Iron Edda - Jokilaakso Saga pt. 2

When we left our heroes, they had chased off some unworthy Petruvians and were about to speak with the hermit Toki, who they thought would know where giant bones could be found.

"Is he telling the TRUTH?" Against Insight/Sense Motive

Man, I am terrible at compiling lists of GM Resolutions, I left off my renewed effort at NPC voices and came to realize today that I also left off my Insight/Detect Lie resolution. To whit, I am done allowing Insight/Sense motive checks to tell when an NPC is lying...

Now, this has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while, but this year I'm putting my foot down and no longer allow players to declare "Is [NPC] telling the truth? I'm rolling Insight". But, but Zack! You cry, the D&D 5e Player's Manual allows it... and, sure I guess you could read it like that... here it is... the description of the Insight skill (which replaced earlier editions equally terrible "Sense Motive")...

Insight. Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.

It's right there "true intentions of a creature... searching out a lie..." to which I say, hooey... HOOEY! Continue reading or skip right to the TL;DR

Thought of the Day: NPC Voices

I didn't include it in my list of 2017 Gaming Resolutions, but I've been trying to do more NPC voices for all my games. So, even though I have players who accuse me of killing NPCs off just because I forgot the voice, I keep trying.

Voices and accents don't come naturally to me. I attempted a Space Australian accent for one of my Numenera NPCs but it quickly drifted into something else (though it was a great excuse to watch this delightful clip again and again...) Lately, I've been trying to give NPCs a quick description of their voice or vocal tics and jotting it down in my notes so I can use that to remind myself of how they should sound when I return to that NPC; here are some recent examples of how I've been describing NPC voices.

• Bömbör
• "repeats himself excitedly"
• a Dverge NPC from my Iron Edda game
• Gwenaëlle Décalage
• "a low and sultry voice"
• Recent deceased vampire NPC from the A Red and Pleasant Land actual play podcast
• Enock Whipple
• "Soft and often apologetic"
• Dormouse NPC from aRaPL actual play podcast
• Firgin
• "ah um eh, talks about water colors"
• NPC from the Strangling Sea 13th Age Adventure I ran to start my new 13th Age Stone Thief campaign. About 2/3rds of my players really, really hated him after listening to him speak.

So I've been trying to decide how to voice a kitten NPC for my 13th Age game, as I want it to live up to the "Talkative" trait that the player picked for the Ranger Pet talent. Long story short, the PC, Felix Mittens, used to be a catperson until he was cursed by a witch to become fully human while his twin brother, Boots, became fully kitten. I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with how Boots should talk, since he'll be an ongoing NPC constantly with the party... I think I'm going to come up with some stock phrases I can use for when certain events happen, like maybe Boots doesn't like orcs or comments when someone fumbles... 

But then I was watching some Venture Bros today and I realize I'm tempted to have Boots speak exactly like Augustus Saint Cloud does when he's pretending that Henrietta Pussycat is speaking to him in the episode Maybe No Go. My delight at saying "Eat the pennies, Quizboy" means that I have a decent Augustus Saint Cloud impression (probably the only VB character I can do reliably) and I like the idea of starting and ending each sentence with "mew mew" to just drive home that Boots the kitten is talking... Others might think it's too creepy, but I'm starting to think it's just creepy enough...

Iron Edda - Jokilaakso Saga pt. 1

After the holdfast creation, we did a short session to kick off my Iron Edda - War of Metal and Bone campaign. You can go back and read the holdfast creation notes and PC introductions here.

Iron Edda - Holdfast Creation, PC Introductions

So, way back on January 11th, I met with my Wednesday group and we had our first session of Iron Edda: World of Metal and Bone. A big part of the first session was Holdfast creation, a bit of collaborative world building where the players had to decide on important matters, or as the book puts it...

The holdfast will be the center of your campaign. Adventures may take you far across the world, but you will always return here, where songs will be sung of your journeys.
Creating your holdfast is a collaborative process. To begin, put a blank piece of paper in the middle of the table. This will be your map of the holdfast and its surrounding area, populated with issues that will drive the campaign.

So each player took a turn, rolling to determine a random category and issue, then they answered the question(s) raised (or at least answered some, re-reading what my group came up with and I see some places where I didn't push hard enough) and drew something on the map to represent the issue. Here's the map we ended up with and the results are below, with the PC introductions below that. I'll post my summary and commentary for the first session elsewhere.

Holdfast creation map with PC runestones.

New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part Two

Well... I did not expect my first post for the 2017 New Year State of the Blog to devolve into a 4,000 word screed... Apologies to all who suffered through that...

Game Master bag buttons with my new Over the Garden Wall buttons!

A photo posted by Zack Schwartz (@thatwordyguy) on Jan 1, 2017 at 11:12am PST

So... I ran 11 different games in 2016, got to play in 4, but what are my plans for 2017?