of Dice and Dragons

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No matter what role-playing system you end up playing there’s always a need to come up with names for people and places. Instead using the old standbys (like baby books or the name of a character from your favorite book) why not try something different - an anagram.

For those not familiar with the term an anagram is a word or phrase that’s created by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase such as:

Leaping Lory - a thief who makes thier escape by jumping from rooftop to rooftop
Gale Olin Pry - that kindly admin behind the desk at the library whose been very helpful with the group’s research
Pale Gin Rory - the drunk at the local bar, pale because he never sees the sun and gin because that’s his drink of choice

As you can see not only can you get a name from an anagram but also something of the personality and background as well.

Now I’ll admit it’s fun to come up with various anagrams but it can be a bit time consuming but there is a short cut you can take. The
Internet Anagram Server is a free online anagram engine and it works great.

I used it to create the three examples above and for those interested the root word was roleplaying.

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Instead of handing out an XP bonus for outstanding play or contributions consider giving out a token instead.

Your tokens can all be of equal value or as in my case I have three ‘levels’ of value as I use poker chips with my group. Then later these tokens can be redeemed for any variety of ‘bonuses.’

Items that could be included:

The list is really endless and it lets the GM and the players tailor the rewards and bonuses to a particular group and system,

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A while back I wrote an article concerning session notes for Gamemasters which was published in issue #266 of the Roleplayingtips ezine (you can see the issue online here).

The article can be found here or in the list of articles to the right.

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A lot of gamers have started determining their actions and rolling thier dice ahead of their actual turn in combat which does speed things up a bit, but do you use multicolored dice?

By using a different color of die for each action you can roll them all at once and there will no confusion as to which result roll (damage) goes with which action roll (attack).

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