The Dragon’s Tower

I’m traipsing cheerfully along the internet when I trip over a Thing in a Jar. You’ve probly seen other version of them out there. It’s a pretty common idea but what caught me was this:

“The glass jar acts as a physical barrier, preventing the viewer from directly accessing its contents. The murky fluid acts as a visual barrier, making the exact details of the form indistinct. The viewer is forced to fill in the gaps with their own imagination.”

You can do this to your players. It’s fun! First, you have to be running a system you know inside and out. Can you make up monsters on the fly? Without ruining the game? That’s harder than it sounds and I never did get to know d20 well enough for it. It won’t always work, alot depends on the party and their imagination but it’s excellent when it does.

We were playing a modern game and it was at night. I had gunmen on the roofs of nearby buildings waiting to ambush the party. The players got rolls to see the ambushers vs the ambushers hide. One player succeeded and immediately began fretting as it was a smaller party than usual and she’s a nervous type to begin with. “Oh god, I hope they don’t have crossbows!” This weapon recently got an upgrade and had been made particularly nasty in the game so she feared its effects.

So of course, all the NPC rifles suddenly morphed into crossbows….

Use it carefully but when it works, the players face their worst nightmare without ever even realizing they created it!

We all know Druids liked trees, right? How about snakes? Check out this site on Irish Druids and old Irish religions. Not only are Irish Druids covered (obviously) but also the German and French varieties. Wait. French Druids?

If you’re as clueless as I am about all these Druids, and they’re in your game, you want to read it.

It’s Friday night and you and your mates are arrayed around the table while the GM plots your destruction. He’s running a scifi game so you’ve got an automatic rifle and some decent body armor. The party is sneaking around the complex, making sure they don’t get seen by the bad guys. To make matters worse, the GM has decreed “You say it, then your character said it - out loud!”

And you know, just know, you’re all fumbling around with hand and arm movements, trying to understand each other and it’s turning into a comedy of errors.

This can be fun sometimes. Depends on the lethality of the GM involved and how often they pull this stunt on you. When it’s not fun any more, print out this sheet of hand signals and take it the next game. I promise the rest of the party will love you even as the GM starts shuffling through books muttering about that new monster he found last week…

You’ve got the SCA (That’s Society for Creative Anachronisms for you uncultured out there.) to learn about sword fighting, musical instruments can be picked up by just about anyone and the sheet music online is legion, head for the local Catholic Church if you want knowledge on ritual and the local branch office of the OTO for ritual of a different kind, but what if you’re looking for instruction about thievery?

Enter Lifehacker with this link to a guide about picking locks. No, I’m not advocating you go out and start breaking into your neighbor’s house. But if you’re looking for a little character depth, and wanting to make sure you never again get locked out of the house, try it out!

It’s happened. Your group is bored. You’ve played all the variations of d20 out (Yeah, we didn’t think it possible, either.) and it’s time to move on to something new. Problem is, you’re a bunch of students with no money to buy a whole new system, and all its attendant books, or the time to create your own. Well, you could diss the term paper but…

Enter The Free RPG Compendium. Here’s a list of systems you can download rules for and try on your own. No $40 book to buy, and only enough time to learn a new set of rules - still less than creating from scratch! It includes old stand-byes like Fudge as well as newer, less well-known systems. There’s very likely real trash there but give a few a try and you’ll find the Wondrous Item that will keep your party playing for months.