Tag Archives: MHR

Punchy Printouts

Today I’ve got some tips on making modern player handouts with more punch as well as updates on our current news.

SHIELD Secret Brief

Avernos Unearthed
Avernos is all about the darkness on the doorstep, the growing evil at the edge of vision. So it’s high time we took a look at the Abyss, this weeks newest addition to the wiki.

The Abyss is a massive hole in the ground, surrounded by the Jaws mountains and leading directly into the depths of hell. Not a place you want to go, unless you’re, say, a witch hunter, monster slayer or questing paladin.

This is one area that will probably see many more entries this year as we travel deeper into the dark. I hope your sword is sharp and your torch bright.

The Books of Faces
Last week I mentioned my big plans for the Book of Faces adventure. But what is it really all about?

The Book of Faces is content that I’m creating while players from all over the Internet are giving their feedback, deciding where the adventure goes. While that’s happening, I’m busy writing more content and drawing concept sketches for a final book version. I call it crowd-questing.

You can follow the history of the quest at the Adventure Chronicle or take part on Facebook.

Campaign Journal
Handouts are a great way to hook players in and say “hey, this information is important.” I made this secret SHIELD Brief for ACT 2 of Breakout for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

It’s easy to put something like this together in a text editor like Word.

  1. Write out your text. Use formal language to make it sound official and important.
  2. Use a font like Stencil for the header and Courier for the main body. A font like Freestyle Script is good for hand written parts, such as notes scribbled by NPCs or their signatures.
  3. Add logos harvested from the web. A grey scale version of the logo makes a great watermark if it’s in the background.
  4. As with logos, you can find stamp marks on the web. Better still, stamp them with a real stamp and red ink. Yet another option is to use the shape tool to create your own stamp, using a thick border and the Stencil font, all in red, to get it as close to the real thing as you can.
  5. To make your document more intriguing for the players, use a black marker pen or white-out to hide important facts. You can also use this trick to create red herrings.

Rising Phoenix News

Rising Phoenix Games is 4! In all the commotion of the holidays I forgot that we’ve been working towards our goals since the very last day of 2010. For sure, it has been a great ride, and the best is still to come, with so many exciting projects itching to go live.
You can check out our publications for the past four years on DriveThruRPG.

Voting for RPG Superstar 2015 ended a day or so ago, but next week the round 1 winners will be announced over at Paizo.com.

Inspired in Japan

I’m not sure who the two people carved on this stone are, but my guess is they were a couple who lived in the area. Perhaps their descendants commissioned the carving after they passed away. What do the statues and carvings your players come across tell them about your world?

Carved Stone. Photo by R Sloan

That’s all from me until next Thursday.
Tell Thrilling Tales

Old School RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

New Games, Ancient Lands

Happy New Year! I hope 2015 is a great year for you.

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This year I’m changing things up with the blogs focus. Each Thursday expect updates on my weeks gaming and project progress, as well as inspiration for your campaign. If you’re a GM, be sure to subscribe, because you don’t want to miss out. (Enter your email address on the right and hit “Join The Party”).

Avernos Unearthed
Each week I’ll bring you a new Avernos Wiki entry. The entries usually go live earlier in the week, but I’ll highlight them here.

This week South Fort expands with a look at the Sentinels. These fearsome totem-towers are both defence and rallying point for the people living in their long shadows.

The Books of Faces
Last year we embarked on an epic adventure with the crowd-game Book of Faces and this year I’m ramping things up. The game will still be available on the Facebook page, but has a new home on the site, with updates mentioned here.

Campaign Journal
After every game session I play I’ll post some thoughts aimed specifically at GMs.

Last Friday I ran my first session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (MHR). Man! Am I sad they stopped publishing it. Anyway, I love this sort of story driven game. D&D and Pathfinder show their wargame roots, while MHR, like World of Darkness, Burning Wheel and my own Claustrophobia!, are much more free form systems that encourage great story telling.

Making the shift from Pathfinder to MHR was tough for me, but so worth-while. I learn’t more about GMing while fumbling through a new system than I would have if I played several sessions of the same old game. And most of that learning came from being out of my comfort zone and having to kick up the role-play a notch. I felt the game was much more immersive for it.

Nothing will improve your GMing like playing something new and unfamiliar, that’s for sure.

Rising Phoenix News
I’ll post weekly updates and teasers of our current projects, so watch this space. For now, you’ll find it worth subscribing to our YouTube channel, interesting things are about to happen there soon.

Also, don’t forget to vote in the 2015 RPG Superstar Contest at Paizo.

Inspired in Japan
Japan is full of history, culture, art and other inspirational things to fuel your creativity. I’ll be posting the videos, pictures and prose that have inspired me recently.

IMG_7364.JPG

This girl was painted on the wall of a local train station and I immediately thought of the beautiful but chilling yuki-onna.

Anyway, that’s all from me.
Tell Thrilling Tales

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Waaay back in the day someone in our role-playing group (called Bob’s Rent-a-Cult btw) owned a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, a supplement for Heroes Unlimited. I don’t think we ever actually played it, but the idea of role-playing a ninja turtle has stuck with me ever since and that’s a gap I intend to fill.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
The Book That Started It All

How? Well, If you haven’t already heard about Marvel Heroic Roleplay (MHR) then you’re already too late, since it’s become so hard to get the books after their short print run. Anyway, the fan base is still huge and people are playing. Besides, the standard Cortex System is still available, which MHR is based off. It’s a perfect system for some turtle powered action. Cowabunga!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by theCHAMBA
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
by theCHAMBA

Datafiles, the game’s character sheets, are easy to build from scratch, but here is some inspiration from RPG.net.

That just leaves the Events (adventure), and I think there are some great resources, namely the original and reboot comics as well as all the numerous TV series runs and all the movies. My favourite would have to be the 2003-2009 run, which was the second series and is closer to the comics.

If your interested in playing, or just want to know more about Marvel Heroic Roleplay, why not join the Google+ group and let’s talk turtles. If you’d like to see campaign notes and other articles about the sessions here, leave a comment below.

TURTLE POWER!!!

 
Superheroes - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com