Book Binding

When my copy of Savage Worlds fell apart as soon as I opened it, I got it ring bound to make it usable. I found that it became even more usable than my other books. I love ring binding (especially on small books like Savage Worlds) because you can flip it open to a page and leave it there. You can also make the book take up less room on the game table, because you don’t need to have it open at a two page spread all the time. I tend to use PDFs a lot these days though, so that avoids the whole pages falling apart issue.

“Doing a voice”. How many people “do voices”? Should they? How do you get better at “doing a voice” if that’s your thing?

I sometimes do voices, and some of my players occasionally have. Mostly it’s not accents though, it’s more like a deeper gruffer voice for a stereotypical barkeep, a quieter awed voice for children amazed by the adventurers, that sort of thing.

This week I did the voice of an elderly angel woman in our game where angels live among humans. She has seen a lot, even for an angel, and so she’s a little nuts. Her voice ranged a lot and was totally Yoda at some point, but it was more about how she talked, the words and grammar and so on, than the exact voice always matching.

I think voices can be fun, especially for NPCs that are supposed to be memorable but you aren’t going to need to speak as all the time. It’s hard to keep it up though, especially difficult to come back to that voice after long breaks between sessions. I try to keep track of it by making a few mental or written notes about the voice:

Drawlin’ voice, drops a letter or two at the endin’ o’ some words, adds unnecessary cowboy-like words in between but otherwise chooses words real careful in heated situations and is mighty respectful to folk, even bandits.

That’s my cowboy-inspired sheriff in the fantasy game I’m running for my wife. I’ve never written it down, but mentally I do what I just did there: try to remember the voice prompts in the voice, as if the character’s telling it to me. Still pretty stereotypical, but I drop in and out of it if I don’t remember those things.

Anyway, mostly the ‘voices’ I do are more the words, grammar and pronunciation than an accent or anything like that. I do use stereotypical accents sometimes, like with the old angel lady, but the other things are more important, I think.

Breaks. How often do youhave breaks within sessions?

Within sessions, hardly at all. At the moment we’re starting around 7 or 7:30 and ending around 10:30. So we don’t have much time. We muck around at the start and people throw pop culture references and quotes back and forth during the game. It takes us out of the fiction and really slows the game down, which can be annoying. I think we do that, though, because we don’t have much time together so this is our social time too. We’re playing this Saturday and we’ll have plenty of time so we’ve put forward the idea of getting that chatter out of the way first, then playing solidly for a few hours, then having a break where appropriate in the story and getting social again.

Normally in our games, because of the short time frame, people get up for bathroom breaks and drinks and stuff whenever. We keep going if we can and just fill them in briefly when they get back a few minutes later. Works for us.

Oh, also, in our longer campaigns where characters may have secrets and so on, we don’t have breaks really, but often someone will want to talk to me in private in the other room so we go do that and everyone else does whatever they want in the meantime, which is sort of a break for them too.

Description. Exactly how florid are your descriptions?

Not very.

I was tempted to leave this one there, but I won’t. I describe things more like “It’s sort of purple, like that table cloth, but all meaty” rather than “The creature’s skin was a brooding purple bruise”.

I do try to use cool words (like brooding) when I think of them, but only if it makes sense. Mostly I just say it like it is, and try to relate it to the character asking. If it’s a happy-go-lucky character who’s all bubbly I’ll sometimes try to say that “it this really nice bright sunny yellow colour” in a happy voice. If it’s a dour character who is known as a sad sack I’ll say something like “It’s bright yellow like the damn sun or that stupid parrot that won’t shut up” if I know those other things have been annoying him.

I try to give a few roleplaying cues or ideas with descriptions. If a character has a medical background I’ll try to describe things in those terms, if they are a no-nonsense down-to-earth fighter I’ll be blunt about how things look. I realise as I type that I don’t do this stuff I’m saying as much as I’d like. I want to focus more on description. I’ve got an index card that has ‘sound’, ‘smell’ ‘sixth sense’ and so on written on it to prompt me. Sound and smell are things I need to describe more.

I think describing these things, even mentioning texture, scent, etc. at all goes a long way, even without florid descriptions.

Where do you strike the balance between “doing what your character would do” and “acting like a dickhead”? 

This rarely comes up. If it does I ask the player if they are “sure you want to smash the only wagon you have, leaving you and your party stranded in the wilderness”. Just putting it back to them with the consequences attached, so they are sure of what could happen if they do that. It often prompts the other players to step in and try to help think of an alternative to the character’s action, too. I also try to get the players to come up with reasons the characters are together, so that if the lone wolf or sullen type characters want to leave or be jerks about something, a character they have ties to can often stop them, even just by me reminding them of these ties.

PC-on-PC violence. Do your players tend to avoid it, or do you ban it? Or does anything go?

I personally think we haven’t had enough of this in our games. I’d love to see some more in a game where we’ve told each other up front that it is likely to happen. We all love our characters so we don’t like risking their lives against each other. The ties mentioned above also often lead to a situation where PC-on-PC violence just isn’t likely to ever happen. When we play Apocalypse World I’m pretty sure (and hoping) some of this violence will arise. I think this can lead to good roleplaying opportunities, and PC-on-PC arguments almost always do.

How do you explain what a role playing game is to a stranger who is also a non-player?

I don’t do this often. One of our players still always calls our roleplaying “D&D”, no matter the game, setting or system. If it comes up I usually either ask strangers if they know of Dungeons & Dragons and start saying how it’s like that but different, OR what I’ve done more recently is describe the setting of our game to hook them in, then they ask how it works, and I tell them a few simple rules about whatever the system is. Describing our Primetime Adventures game to a non-roleplaying friend, I went into the setting we’d made, then told him about how it was like a TV show and there were acts and scenes etc.

Alchohol at the table? 

I’m not a big drinker at all and this has never come up. I wouldn’t mind people having a drink or two, I don’t think, especially in longer sessions. It could loosen people up a bit and get the ones who don’t talk as much talking. Maybe we’ll try it this weekend.

What’s acceptable to do to a PC whose player is absent from the session? Is whatever happens their fault for not being there, or are there some limits?

We often skip or delay the session or sometimes we play Munchkin or a one shot like Fiasco instead. If they aren’t here for a long time we try to write them out of the story for a bit (one player was away for a month so we played flashbacks). If they are away and we play anyway that day they – hey! super rhyme combo! – just fade into the background and are assumed to do well enough at any required checks. I try to keep them out of danger and situations where I don’t know how the player would react.

They’re some handy tables for generating various physical characteristics and behavioural traits of NPCs on the fly or during prep all contained on a single page. Choose results or roll once for each column. She didn’t design it to make coherent NPCs by reading across the rows, but I think you can get some pretty interesting ones by doing that too.

When rolling, for the large table roll a d6 twice and check the results in order, or roll two different coloured d6s. For the d8 tables, if you happen to have only a d6 handy you can just use that, as the results that a 7 or 8 would bring can easily be ignored as they are the least common.

Also, some results have a few choices, sometimes as opposites or alternatives (hairy/hairless) and sometimes to just give a little more choice (bandaged/stitched). When you get a result like this, choose whichever you like best or whatever seems most appropriate.

If you don’t like a result or it doesn’t make sense with something else you’ve already rolled, simply re-roll or choose something else.

I hope you enjoy this gift as much as I have.

Some of the results overlap somewhat (like desire for freedom could be a desire for change) but it gets the job done fairly well. I’m hoping this will give me, and others, a good starting point for NPCs.

If you roll and realise that this guard the PCs are talking to has a Fear of Truth, then maybe that gives you the idea that he’s taking bribes and is afraid of that getting out, or maybe he has some evidence that one of his fellow guards is a murderer but is afraid to believe it.

The goal here is not to generate fully fleshed out motivations, but to give the GM a spring board for their creativity. Usually something going on in the plot or the PCs stories and hooks will give you an idea of where to go with the motivations.

NPC Motivations

Imagine playing (or GMing) your regular campaign and the GM cuts to a scene of a character talking about the PCs’ exploits. This in itself is cool, but what if the character was talking about the PCs and how they ruined his life? What if he considered them to be the villains of the piece? What do other people think of the PCs, in the time and place this flashforward is happening in? The PC don’t know, so it’s a subjective retelling of events. Will the PCs become bad guys, or is this just one man’s opinion? When and where is this happening? Why is he telling this story?

Questions like these will arise for the players and I feel that it would create a sense of intrigue. Cutting back to this character from time to time will let the players discover a few more pieces of the puzzle, showing where they are heading. However, there’s a fine line between alluding to events and railroading. If it’s a one-shot you’re playing, or if your players are comfortable with railroading, it’s not so much of a problem. But this is often not the case.

If you’re describing events that haven’t happened yet in an open-ended interactive story like a roleplaying game, you need to make sure you only allude to what has happened, not citing specifics until the PCs have experienced those events or just before. Imagine the look on your players faces when they successfully negotiate a trade deal with a powerful warlord only to have the GM cut to the future storyteller saying how badly that deal ended. What if they entered a deserted castle only to cut to a flashforward describing an ambush at that location.

As I mentioned, subtly is the key. Have the storyteller talk about how there was a massacre, not which side won and how many survived. Talk about a plan going horribly wrong, but not for who or how. Give the players a little hint at the future but make it vague. It might not be that the storyteller is trying to be vague to their audience; maybe they are many, many years in the future and the storyteller is a great bard telling the legend of the heroes, which would obviously have become embellished over time and with differing perspectives on events.

Every so often through in something crazy like a pretty clear indication that one of the heroes will die. You can make this a lie from the storyteller, but that’s not a lot of fun. You could end up having one of the PCs faking their own death for story reasons, or maybe one of them does die in an unfortunate roll of the dice. Another possibility is that someone else, an NPC, joins them and the storyteller doesn’t differentiate between this person and the PCs when he says that “one of the party was killed”. What if he said, “I can’t believe that the most clever of the group was the one who died”? Now the players wonder who the cleverest PC is and they probably hope it isn’t theirs.

Separation of player and character knowledge could be a problem with this technique, but even if the characters sort of act on this “knowledge” of the future that they don’t really have, it is vague and not enough to go on. It could even lead towards a self-fulfilling prophecy when they make that trade deal go sour as they needlessly investigate the honest warlord who finds out about their meddling and now distrusts them, ending the deal in bloody combat, thus fulfilling the PCs’ worries that the deal would go poorly.

I’ve seen this technique in media other than Dragon Age II. A similar device is used when your character dies in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, the prince says things like “Wait… no, that’s not how it happened” and it jumps back to before you died. I think the Witcher 2 does something very similar to Dragon Age II, judging from one of the trailers. How I Met Your Mother is another great example of frame narrative. We know certain things about the future of the story, but not how events lead up to that future. It’s a powerful technique and if pulled off correctly, it could really add something to a campaign.

I actually used this technique once as a short side adventure. The PCs arrived in a ruined and devastated town finding only one resident alive. They asked him what had happened and he started with something like “It all started three days ago…”. I then handed the players some character sheets and they played some lowly commoners in this flashback. They knew that something bad was going to happen in the next few days and that they were going to not be present after those events. It was an exciting way to start off the short adventure and in the end the players had great fun being part of the havoc that destroyed the town.

If you do try this technique, I’d recommend a one-shot or a side-trek so that if it doesn’t work out you haven’t lost anything really and you can just keep going. And if your players like it you can bring it back as a recurring event in your ongoing campaign.

Living the Past

GMs often use journals and other written texts in the game world for exposition. Everything isn’t always clear to the PCs, even if it is for the GM, so you need to give them enough information to satisfy them. Flashbacks allow the PCs to play as the characters mentioned in the text. If your PCs discover a tome that tells them all about a doomed expedition, you can let one of them be the expedition leader slowly going insane, another a prisoner with information the explorers need, another a witch to be sacrificed at the end of the expedition, and another the researcher in love with the witch.

You can hand out pre-gen character sheets with these characters on them and let the players decide amongst themselves which characters they want to play. It can be fun for the player who normally plays the paladin to play as an insane leader, dark mage or murderous thief every so often. Vice versa, too – maybe the guy who normally plays roguish characters all the time would have a blast playing a chivalrous knight for one game (and if he doesn’t, he hasn’t really lost anything).

When planning and running these flashbacks, it’s important to get things moving and frame scenes well when one of the goals is exposition. I usually run flashbacks like this as one-shots, so you’ve got limited time too. It’s often a good idea to give a little bit of information at the start of the flashback and start in the middle of the action. Seeing as you’ve created the pre-gen characters, you can give them strong motivations for completing whatever goals you wish them to and also give them strong interconnected relations with each other (and NPCs, if you like). Main point is: set things up to get the action going quickly and building to a satisfying and memorable conclusion.

If you want to show the formula for a dark ritual, have the players play as some unfortunate souls uncovering these ingredients in a series of grisly rituals and discoveries after years of research then attempting the ritual (possibly failing; more on this later). This works well too, for other deadly experiments – like a doomsday device with a far too complicated panel of buttons, or two big levers (giving a 50% chance of ultimate failure). Giving the PCs a chance to find out in a flashback how other people have previously succeeded or failed gives them the answer in the present.

If you want to show them the correct path through a deadly jungle, have the flashback characters make the expedition with a handful of red shirts and have them make decisions at crossroads and puzzles as they go, dishing out brutal death for incorrect choices. When the PCs make the same journey in the present day, they will encounter the same puzzles and crossroads but will know the solutions. Throw a curve ball in there too, just to make it interesting (and to show that time has past, other creatures have set traps, and so on).

If your goal is instead to show them the setting up of the villain’s plan, maybe you can have a series of flashbacks. One player gets the dubious honour of playing the villain, another his best friend, another his lover and another his rival. Play through various stages of the villain’s life, any characters that die can be replaced by other characters in later stages. By the end of the flashback the PCs will have seen – and, in some way, lived – the events of the villain’s life and may even have developed sympathy for him. It will make the final encounter much more memorable.

All of these methods also have the added benefit of making your world seem more believable. It shows that the PCs aren’t the only people in the world who have adventures and get involved in dangerous events. If some of the PCs from the flashback manage to survive, too, then they can be brought back into the ongoing game in the present as NPCs. It can be very interesting to see what’s happened to them since the flashback and how they’ve changed. It also gives the players a kick to see the character they played come back as an ally or threat.

Flashback Example

Here’s an example of the above from my ongoing Pathfinder game. We played a series of flashbacks each starring one of the PCs. In the paladin’s flashback we played an important, formative scene from her childhood – the zombie invasion of her home town. The paladin was a beautiful noble girl, fifteen years of age. The other characters in the flashback were a squat young boy obsessed with the paladin, and a street-sweeper urchin who looked down on ‘nobs’ as he called them.

By the end of the flashback the paladin-to-be and the two boys had saved the town. The paladin’s family manor was trashed and her parents were missing. In the present day of the campaign the paladin has still not truly discovered what happened to her parents. Now though, we’re back in her home town – which she hasn’t visited since that fateful day.

The street-sweeper urchin is now running for mayor. The obsessed little boy, on the other hand, has grown up to be an obsessed stalker. He still holds a disturbing flame for the paladin and it looks like he has been living in her mansion, stringing up preserved dead bodies on the ceiling and basically making the place so spooky as to scare off the kids who like to trash the place. He seems to be living in her room and doing creepy things like grooming the dolls in the paladin’s old room to look like her. He is a suspected serial killer.

This has a lot more impact when you’ve seen this person as a child and know that he has saved the paladin’s life. It also shows that people react differently to bad situations: some end up like him, some become paladins.

Wrapping Up

Failure in flashbacks can be really fun. Hearing about a sacrifice to a summon an ancient god is cool, playing through that sacrifice is even better, but being the sacrifice for the ritual isn’t something awesome you don’t get to do every day! Equally, if the ritual doesn’t succeed and goes horribly wrong, it can be cool to fight against a massively overpowered foe, like an accidentally freed demon, and shows the players just how tough a situation they’re getting involved with.

Just try to make sure when planning the flashback that failure will make sense, if it occurs – for example, if the flashback is in the recent past and is being played in a town the PCs have recently visited, put a bit of thought into it. Be careful about the flashback PCs destroying a building or killing a person the PCs have interacted with in the present. It could make things interesting – was the person resurrected or the building rebuilt? – but it could create a lot of trouble, too.

I’m not done with this topic yet, so look out for further articles about flashbacks (including using mini-flashbacks), alternate realities and even time travel! As you can see, there is a lot of potential for this sort of thing. Stay tuned!

There are lots of reasons your game might not happen: you don’t have enough time to prep, a player or two can’t make it, or you’re just running late and low on play time. You can always skip the game for that week, but if you don’t get together all that often it can seem like a wasted opportunity.

Off the top of my head, there are three broad types of one-shots (games designed to be played in a single session).

Related One-Shot

The first is a one-shot related to the ongoing campaign. It will be in the same world and with the same game system. It could be that you put your heroes’ character sheets down and play as the villains for a night. Maybe they play as some NPCs or a rival adventuring party. It could be that they play their forefathers. My favourite things to do though are alternate realities (what would the world be like the villains were to win?) and flashbacks.

In my group game we had made our characters are were ready to play, but then one of our friends told us he was moving closer to us and wanted to play. Instead of not playing for three weeks or making him catch-up on what we had missed, we played one-shot flashbacks. Basically, we played a one-shot for each of the other three characters, each time with a different one in the spotlight. I really like this technique, so I’ll definitely be posting an article about it soon. I also have a lot more to say about related one-shots and using them as a source of exposition, so keep your eyes out for an article or two on this topic in the near future as well.

Related one-shots are often best when you know they’re coming. If you know that next week you won’t be able to all get together, you can end the current session ready for a one-shot. I did this when my now-wife went overseas for a month. We encountered a destroyed town and found a surviving NPC. Questioning him, he told the story of how the town came to be that way. Instead of telling the players what happened, they played as commoners and townsfolk over the next couple of sessions – okay, so this was more of a three- or four-shot, but the idea is still sound. By the end of it, the PCs had played out the story and we came back into the present with the NPC saying, “That’s how it happened. I swear!”.

If you don’t know when a one-shot is going to be needed, then it’s best to focus on building one that can be dropped in at any time. As mentioned above, flashbacks are great for this, as are any one-shots that flesh out the backstory of the world or campaign-spanning quest.

Unrelated One-Shot

The second type of one-shot is the unrelated one-shot. It will be with the same game system that everyone in your group game is familiar with, but it may not be in the same world or part of the world. The difference between this and the first type of one-shot is that this one has nothing to do with the ongoing campaign. Forget that those PCs even exist and just have fun with a self-contained one-shot.

Doing this gives the GM and the players a lot of freedom. You don’t need to work it in with the main story of the ongoing campaign or try to make sense of inconsistencies – like when your one-shot PCs destroy the town the PCs are currently staying in. Seeing as it’s totally unrelated to that story, you can do whatever you want and can even set it in mythical and undefined times.

I think the key here is to use the same system you’re all familiar with. Pre-generate some PCs and keep them handy for whenever you need them. I find that having a simple bullet-point outline of the main events in the one-shot works wonders. It’s easy to refer to in-game and a good way to refresh your memory of what this one-shot is about when you need it now, but wrote it up months ago. Have a list of NPC names for random NPCs and have all your main NPCs already named and coloured with interesting details. This will make your one-shot seem more vivid and less slapped together – it will also make it more memorable. By the way, this advice works just as well for the related one-shot.

Planning a one-shot like this can let your players experience parts of your world that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. If you’ve been playing a low-magic political campaign, try a mystical desert adventure with sunmagi and environmental hazards. In fact, that’s another good point: have a few set pieces for your one-shot that really stand out. Enduring the deadly sun is something those political intrigue PCs have never had to worry about. It will stand out to the players as something unique about the one-shot.

Think of Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog – that’s a great set-piece too as they fall and tumble, fighting as they go. Also, the end of pretty much any Bond film is probably a set-piece. Anything cool like that will get players into the game and will make it easy for your to remember and describe. If there’s enough interest on the part of readers and myself, I will post some of my prepared one-shots usable for most fantasy systems.

Something Completely Different

While the unrelated one-shot is in a different world or place but uses the same system, it can be refreshing from time to time to do something completely different. By this, I mean ditch the system, ditch the world, do something that is in no way connected. Doing this, you can’t rely on the advantage of system familiarity. What you can rely on is the indie game community. Lots of indie games are built to be played as one-shots and with little or no prep required. Board or card games like Munchkin are also excellent for these purposes – and again, no prep required.

Fiasco is one of the absolute best games you could choose for something completely different. Fiasco’s game text says that it will take “about two and a half hours, varying with experience, play style and the size of your group”. If your players are used to D&D, Savage Worlds, or that sort of gaming, your first game of Fiasco might take a little while, but it is a very fun game, easy to learn, very replayable and can help your players develop more confidence and roleplaying skill.

Murderland is a great one too (all you need is Clue) and you could read the six page rulebook in a few minutes then get down to playing. Geiger Counter is another one-shot game that should take about as long to play as it would to watch a survival horror movie, which the game aims to emulate. I haven’t played either of these games yet, but the rules are solid and really make me want play. Of course, my own game, ZILLA! – available for free download here – is two pages long, very easy to understand and play, and is good fun for filling in a couple of hours with even a low number of players.

Playing something completely different lets you break out and try something you wouldn’t normally be playing. It can be very inspiring too – especially Fiasco, as the game takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. It’s sort of like reading fantasy fiction for years then turning to modern day thrillers: it’s different, refreshing and can give you GMing fuel and ideas that another thousand fantasy books (or sessions) couldn’t.

Wrapping it Up

I’m a big fan of one-shots, as you can see, and I think that everyone who plays an ongoing campaign should try a one-shot, at least once. If it’s not your thing, you’ve lost a single session. If your group likes it, you’ve open a door to a whole new world of play.

March Fourth has become known as GM’s Day in the roleplaying community. It’s a day to celebrate Game Masters and thank them for their hard work, convoluted plots, devious villains and all the fun times you’ve had with them. After all, without GMs most people wouldn’t be roleplaying. So players, bring extra snacks to your next game, buy your GM some new dice, make a little present or try extra hard to roleplay your character. What about Players’ Day, you ask? Every other day is Players’ Day

GMs and players alike will be interested in the celebrations happening over at DriveThruRPG, the Internet’s largest RPG download store. They’ve take a fourth off many of the products on their site until the 8th of March. That’s 25% off! So head over there and pick up some great deals. Now is the perfect time to try something you might not have played before, like Mouse Guard or Savage Worlds. Both of these excellent systems – along with hundreds of other PDFs – are dirt cheap until March 8th!

So march forth and celebrate your GM, grab some bargains and keep playing games!

Only a session or two earlier, I had asked the players what their characters’ deepest darkest desires were. I framed it as if they were able to wish for anything. What would their “dark side” or subconscious wish for? At the finale, I asked them to tell me their concsious desires for the new world. I then took all the answers into account and began building the new world in my mind.

As I said, we had three PCs. Etna was an evil sorceress who repented at the very last second after her companions didn’t judge her too harshly when her secrets were revealed. Larissa was an overly sweet druid infected with an alchemically enhanced disease that made her rage like a rabid animal. Finally we had Blaine: a short, bald, very angry man who it turned out was actually a dragon trapped in human form (which was why he was so angry… one of the reasons, anyway). So, when all three of these characters touched the crystal to remake the continent the results were very interesting.

Etna’s desire was to fight back against the evil technology-based organisation that had raised her and forced her down her dark path. Deep down, she didn’t want this organisation destroyed in the blink of an eye; she wanted to do it herself. Larissa wanted humans to live in harmony with nature. Deep down, due to her disease (and the fact that she was in the form of raging bear at the time), she wanted to bring civilisation to its knees and watch nature take over. Blaine just wanted to be a dragon again. Deep down, he wanted the thrill of chasing people down and killing them for their loot. But he didn’t want humans to try to kill him either.

So, on the spot I described the basics of the world they were creating. It is a world at peace with nature, where humans live simply and work in harmony with the natural world. Some technology exists, but most settlements shun clockwork or anything else too advanced. Bone and ironwood are used where possible, rather than steel. Only a handful of cities exist. Larissa is now known as Lashira, a greater guardian spirit of the forest. Etna – taking the name Nenya after her transformation – has become an angelic being and is the avatar of the god of justice and protection. She is building an army to combat the evil organisation – who are the source of any advanced technology. Blaine became a god and is referred to by his dragon name, Vervesh. He is now the ruler of the Storm Coast, flying through the sky causing thunderstorms. Treasure-hoarding monsters are abundant in the wilderness, thanks to Blaine’s wish – he can kill these monsters without being frowned upon.

I added many side effects of the ritual and additional details. Larissa was screwed over by a group of alchemists and so in this world alchemy that goes against nature – chimeras, altering one’s body, etc. – is one of the greatest taboos. Larissa’s connection with nature means that now each town has a guardian spirit and an oracle that “sees” this spirit and crafts a likeness of them to serve as an idol of worship. The Storm Coast only exists because Blaine was a Storm Dragon. I decided that seeing as Vervesh was actually present in the world, what if all the gods – or Ordra as I ended up calling them – were “earthbound” and roamed the mortal world. It fitted well with the primal nature of the continent and because of the “rewrite” of the world, these ancient primal beings have been here since the dawn of time in this reality. Etna’s wish to take down the evil organisation is actually the entire basis of the new campaign. The players have created new PCs and are gathering forces for Nenya’s army, to fight back against an impending attack.

It isn’t appropriate for every campaign, but if you ever get the chance, let the players – and their characters – help build (or rebuild) part of your world. You might be surprised at the results. I’ve always wanted to run a Nature vs. Technology game, but I didn’t think it would happen in this way. One of the greatest advantages of this technique is that your players will be instantly invested in the setting because they helped build it. Watch your players suddenly start playing very close attention whenever you mention something about their old characters who are now the big movers and shakers in the world.