of Dice and Dragons

The latest online issue of Role-playing Tips #352 is available - Know Your Players - Building Your Session Checklist

In this issue (the first of two) Johnn, gives GMs a reminder about a very useful tool that often goes overlooked - the checklist. Johnn goes beyond just listing out those items that should be on your checklist but instead gives you a variety of checklists that you should consider putting together for items such as session planning and time management.

He also includes some submissions to the superstitions contest he’s currently running.

Enjoy!

Contents:
–> A Brief Word From Johnn

–> This Week’s Tips:
1. Learn Player Time Habits
2. Learn Player Organization
3. Learn Player Preferences

–> Readers’ Tips Of The Week:
1. Superstitions For Use In Your Games
2. Scenario Writing Tips
3. Mickey Spillane, Game Master
4. Rackham Tiles
5. Character Generation Idea

–> Links Of The Week
1. Dungeons & Dragons Canada
2. Online Dice Roller (German)
3. Another Dice Roller
4. Thinking Rock

You can read it online here.

If you don’t already subscribe I would recommend it, you can do that here.

May your dice roll well.

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The latest online issue of Role-playing Tips #351 is available - How To Craft And Use Superstitions To Enhance Your Game

Johnn gives us some great information and tips this week related to superstitions. He starts off by explaining what they are along with why you would want to include them in your campaign. Afterwards, he follows up with some solid advice on how to design and use them.

Enjoy!

Contents:
–> A Brief Word From Johnn

–> This Week’s Tips:
1. Why Use Superstitions?
2. Superstition - Real Or Not?
3. Design Specific Triggers
4. Focus On Action-Based Superstitions
5. Craft Specific Consequences
6. Design Counteractions
7. Statement Method For Creating Superstitions
8. Superstition Stat Block
9. Superstition Resources

–> Readers’ Tips Of The Week:
1. Scenario Writing
2. Drink Coffee
3. A Reader’s Sample Excel Tracker
4. Keeping Things Interesting

–> Links Of The Week
1. Ambient Background Music
2. Read Game Logs Posted Online
3. Visual Gamer Forums

You can read it online here.

If you don’t already subscribe I would recommend it, you can do that here.

May your dice roll well.

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Every once in a while you need to take a break from your regular game so that you can recharge your batteries or just to try something new - it keeps your regular game from getting stagnant.

In my wanderings across the Internet I came across BrickQuest, and it fits the bill as being something completely different.

From their Introduction page:

BrickQuest is a game of small-scale fantasy combat similar to HeroQuest, Warhammer Quest, or MageKnight Dungeons. It requires at least two players to play and can be played easily by four to six players.

It’s a boardgame, is fantasy based and it uses that vast collection of Legos(R) that so many folks have collecting dust in storage.

Take a minute to check it out as it might just fit the “break” you need from your regular role-playing game and who knows? Maybe it’ll become a regular addition to the games you play.

Already play it? Take a moment and share your experiences with the rest of us!

May your dice roll well.

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Just recently I’ve had the opportunity to return to the player side of the role-playing table and found myself in need of a method of tracking many different things, among them a spell list.

For those that have been following the posts here for a while know that I’ve had many tips and suggests on how to do just that (check out sticky notes for spells and use those index cards) but I decided to take things in a slightly different direction, I wanted to do it electronically. In other words, I wanted to my laptop to track my spells.

Enter Evernote.

Evernote is an application that has a “continuous tape” to which you can add all sorts of things, text files, images, to do lists, and so on. As you add items you can also categorize them – so I did just that, a created a number of notes, one for each spell in my collection and categorized them as spells for my character. I keep the list of them at the top and then simply need to select the spell I want and all the details are show at the bottom.

Evernote is not the only application out there that wasn’t designed for the role-playing public but it adapts nicely to it, and it’s not the only one I use – as I fine tune things I’ll be passing along what I’ve learned.

Are there applications that you use for your gaming? Take a moment to post and share.

May your dice roll well.

You can checkout Evernote here.

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Now available - RSS feed by e-mail!

For those that don’t stop by the site frequently to see what I’ve posted and haven’t subscribed to the RSS feed there is a new option available to you now - email.

In the right-hand sidebar there’s a new link at the top which will allow you to subscribe to of Dice and Dragons and get the postings by email.

As always I’m looking for ways to get gaming tips, advice and information out to the masses - got and idea? Please post away and share.

May your dice roll well.

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