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Showing posts from September, 2010

Story vs. Railroad - Some Ponderings

I've gotten into a lot of Internet wars over this. There seems to be this attitude that's become more prevalent over the past few years, which says that any GM who wishes to have a plot or story arc for his campaign is a shit GM and is just railroading his players. The GM's job, according to this set of gamers, is to essentially sit there and passively react to whatever the players decide to do, adjudicating rules, rolling dice for monsters, and nothing else, for taking any more of a hand in the game than that equates to a railroad. I had previously thought this to be an attitude amongst new gamers, reared on player empowerment mechanics like drama / action / hero / luck / fate points, but now I am noticing it in the old school community who champion so-called "sandbox" play. I find this attitude from old-schoolers, who tend to champion concepts like the megadungeon, baffling. Let's look at the megadungeon concept. A dungeon is completely scripted out in

Maximum Rock & Role Playing Conan resource

I would be very remiss if I did not give a shout-out to the Maximum Rock & Role-Playing blog, as he has a whopping 40 posts of fantastic information of use to anyone running a Hyborian Age campaign, including detailed breakdowns of every military force in the world, taken from the Armies of the Hyborian Age wargame. http://maximumrockroleplaying.blogspot.com/ Check it out--you cannot go wrong!