I have a sense of satisfaction writing this post. I’ve done something good for people in need and helped out other Champion’s charities that I may not have even known about before, let alone donated to. I’ve made new connections in the roleplaying community and I now get to create a fantasy newspaper knowing that it has helped people in need.

Today I was heading out into the city, so I made up a flyer and printed two copies.

I went for a more teaser-like kind of poster to get people interested and made those little tear-off bits. It looked like rain today, but it has been okay so far. Hopefully the fliers I posted won’t get soaked.

I posted one on the bulletin board on the way to my work, so when I walk past in the next few weeks I’ll be able to check if anyone has taken the little tabs.

I posted the other one in the CBD near a gaming store and comic store right in front of the bus interchange. I’m hoping it’ll get some publicity there. I feel like my fliers stood out against all the other posters there.

I found this whole challenge exciting, but very fast paced. I need a rest for a little bit now before I start work on the fantasy newspaper. I think it felt fast paced too because this is the playtest and we didn’t know what was coming.

Rounds 1 and 2 were actually very simple, but core to the whole challenge, while the later rounds were a bit trickier. Coming up Supreme Challenges was a bit difficult, but the ones people made have been excellent and I was really excited when Graham included me in a Supreme Challenge and then I created a combined Supreme Challenge. Having the option to Throw Down as well as Throw In was great too. It allowed people with not a lot of spare cash to still contribute to the charities. It was also just a lot of fun.

The drills were cool. I like optional ‘side quests’ for bonus points or completion’s sake, and so on. I was very glad the drills weren’t required, but I was also glad they were there. Speaking of completion, here’s everything I’ve done:

• Round 1 – Tasks 1, 2, 3 complete; Drills 1, 2, 3 complete
• Round 2 – Tasks 1, 2, 3 complete; Drills 2, 3 complete
• Round 3 – Tasks 1, 2, 3 complete; Drill 1 complete
• Round 4 – Tasks 1, 2, 3 complete; Drill 2 complete
• Round 5 – Tasks 1, 2, 3 complete; Drill 1, 2, 3 complete

So, I completed every Task. Great! I completed most of the drills. In Round 5 I’m counting starting an ongoing donation as enough to complete Drill 2, until I can find out more about volunteering for my charity. As for Drill 3, well, I plan to keep playing the game. I’m going to promote this for a while as I work on the fantasy newspaper.

Here’s everything I missed, all of them drills:

• Help another Champion design a reward
• Submit ideas for Drills for other Champions
• Contribute 3 solid ideas for others to use as Rewards or Challenges, regardless of their situation
• Propose two more Supreme Challenges

Looking at all of these, I see a trend. They were all about coming up with ideas for others. In retrospect, I found this difficult because it was hard to determine exactly who was playing and which players needed help.  The creation of the IAYC wiki really helped this, but it took a while to fill up with details and still isn’t complete.

I think, in future, having a solid wiki filled out in an early round (Round 2, as you design your Reward and Challenge?) would be really helpful. I’d like to see the rewards and challenges included in brief right there, to aid in creating Supreme Challenges and to help us work out who’s having trouble coming up with stuff. Maybe instead of the drill where we make our own list of Champions and causes, we can add missing details to the wiki. I’ve just added a few more, myself.

Time constraints were also a factor in not completing those four drills. I half completed the last one, by noticing that you could combine my Supreme Challenge and Graham’s. I was able to check the posts about the Rounds before work each day, think about them during work, complete the Tasks and some Drills that night and that was about all I had time for. I sometimes didn’t get everything done straight away, so that added more to do later on (complete the new Round while finishing off the previous one).

All that said, I think 5 days is a good amount of time for this game to run. I don’t know if a Loose Ends weekend could be useful: Saturday and Sunday with no new rounds, but to get everything sorted and finished off. I got mostly everything done, so even with time constraints, I Am Your Champion is definitely doable in 5 days. You mostly have to commit to things, not actually do them by the end of the week. That’s what let me complete the game. Also, the drills are optional, so I easily completed all the tasks, I just didn’t 100% this game. Almost, but not quite.

I really want to thank Duane from A Terrible Idea for coming up with IAYC and getting us all involved. I’ve always wanted to combine my hobby with social justice and this empowered me to do so. I’ll be keeping an eye on all the IAYC projects and seeing how they go. I know some people have already raised a lot of money, and I’ve raised some too. It’s been a wild ride, but it’s not over yet, just slowing down and cruising along. I’ll keep readers up to date with the progress of the fantasy newspaper. I’m looking forward to it a lot more than if it wasn’t a part of IAYC.

Thanks again Duane. You are a Champion!

I Am Your Champion update! If you don’t know what IAYC is, check out this link and/or my original post about this awesome challenge for charity. In that link you’ll learn about the charity I am Championing – Act for Peace – and how you can help me.

I’m supporting Act for Peace by making a free PDF-format fantasy newspaper full of adventure locations, artefacts, NPCs and the like. Donate $5 to my charity and you’ll get your name in one of the articles. Donate more money and you’ll get cooler articles that are more focused around your namesake (or your namesake’s artefact or adventure location!). See my original post for the full reward/goal structure.

I’ve gotten really excited about this since people started throwing in and throwing down and offering combined challenges. So, I’m upping the ante! I’ve added some more sections to the newspaper: obituaries and an advice column.

Expanded Donation Rewards

For $5 you can have your dead character listed in the obituaries as someone to mourn for. This will be a list of character names, with no additional details.

For $10 your character will get their own individual obituary. Email me with their name, some great deeds they would have wanted to be remembered for, and how they died.

Or, for $10 you can write in a question to the newspaper’s advice column to have it answered.

I’ve added these options to my original post too, to keep it all in one place.

Throw Downs & Combined Challenges

Duane himself, from A Terrible Idea has Thrown In on my Challenge. He says:

If someone accepts this Challenge on my behalf at the $25 level, I will write a 1000 word backstory to the artifact created in my name. This backstory will be available to anyone wants it, and will be suitable for use as a GM aid to provide historical context for the artifact in question.

This is great. I hope somebody takes Duane up on this. Thanks Duane!

Graham is supporting the National Theatre by reading Dagon. Check out his challenge page. He has also offered a combined challenge for my charity. He says:

If anyone donates double the requested amount (e.g. $10, rather than $5, to use their name in an article), I’ll do an audio copy of the article. It’ll be roughly in the style of a BBC News broadcast (i.e. I’ll try to sound posh).

We’re both pretty excited about that one! It’s a great idea. Thank you, Graham.

I’ve Thrown In on Rev. Lazaro’s challenge to help one of his friends who has lost her home in a fire. He’s offering, among other things, the creation of delves for a $15 donation. If anyone takes him up on this and also gives $5 to my charity, I’ll include the delve he makes as an adventure location in an article in my fantasy newspaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

What’s really got me excited though is that if you combine my combined challenge with Graham’s, you get the following behemoth of a combined challenge: donate $15 to Rev. Lazaro’s challenge and $10 to mine (that’s double the $5 level) and you’ll be meeting the requirements of my challenge, Rev. Lazaro’s challenge and Graham’s challenge! That means you’ll get your delve, you’ll get an article about it in my fantasy newspaper, and you’ll get an audio recording of the article, from Graham!

To me, that is the real magic of I Am Your Champion. Awesome rewards for supporting each other support awesome causes. Throw Down today and help out some really worthwhile charities. You can donate to Act for Peace by going to my original article. Just click here. Thank you so much.

Shout Outs

Duane is a genius for coming up with I Am Your Champion. It is an awesome idea and event. One great part of it is that we’re all Champions, not competitors. We support each other and thrown down and thrown in for each other.

Personally, I’ve put $5 towards April’s charity , the Music Maker Relief Foundation. In return she’s making me a music mix! You can get one too at Now This Sound Is Brave.

I’ve thrown in $15 to Graham to read Dagon and I’ve taken up Duane’s Thrown In. I’ve donated another $15 on his behalf in exchange for a Lovecraftian prop he has created. I don’t know what it is, really, but I’m intrigued.

Get involved with I Am Your Champion at A Terrible Idea or on Twitter with the hashtag #iayc

A Terrible Idea has come out with another great idea. I Am Your Champion is a game/challenge played in five rounds that will challenge your existing ideas regarding charitable fundraising. Basically, you choose a charity and support it, but it’s more like you use your creativity to provide rewards or thank you gifts to those who contribute to your charity. Jump over to the website to catch up on the requirements for each round. It’s not too late to join in! I’m participating, and this post is me announcing myself, my cause, my goal and my reward.

Act for Peace, I am your Champion!

Act for Peace empowers war-torn communities to reduce poverty, protect refugees and prevent further conflict. Our project partners are currently assisting more than one million people in many of the world’s worst conflict-affected areas, including Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Middle East, Burma and Sri Lanka.

Act for Peace is a member of the global Action by Churches Together (ACT) Alliance which works in more than 125 countries worldwide enabling us to respond immediately and effectively to emergency situations as they occur.

Act for Peace is the international aid agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA). Act for Peace provides aid to those affected by emergencies and disasters like the Pakistan Floods and Haiti Earthquake. They are also involved in a lot of great advocacy and campaigns including Act for Disarmament, Make Poverty History, The Robin Hood Tax, Act for Peace in Palestine & Israel, and the Micah Challenge.

Goals & Rewards

So, here’s what I’m creating to support Act for Peace. I’m going to make a broadsheet or newspaper for use in fantasy roleplaying games. Rather than a few longer articles, it will have several short ones, kind of like a classifieds section. Each ‘article’ will be about an adventure hook or an item, person, location, or the like. GMs can use these as inspiration, or the broadsheet can be printed out and handed to players, telling their characters “You find this broadsheet in the tavern” and then letting them go wild, following or investigating whichever articles they choose. I’ll be creating the broadsheet as if it exists in a fantasy world. It will resemble a short newspaper.

Even if nobody donates I’m going to release the broadsheet in PDF format for free under the Creative Commons. So everyone gets that, but for those who donate here are the thank you gifts or rewards I’m offering:

• Donate $5 and I will use your name in an article.
  • The article won’t be about your namesake, but will mention them. For example, in an article about bandit raids it might say “Gary, a local resident, was quoted as saying…” or in one about a recent dragon attack “Among the victims of the tragic dragon rampage was a local scribe, Mr. Gygax”.
  • UPDATE: Alternatively, for $5 you can have your dead character listed in the obituaries as someone to mourn for and remember. This will be a list of character names, with no additional details. If you want more, see the $10 level.
• Donate $10 and I will use your name in an article as the focus of the article.
  • Your namesake might be a wanted criminal, a merchant advertising their new store, an explorer looking for help on an expedition, a local lord offering a reward for information about his daughter, a retired hero (Sir Gygax!) looking for new blood to settle an old score, and so on. At the $10 level, feel free to give me an idea of how you’d like your name used and I’ll see what I can do.
  • UPDATE: Alternatively, for $10 your character will get their own individual obituary. Email me with their name, some great deeds they would have wanted to be remembered for, and how they died. Or, for $10 you can write in a question to the newspaper’s advice column and have it answered.
• Donate $15 and I will use your name in an article as part of an adventure location or artefact name.
  • Your name will also be included in bold as part of the title of the article. For example, GYGAX PEAK: A NATURALIST’S NIGHTMARE or WANTED: THE GLAIVE OF GYGAX. The article will then go on, focused on that location or artefact, and perhaps an NPC of the same name. Like at the $10 level, feel free to give me some direction here.
  • UPDATE: If you wish, I’ll throw in an obituary or advice column answer from the $10 level here too, as a bonus.
• Donate $20 and you will receive the same reward as at the $15 level, but I will also add a little sketch to the article.
  • Sketches will be of things like a quick map of the location, an adventurer’s drawing of the artefact they claim they saw, or something similar. Again, happy to be given some direction on what you’d like me to do here.
  • UPDATE: If you wish, I’ll throw in an obituary or advice column answer from the $10 level here too, as a bonus.
• Donate $25 or more and I will write a longer article with all the rewards of the $20 level or I will write a number of shorter articles on a theme of your choosing.
  • So, I could write a few articles about an adventure location of your choice, or if you like plagues I could write a few articles focusing on a plague that has ravaged the land. That kind of stuff. I’m willing to discuss it with you and offer something more. At this level, I’m happy to do a fair bit.
  • UPDATE: If you wish, I’ll throw in an obituary or advice column answer from the $10 level here too, as a bonus. Or you can ask me for something similar. You might have some other idea, and for $25 I’m very happy to listen.

I’ve referred to “your name” in the rewards above, but if you want me to use the name of a character you have or the name of one of your friends or something, just let me know.

I Challenge You! Dare to Donate.

I’m making this broadsheet even if I don’t get any donations. When it’s released will depend on how much interest I get. I want to give people a chance to donate and let this get out there for a while. I’ll definitely keep you updated though.

So, will you accept my challenge? Donate to Act for Peace. Help them help those in need. It’s a great cause and they deserve your support. But as thanks from me, you will also receive the corresponding award above. Simple as that.

There are two ways to donate.

Way 1

Click here to donate now. Follow that link and donate to whichever Act for Peace appeal you prefer. Once you’re done, you’ll get an email receipt. Forward the receipt to pyresofvam@gmail.com with the subject “I Am Your Champion – Act for Peace”.

I’ll only be using the receipt to confirm your payment and amount, but if you don’t want to delete any personal details (like your home address) that’s fine. In the email also tell me what reward you want at your donation level, what name you want me to use in the broadsheet and any other relevant details for the higher levels of donations.

Way 2

Some people were having trouble using donating through the Act for Peace website, possibly because the donors were not in Australia. So, I’ve set up a PayPal donate button. I’m not sure how much extra it’ll try to charge you, I think it’ll be about 50 cents for a donation of 5 Aussie dollars. If anyone uses it, I’d be keen to know the real numbers (I can’t really test this myself). If you don’t want to pay the extra charge, I can foot the bill for you. Make sure to also tell me what name you want used in the article and any other relevant details. You can do that in the additional info box or by email.

Here’s the donate button:

If you have any questions before or after donating, or if you have any trouble donating, shoot me an email at pyresofvam@gmail.com or just ask in the comments below. And if you do donate, be sure to speak up in the comments and let people know how awesome you are!

I’m excited about being a Champion and I hope you take up my cause and support Act for Peace.

Any current backers and anyone else who backs the project before time runs out in 18 days will receive a free exclusive Apocalypse World character playbook written by Vincent Baker. The character is called the Quarantine. Here’s a run-down:

The Quarantine has been locked away, suspended in ignorance of the outside world, throughout the Apocalypse. But his ignorance is nothing compared to what he knows: he remembers what came before and knows what caused it.

Not that it will help him.

If that doesn’t sound good, then you probably haven’t read Apocalypse World. If it does sound good, get over to Kickstarter and back Human Contact. It’s shaping up to be a great game and now you get a cool supplement for another great game, too. You can’t lose.

So… here I am blogging about it… yeah, ulterior motives for this post, definitely. But, it is also a great opportunity for people who are wary of 4E or just have never played it before to get in on the action. I’m one of those people, actually. I’m interested in the D&D Essentials stuff, but can’t justify forking out the gold for it yet. However, if I win the games, then that’s excellent! If I happen to be the lucky winner, I’ll be sure to post my thoughts on the games here once I play them.

Also, it’s always great to find out about a new (or old, but new-to-me) roleplaying forum, like Gamer’s Haven. I think this contest is a great way to get people to check out the forum and those that like it will stick around. It seems like a nice new little community. I’ll have to poke around some more and see what they’re up to.

So, that’s it for this post. I’ve entered the contest, and you should too. Don’t forget to check out Gamer’s Haven and all the frequent articles and competitions at Troll in the Corner.

…

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’ll also notice that there’s a brand new Twitter icon up at the top of our site. You can click that to check out my tweets and tweet back at me. I’m also trialling having the twitter feed right here on the site, too. I’ll try to keep Vam away from it, but I think that move is destined to fail. I’ll at least make sure his tweets are tagged with #fromvam so you can indulge in or avoid his madness at your leisure.