Kick-Ass Villains

I am the Warden!!

Ever roleplayed on a train before? We did during the Shadoworld Excursion a couple of weeks ago. When I was younger, my concern for standing out and "looking weird" roleplaying in public would have prevented me from doing so, but now I just don't give a shit. Roleplaying games have done more for me than any stranger has and so my teenage compulsion has gone up in flames. Plus, it's fun to see people walk by and wonder just what the hell we're doing and why it's not being done on a phone.

On our ride to Moncton, my buddy Kurt and I played the finishing scenes of the Matrix: Revolutions playtest with slight modifications for a solo game. Save for one part: the final villain, a program known only as the Gimp. He was a giant man adorned in black leather and a kinky zippered mask concealing his identity, though this wasn't as apparent as the gargantuan meat tenderizer he carried with him. Oh, and he was immune to firearms. Bullets would hit him, but never harm him. I wanted to see how a long hero would fare against this bastard and was really hoping for a wild ride of devastation.

Nope. Part of this one-sided slashfest was Kurt's decision to pull out his twin samurai swords from moment one rather than shoot first as I had expected. The other part has lead me to consider new and dramatic additions to villains, the subject of today's post.

Reporting Live From Canada

I am the Warden, the Canadian Correspondent for Roleplayer's Chronicle!!

That's right. Over my vacation, RPC put out a call for regional correspondents to cover as much RPG material as they could and I took the bait. As the Man in Can, I now have no choice but to make it to as many Canadian conventions as I can and talk about roleplaying from north of the border. I'm also starting a new weekly column on the site called Under the Hood, a look at RPG mechanics and how players' interpretations make them unique. My first article posts on December 11th on http://www.roleplayerschronicle.com.

Shadoworld: The End of the Beginning

I am the Warden!!

Notice a bit of an absence, did ya? I have to admit, last week's "vacation from unemployment" was exactly what I needed to refresh my creative juices. While this may sound contradictory as this blog is also supposed to act as fuel for the fire, there's nothing better than running what may have been the best game of my gaming career to not only rejuvenate creativity but also give me cause to sit back and reflect.

The main purpose of this Weekend Extravaganza was to wrap up the old Shadoworld campaign once and for all. Or, at the very least, wrap up the storyline so we could indulge in the occasional return to that domain. The main theme of Shadoworld is captivity; the PCs are prisoners magically sealed within an entire world through binding shadowmarks preventing them from ever leaving the former continent of Barsaive (from Earthdawn - I just blowed it up a little more and made the Horrors victorious over the Name-givers). At bare minimum, I needed to wrap up the continuous storyline involving one PC in particular, Dorion, and his quest to free his brother, Rheece, from a lifetime of servitude to Boccob.

Gaming Ain't Cheap: An Old Man's Tirade

I am the Warden and I remember a time when roleplaying games were cheap!!

That's right. Why, when we played RPGs, there was only one rulebook at the table shared by everyone and we liked it. We loved it! There were none of these player splatbooks, character sheets, d7s, miniatures, and such. There was one AD&D Player's Handbook, dice, pencils, and scrap pieces of paper. And that was it.

Now, as much as I'd like to rant about how publishers drove us into a cost-heavy market of product lines and residual marketing, there's only one guilty party we can truly point the finger at: ourselves. That same original AD&D campaign eventually saw the table fill up with multiple PHBs, minis, homemade terrain, individualized character sheets based on your chosen class, and more. As we got older, we got jobs and had loads of disposable income. While all of our "peers" were learning that money could be exchanged for alcohol, drugs, condoms, and bail, we used our resources to construct a massive reservoir of RPG goodness. We brought all of this on ourselves.

Redpill Diary #4: Down the Rabbit Hole

I am the Warden!!

Seems I've decided to juggle several balls at once this week. No longer content to balance the delicate conclusion of Shadoworld while working on building a playtest job for Killshot, I've suddenly felt the need to get some work done on Redpill as well. Might have something to do with the numbers my Matrix posts get in comparison to everything else (about a 1000% difference).

As I've said in my original declaration of this project, I'm aiming to make Redpill a truly epic free RPG unlike all the other Matrix wannabes out there but there needs to be a coherent start for curious readers to latch onto. I could spend pages and pages going on about all the history of the Matrix setting and the intention of my game design, but then you're just reading the same kind of text as every other game out there. I want something captivating right from the get-go.

Shadoworld: Loose Ends

The original Shadoworld logo, built long before I knew
how to make logos.

I am the Warden!!

These past couple of days have been remarkably emotional for me as I pour over all my old Shadoworld notes to compile everything for Shadoworld: The Finale. And it's been amazing and refreshing how much I can still remember with just a single name, reaffirming once again that my RPG design work has helped me regain confidence in my cognitive functions. After reviewing everything I have, a checklist of concrete plot points for this final adventure stand at the ready.

But I'm not writing about those individual points because my players read this blog and most of that checklist revolves around the revelation I call The Answer, the truth about why everything happened in the campaign. The Answer has existed since before designing the first encounter of the first adventure nearly 10 years ago and has only been tweaked here and there to account for new details, new PCs, and sudden moments of awesomeness waking me up at 4 in the morning.

My point being the entire campaign has been about revealing The Answer. So why am I still unwilling to write it down for the purpose of telling it to the players?

Shadoworld: The Beginning of the End

I am the Warden!!

For the past week-and-a-half, I've been plugging away at Killshot, producing 45 pages of material for rules and character creation and enhancement. Now I must put all that aside - everything involving the Optional System, for that matter - to start working on something I never thought would come: the end of my old Shadoworld campaign.

When I say "Shadoworld," I don't mean the campaign setting released by ICE. I didn't even learn about their work until a random Google search years ago. My Shadoworld is a D&D 3e campaign started back in 2001 with my good friends and regular gamers, Derek, John, and Kurt. It was a very intense, heavy-roleplaying, action-packed series of adventures simmered in a long-stewing backstory. Everything hinged around the PCs trapped in a prison world known only as Shadoworld to its inmates (which is Barsaive from FASA's Earthdawn game, except the Horrors actually finished off the Name-givers) run by an enigmatic figure called the Warden. Now you know where I got my name.