RPG a Day: What music enhances your game?

Day 22: What music enhances your game?

I’ve always been a firm believer that a good musical playlist can take your session to the next level by providing a sense of atmosphere and establishing a tone. I don’t ever want the music to be distracting, rather it should wrap around the players and give them a sense of wonder without them ever thinking about it.

I’ve spent a lot of time crafting a playlist comprised of instrumental music from the best composers in tv and film, with a few of the classical greats thrown in for good measure. So far the playlist is over ten hours, but I’m always adding more. Of course I put in some of the great fantasy soundtracks on the playlist; “Lord of the Rings,” “Game of Thrones,” How to Train Your Dragon” and the like, but anything that I find moving or inspiring makes its way onto the playlist. My personal favorite composers Michael Giacchino and Hans Zimmer are well represented. Take a listen here, and feel free to follow and use if for your own sessions if you find it to your liking;

https://open.spotify.com/user/1229294506/playlist/5y7UIKKgHreedvVcfxWqhT?si=7Q7lLlZxRCSxlbsHbGH-sQ

Of course just making the playlist is only part of it, making sure the right song is playing at the right moment is equally important. Having “Hedwig’s Theme” playing during an intense battle would lessen the tension I like to have my phone connected via Bluetooth to a speaker so I can change a song as the situation calls for it. I had a lot of fun playing the score from “Pirates of the Caribbean” during a session on the high seas, and one of my absolute favorite things is to play the theme from stranger things as we set up and I give a recap of the previous week.

RPG a Day: Day 14

Day 14: Describe how have you evolved as a player?

I haven’t been gaming that long (relatively speaking) but I feel that I have “evolved vastly as a player. When I began I was concerned greatly with making an impact on the game, with having made important decisions that would vastly affect the game, rather than just sheepishly follow others.

I still like to make a impact on the game, but the way I go about it has evolved. Rather than hoping my suggestion will be the one that people will follow, I try to have insightful interesting charcters that will affect the way the game goes based on their personality, rather than me making choices based on what I as a player, rather than a character, would like.

This ties into the other major way I’ve evolved, as my first major player had a very similar mindset and moral code to myself, I try to play characters very different from me as a person typically.

RPG a Day: Days 11 and 12

As promised here’s my weekend double header.

Day 11: Weirdest character name?

My weirdest character name was actually an alias for a character known to the rest of the party by another alias, in an Inception situation of weirdness.  An akarakokra rouge, hiding in a land where akarakokra were thought to be extinct wore an amulet to conceal his identity, he was known to the other members of the party simply as Archer.

 Archer’s true name was Taal Azazel, a weird name in its own right, as I wanted the aarakocra to have a unique name. Taal was an altered spelling from a character from the very underrated book series “The Seventh Tower,” and Azazel is a fallen angel, since akarakokra have wings.

Of course when Taal went undercover and faked his own death I gave him the name Zane Landstander, when he was disguised as a human. This was of course a play on the fact that he was pretending to be a human and not someone who could fly, and me trying to come up with a bizarre name for the deepest level down of this name Russian nesting doll.

Day 12: Weirdest character concept?           

There were a few things I considered putting here, like the bird person I just mentioned, who was undercover and faked his own death, or the young girl monk leaving her rich family behind to search for enlightenment, or I could have talked about the young force user from Naboo with the old family friend Jar Jar Binks. But I’m not going to do any of them, and I’m going to completely cheat.

The character I’m using is actually from Arkham Horror, which is technically a board game based on a roleplaying game, and the player I used was one of the pregenerated characters from the game. But when we play we tend to play it more like a roleplaying game, not making decisions based on what makes sense to win the game, but as characters. I decided to put my own spin on the character based on his backstory and goals; I even did a character voice.

This was my first time, and it really was like a mini campaighn because we played with four expansions leading to a massive map. I chose Bob Jenkins, a traveling salesman who misses his train because he finds some mysterious gold coins. For those not familiar with Arkahm Horror, it’s a Lovecraftian game about trying to stop ancient gods from destroying the world in the 1920’s.

Bob was just a guy trying to earn a quick buck, looking for coins, but ended up fighting monsters with a tommy gun pretty quickly. Bob wasn’t really concerned with where these monstrosities were coming from, and even when traveling to dark and evil planes he didn’t care about understanding about any of this, he just knew he had to stop it, there wasn’t much profit to be made if the world ended.

Bob found his golden coins, but that was the least of his trouble, and he quickly traded his fortune for clues to find a way to seal these portals to the other world that were letting in these monstrosities. He grew into a less selfish character, but one that stood by his capitalist ideals, which ultimately helped him save the world. In the end the game all came down to a single dice roll, if I sucsseded, the world was saved, if I failed an elder god would return and destroy us all. Of course Bob Jenkins was up to the challenge, shouting after he had spent his last dollar to help seal the portal “If that isn’t an endorsement for capitalism, I don’t know what is!”

Bob Jenkins; wheelin, dealin, and sealin!

Infinity Stones and Dragon Bones: Ep. 5- "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

It's another episode of my Marvel Cinematic Universe Podcast! This time I''m joined by Jonathan Akin and we discuss the newest Marvel movie, "Ant-Man and the Wasp." We also delve into a variety of other topics including recent Netflix shows, "Spider-Man: Far From Home," and the James Gunn firing.

Check it out on YouTube:

...or on

Soundcloud

RPG a Day: Day 8

After taking a few days off for my birthday and to work on some other projects I’m back to answer another question, and I’ll return with another double tomorrow for the weekend!

Day 8: How can we get more people roleplaying?

I think the biggest hurdle that people have with roleplaying are a some misconceptions, ones that actually kept me from playing till later in life myself.

The first big misconception is that tabletop is only for the most nerdy people, that those who play it are completely anti-social and are portrayed very negatively. Even being a self-proclaimed gamer and geek in high school I thought of D&D and the like as something even too nerdy for me. The perception of this is starting to change as more people take on the hobby, and shows like Stranger Things portray it in a more respectful and less demeaning way.

I also think people don’t understand how freeing it is, how you can essentially do whatever you want, and it’s a great outlet for imagination. A common perception of tabletop is that it is very rigid, and its more like a video game with more math to do. That’s how I saw it for a long time, after I had finally decided to give it a try many years ago and the game I played was a simple dungeon crawl with no real roleplaying or opportunities to make decisions. It wasn’t until about ten years later that I tried again and realized how great it could be, and I could use my skills as an actor and improviser.

All in all I think that making sure people know what the game really is is what will get more players to the table.

RPG a Day: Day 7

Day 7:

How can a GM make the stakes important?

Today I’ll keep things shot.

One thing that has frustrated me when I was a player was feeling that my actions had no real consequences. If I saved residents of a town, only for them to be killed a couple sessions later that destroys the sense of stakes.

That’s why I always make the thing the players do matter, what they do affects them, sometimes negatively, and that gives the world a sense of stakes. Of course if players felt like they could live through any encounter then any real sense of stakes would evaporate. That’s why I will put them into situations that could potentially get a character killed. Sometimes even a near brush with death will have lasting consequences for a player.

Of course you can’t overdo it. If a put your players in life threatening situations and constantly kill them off it has the opposite effect, making nothing matter.

It’s a balance that must be found, but if you find it your players will be wholly invested in your world.

RPG a Day, Day 6

Day 6:

How can players make a world seem real?

As they say, the devil is in the details.

For me a really great tabletop world is a world where someone can ask a question and get an answer. A lot of the time this means having done a lot of worldbuilding, prepwork, and introducing NPCs with a fleshed out backstory. Sometimes however, this means being good at improvising. No matter how prepared a GM is a player will always do something unexpected, and a GM needs to improvise in a way that makes sense in context to the world.

Of course its not just the DM that needs to do this, players bring a lot to the table too, no pun intended. With realistic and developed backstories and relationships they add to the world and make it a more realistic place. For a game with an established lore, such as Star Wars, this can be easier, but more restrictive than a homebrew where the only limit is the imaginations of those at the table.