Random Roleplay Table - Special Creature Details

Sometimes, you've got a bunch of monsters to throw at the players and it's nice to mark out one (or more) amongst them as special.  This could be the leader of the group, the alpha, or maybe the designated champion.  Perhaps it's the one that's carrying the treasure the players are after, or is otherwise important to the story -- it could be the one that crept into town and killed that old man.

These little extra details will help the players, too.  Not only will they better imagine the critter (it'll stand out more in their minds if it's exceptional in some way), but they can more easily discuss tactics if their foe is easy to name, and can do so in-character too if there's an obvious detail.

This table is mostly useful to games where hoards of monsters or hostile creatures are common, like in fantasy settings such as D&D.  I haven't included any system-specific rules, but there are suggestions in the second column (feel free to ignore these if you'd like the detail to be purely cosmetic).  Some of the details represent different levels of experience (a critter with one less eye might easily be a veteran), others denote minor biological differences, and could be used to trace genetic lineage ("That must be the brother of the one that ambushed us a week ago!").

Random roleplay table - special creature details

D10	Extra Detail	Rules
1.	One less eye than normal.  If the critter usually only has one eye (cyclops, beholder, etc.), the eye is milky or looks cracked, or it has other notable scars or old wounds.	Minor penalty on ranged attacks, minor bonus on morale.
2.	Horns.  If the creature is usually horned anyway, it has two sets, or an especially long set.	Gives the creature a bonus attack with the horns.
3.	Unusually gnarled-looking skin, maybe scaled or rock-like.  If the monster has no discernible skin (gelatinous cube, ectoplasmic ghost) it has a film over it, like custard.	Extra constitution or resistance to physical attacks, minor agility penalty.
4.	Musical or noisy.  The creature continually barks out a war hymn in its own language or whistles an eery melody (if intelligent), or howls or screams with ear-shattering volume for the entire duration of a combat (if low intelligence or mindless).	Depending on your whim, the critter might gain a sonic attack.  Makes it impossible for the creature to hide or surprise once it starts making noise.
5.	More teeth.  If the critter doesn't usually have teeth or a mouth, it does now.	Gives the creature a bonus attack with the teeth.  Might intimidate enemies if particularly unnerving (a slime monster with teeth is a bit more scary than one without).
6.	Not the same creature as the rest.  You can go subtle with this one, or crazy.  Perhaps introduce hybrid creatures or unusual modifiers (a lizardman-orc, or a vampiric gnoll).  Sci-fi settings may feature mutations and artificial hybrids, fantasy settings may have magical hybrids.	Modify as appropriate.
7.	Marked with runes.  If the creature has armour, it can be the armour that is marked; if not, the runes could be carved in the skin, or tattoos.  Runes could be sigils, or an ancient language.	Pick your favourite rules modifiers for whatever the runes represent.  Alternately, could just denote social superiority.
8.	Big bones.  The critter is notably more heavy-set than usual, or if not a creature supported by a skeleton is of greater mass than expected.	Extra constitution or hit points, minor agility penalty.
9.	Elemental affinity.  The monster is surrounded by a field of fire (think phlogiston), or can summon bursts of air at will.  Perhaps it is electrical or plasmic in nature and gives shocks to anything conductive that touches it with an appearance like St. Elmo's fire, or is frosted over and immune to cold attacks.	Modify as appropriate.
10.	Decorated.  This could be in war paint, or fancy clothes or jewellery (if intelligent), or in blood, or the creature could just be an unusual colour.	Slight morale boost to the other creatures around it.

D14s and D18s

Oh my.  Impact! Miniatures (y'know, the ones who make loads of Blood Bowl and other fantasy sports miniatures) have a Kickstarter going to make D14s and D18s.

I'm not much of a fan of most Kickstarter projects, in truth.  The concept of Kickstarter is sound, if not amazing, but usually the projects don't interest me beyond 5 minutes fascination.  But if you say you're going to start making awesome new dice available, well, that's a bit of a different story.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/674003445/spherical-d14-and-d18-the-missing-even-sided-game

They've also got D16s made by another company available (which were already readily available in the market - who knew?) and a dice game called Dice Farmer.

My pockets run a little empty at the moment (or I'd get on to ordering a bunch of custom-made Ghost Dice for GBI like I've been wanting to for a while now) but I'm going to have to consider this one seriously.  Hmmm, what organs go for the most on the black market these days?

Random Roleplay Table - Hobbies and Interests

When writing up a character, it's all too easy to get caught up in a theme, and forget to add those little details that give depth.  This is true whether you're a player putting the final touches on your trusty alter-ego that'll see you through many an adventure yet to come, or a GM writing what seems like a billion NPCs for the next session.

The strange thing is, the answer to adding depth is staring us right in the face every time we interact with another person.  Small talk covers all the basics, such as job, family and weather (and most characters will have some answer to each of those already), but then it moves on to interests, hobbies, passions.  So, throw some dice and use this table if you're stuck for ideas (or do as I tend to, and read them all picking the ones I feel like using).  I've written this with modern settings in mind, meaning it will work with most sci-fi settings without any effort, but shouldn't be too hard to bend to the majority of fantasy settings either.  Street racing becomes chariot racing, playing guitar becomes playing lute, and so on.  It's not exhaustive, and isn't meant to be, but hopefully will give some ideas that wouldn't have sprung to mind otherwise.  Comments are always open (especially for suggestions).

Random roleplay table - hobbies & interests

D20	Hobby / Interest	Variations
1.	Origami	Competitive origami, Kirigami (involves cutting), paper engineering, paper making
2.	Boating/sailing	Boating combined with d6: 1. birdwatching; 2. sunbathing; 3. outdoor BBQ cooking; 4. painting landscapes; 5. paragliding; 6. roll again on main table for combine
3.	Paintball	Customising paintball equipment, airsoft, gun enthusiasm, hunting
4.	Flying kites	Kite fighting, kite surfing, kite fishing
5.	Orienteering	Geocaching, letterboxing, BookCrossing, cartography
6.	Remote control cars	Amateur mechanics, Formula One/stock car racing, street racing, demolition derby, vintage cars
7.	Toy models	Model rockets, matchstick models, scrapyard art
8.	Poker	Bingo, casino gambling, backgammon, boardgames, roleplaying games, chess
9.	Amateur astronomy	Astrophotography, theoretical astronomy, planetary science
10.	Cookery	Home beer brewing or wine making, home jam making, vegetable/herb gardening, BBQs
11.	Playing guitar	Playing [insert any musical instrument here], orchestral performances, being in a band, choral singing, beatboxing
12.	Stamp collection	[Insert any collectible here] collection (coins, antiques, artwork, Beanie Babies etc.), bird watching, train watching
13.	Pedigree cat shows	Dog shows, sheepdog trials, dressage, polo
14.	Meditation	Reflexology, aromatherapy, reiki, t'ai chi
15.	Quilting	Needlepoint, puppet-making and puppetry, cross-stitch, knitting, clothes making, cosplay
16.	Dancing	Old time dancing, line dancing, tap dancing, pole dancing, belly dancing
17.	Pottery making	Papier-mâché, sculpting, oil painting, candle making
18.	Amateur wrestling	Martial arts, boxing, professional (entertainment) wrestling
19.	Tarot card reading	I Ching, reading runes, water divination, metal detection
20.	Movies	Theatre, acting, celebrity gossip

Sound Effects for GMs

So, in searching for sounds to use with my dice roller for the Ghostbusters RPG that I released yesterday, I came across a couple of links, and since I'm in the blogging mood thought I might share.

http://www.hprops.com/sounds/
The HProps website has some of the best sounds for ghost busting equipment, and is certainly no secret amongst the Ghostbusters fan community.  While I don't think I'll ever actually build a Proton Pack, two of my players have put these sounds on their smart phones, so when they want to flip a switch that makes a worrying hum they actually can.  If anyone wanted to use them for GB Roller, you'll need to convert them from MP3s to WAV files, but if you haven't got a solution for that already Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is free and easy to use.

That's all I've found (so far) for Ghostbusters specific stuff; the next two links are good for GMs of all systems and genres.

http://soundfxnow.com/
SoundFX Now! offers pages of sound effects, some more useful than others for GMs (the machine & technology and weapons & war sections might be the most popular, but the other sections have some hidden gems too).  What's good about this site is it offers the files to download if you click the title, but also presents a page full of effects you can play straight from the browser.

http://www.freesound.org/
Probably one of the better known sources of free sound effects, though I generally find that, because of its open nature, there's a lot of content there, and you've got to really hunt for the good amongst the average and not-so-good.

Okay, that'll do for now.  If anyone's got any suggestions of other sites they use, or wants to point out awesome software for playing said sounds specifically useful to GMs, comments are, as always, open and welcome.

Old Computer Love - GB Roller Legacy

Something I should have mentioned in yesterday's post is that the GB Roller dice rolling application needs Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.  While that's not going to be a problem for the overwhelming majority of people, since it'll definitely run in Windows XP and later, and the setup takes care of installing anything needed, it does mean that those of you using quite old machines are going to feel a bit excluded.

So, I've spliced up a version that will run using .NET 2.0, and that opens it up to anything as low as Windows 98, fully acknowledging I might be the only person left in the whole world who has a working computer that still uses that operating system.  Here's a screenshot!

So, it's definitely not quite as pretty or functional as its older cousin, lacking the fancy mini soundboard, the switch button, and even the options button.  But, GB Roller Legacy is fully ready to help out those people playing a game from almost 30 years ago on hardware nearly as old!  Plus, it's nicely portable (just one tiny .EXE file) and it has so much love to give.  Won't you help it find a home, dear readers?

Yeah, I completely realise I've gone off the rails a bit with this one.  The chances of a Ghostmaster of Ghostbusters International or Ghostbusters RPG coming along to my site and saying "Perfect!  Just what I needed for my 200 MHz Pentium!" is, shall we say, a bit unlikely.  But I love old computers.

If anyone misses any of the features of the real GB Roller, just leave me a comment (hey... I can dream, right?).  I can probably get everything but the opacity setting working, but I'm not going to invest time on it if nobody would find it useful.

Download link:

Here

Update: Link now points to version 1.0.0.1, and isn't hosted on FileFactory. 

Ghostbusters International RPG - GB Roller

So, just a little over a month ago, I started a new Ghostbusters International campaign*.  Things are going great so far, we're only three sessions in and the players seem to be really enjoying themselves, when I'm not scaring them witless.  Actually, things are going great with two exceptions.

The first is that I'm suffering from a lack of players; two of my players have been exceptionally reliable.  But since the game is open to a rotating cast (it's episodic, so ideal for characters to just drop in for a session) it's proving a bit of challenge to get enough people with Proton Packs to effectively deal with the horrific threats from beyond that I'm throwing at the players.  This post isn't here to complain about that, though**.

The second is that I've only got one Ghost Die, and it's getting old.  Anyone familiar with West End's Ghostbusters RPG, or the follow-up Ghostbusters International (the one I'm choosing to run) will know that the system uses D6s, one of which has the 6 replaced by a Ghostbusters symbol (referred to as "rolling a ghost" in the rules) and when that shows up, it means something bad will happen to the players.  Those same people will also probably know that these Ghost Dice were notoriously poorly made, with the faces rubbing off over time, sometimes with very little use.

As a GM, I've often turned to my computer for dice-rolling solutions, so I thought I'd throw together a little application for myself and other Ghostmasters (yes, they actually use that term in the game) to have handy so I'm not always snatching the precious Ghost Die from my players every time I want to make a roll.  And since it's going to be there on my laptop screen anyway, I figured I might as well throw a few other features in there.

Click that lower image for an explanation of the elements.

The result and the UHM (Universal How Much, from GBI) result are the main focal point, but I included the actual dice rolled (the small numbers) just in case there's any question as to which dice resulted in what, and because sometimes you can roll, say, 3 dice and end up with, for example, 9 as a result, and this can happen twice in a row.  Without the dice there, it's not even obvious that you've re-rolled, so they act as a form of visual reassurance.

The mini soundboard can be configured to play 3 WAV files; mine's set to Proton Pack heating up, being fired, and powering down.  Yours could easily be Ecto-1's sirens, a ghost growling and a door creaking though, if you wanted, just change it in the options (the little tool symbol, top right).

The switch button might take some explanation.  If, like me, you have a few things open on your screen and it can all get a bit lost, this will shortcut to an open window you commonly use.  The default is set to "Untitled - Notepad" (you can find this in the options), but there's good sense in setting it to a PDF you often use (just type in the exact title of the Window you want to switch to, e.g. "Ghostbusters International RPG.pdf - SumatraPDF") or, in my case, a TightVNC client running the music on a different laptop***.

While we're on the subject of that options screen, you can set the opacity of the main window there (minimum 10%).  Useful for seeing through to underlying windows, especially since GB Roller defaults to Always On Top.  Hmmm, must remember to add that option in later in case people don't want it.

The link to download is:

Here

Update: Link now points to version 1.0.0.1, and isn't hosted on FileFactory.

Enjoy!

* Huh?  Was that why I haven't been posting much here lately?  Uh, yeah, sure.
** But it's my party blog and I'll cry vent in a manly fashion if I want to.
*** As a GM, I use quite a few technical solutions.  My best so far was a bank of computers (one showing only static) for the Paranoia confession booth in a side room.  The individual screens had a picture of the Computer's eye, with scrolling text messages and warnings as might be seen throughout Alpha Complex.

Portal #21

Hey, you cool peeps into miniatures all know about Portal, right?  Well, issue #21 has just been released.

http://www.wamp-forum.com/portal/WhatsNew.html

Of particular interest to me -- and the ThoughtonBOT as well, no doubt -- is Tim Fitch's clever piece about realism in miniatures and fantasy in general.  If you're wondering what I'm talking about, follow that link above; you might as well, it's free.

(As an unfortunate aside, it's a shame the article is printed in the same issue as Maya Morland's guide to painting transparent cloth, as demonstrated on a cheerleader's top.  Mixed messages much, Portal Magazine?)