There are so many places to gain inspiration for the plots that a DM throws their character group into. For me I find much of my inspiration comes from the books have read as well as the movies I have watched, that combined with my own vivid and active imagination. Since I run primarily Fantasy Genre games there is not much from the modern day that I draw from. However, my husband has introduced me a show that, while a number of years old, would provide plenty of plot ideas for the modern or near future genre DM.

Mission Impossible

Our current old TV show on Netflix is Mission Impossible; which aired from 1966 to 1973. For me this puts the show airing before I was even born, but it is still awesome enough to deserve watching. I would dare say that we have all heard of it, especially the “this message will self destruct” quote, but many of us have not actually watched it; at least I hadn’t until this last month. The show definitely shows it age in the dress and manners of the actors, but the plot is top rate, as is the scripting. It is an excellent training for anyone looking to run a Shadowrun game or better yet a D20 modern game. The situations are great, and far better than what I could think up. And even if your players were complete Mission Impossible buffs the randomness of the dice rolls and character skill sets would prevent them from following the script of the show exactly. Heck, even in the show it often doesn’t go as planned and they have to fake it and fly off the cuff to get through and out again.

In the last episode we watched, the group of agents had to infiltrate a foreign group looking to do something in the way of an attack on America.  To infiltrate the group to learn what it they were doing and stop it, they captured another group of people who were supposed to go to the training session and then pretended to be them.  In the end this had he agents pretending to be foreigners in a training environment learning how to be American’s.  I won’t give away the whole plot, but just this group of American agents pretending to be foreign agents who were to be pretending to be American’s was rather enjoyable to watch.

So if you are looking for new and fresh plot ideas for your games, then I suggest you take a look at some older TV shows and movies to see what they have to offer.  Not everyone sitting at your table will be in the know of the show’s plot and you can add fuel to your creative GM imagination bringing your games to life.

We have found that while we really love our truly gamer geared board games, we are always on the lookout for those games that have great general appeal. In our house this are referred to as cross-over games and they can bring both gamers and non-gamers to the table for some good fun.

One of the easiest types of games to introduce to non-gamers are card games. Here I would recommend introducing the crowd you are playing with to Fluxx 4.0. This great little game has simple rules, that change over time but don’t generally lose a person. Since Flux starts with the simple rule of draw a card, play a card it is easy to teach. If you haven’t played before, it is really fairly simple, and even my kids can mange it quite nicely.

Another easy to play game, that has already hit mainstream in many areas is Apples to Apples Party Box – The Game of Hilarious Comparisons. This game is a card based game that has players placing cards into play based on their belonging to a particular category. The challenge comes from that each player takes turns determining the winning card of each hand. So to win a hand you must be able to judge how the other person will judge the cards. Not everyone has the same definition of gross after all.

If you are looking for a board game to pass away some time at the latest family gathering, I would suggest Gift TRAP Game. There is no gamer knowledge required for this game, of giving and taking of gifts. Each hand of play there are a number of cards representing various gifts that can be given. Each player marks gifts with hidden tokens to represent the level of like or dislike they have towards the gift. As an example I would love to get a trip to Disney World, but would hate to get a skydiving lesson. Then each player gives another a gift, no doubling up, and then points are scored. To win you have to manage to receive enough gifts that you like, as well as give enough gifts that other people like. It is a great way to learn a little more about the family or friends that you are playing with.

The Problem:

So, you have a friend that wants to game but can’t make it to the table, what should you do? Perhaps they live somewhere else, or maybe they are on vacation, or perhaps they are in a care center after having a tracheotomy? Well, no worries so long as they can talk, type, or write flash cards they can join you at the table!

The Solution:

Our friend was recently in the hospital and then care facility for a month, once he was off the strong pain meds and realized he was missing game we had to do something. So, we hooked him up with a net book complete with web cam from one of the group, and then setup my trust laptop also with web cam to take care of things on our end. We used Skype since I already have an account and is conveniently free for this sort of thing. Of course another program if you have one handy would work as well.

In Action:

We used this for two games and it worked pretty good. While we had some issues with the volume these were mostly due to an air compressor that was running on our friends end and nothing else as the problem was not as evident in session 2 when the compressor was not being used. Also I would recommend that if you have a USB web cam that you place the camera on the game side up higher if it is an option so it isn’t on one person all night, we didn’t think of this until after the game.

Alternatives:

As an alternative, I have some friends who have used Second Life for RPGs with distant people. To be honest, I didn’t really get Second Life the first time I checked it out. I can understand the appeal, I just find it doesn’t hold my interest. Perhaps I am much to busy in my first life to want to manage a second one too.

So while searching the web for fidget toys for my son to use in class I discovered these great pair of gloves from The Therapy Shoppe.  Obviously they are designed as therapy gloves for people with sensory issues, but I can help but see them as also being potentially cool costume additions.  I must admit I have no idea what costume I would use these with, but they are simply too neat to keep to myself.

Also if you are looking for a quiet fidget toy for the gaming table this website has a pretty good selection.  That way you can manage your ADHD without driving your gaming group bat crazy clicking a pen in and out, or constantly rolling your dice.  I haven’t ordered anything for my boy from them yet, but hope to manage to sit him down soon and make a couple selections to try out.

If you have any ideas of a costume that would go with the gloves let me know.

So I am sure that many of you are familiar with the variety of web comics that are out there these days.  Really any print comic can be found online as well as a large number of comics that can only be found online.  Sure there are old classics that are still out there, I know Charlie Brown is quite popular with my kids.  But here is a list of the web comics that are followed in my gaming group.  I would love to say I am all caught up on these, but with college still a part of my busy life these haven’t made it to the top of my to-do list.  Hopefully you have more free time then I do.

Order of the Stick

Erfworld

Schlock Mercenary

So when an adventuring party is faced with the challenge of stealing a dragon’s horde out from under a dragon what is the best approach.  I suppose this particular problem has been covered before and will likely be covered again, though I doubt too many other groups will find the ultra creative approach that my gaming group decided to take.

First off I should clarify for you that 1) this party is evil, made up of demonologist, necromancers and the like and 2) there was never any intent on slaying the dragon, just removing as much treasure as they could with minimal effort and sacrifice of life or limb.  Now that we have those basic facts covered we can proceed with the story of how they achieved this goal.  Oh, I guess I should mention that I was running Legendary Lives 2nd Ed. in our typical Friday night game.

Bacon courtesy Spara

So the plan, that almost went off, was to lure the dragon from its home in the side of the mountain and while it was out and distracted to rush the lair and steal as much treasure as they could and escape.  The escape route was clear for they have a magic circle made of 26 leather sections that can be laid down in a pattern to teleport what ever enters the circle to another place based on the pattern the pieces are arranged in (think Stargate).  But now they had to determine how to lure out the dragon.

Well the groups assassin found in the small town a contact that would sell him a dragon sized dose of double-vision poison.  This, they hoped, would provide them a fighting chance.  But the poison had to be ingested, so they devised a cunning plan.  They bought a cow, and a towns worth of bacon and two cheese wheels [can you see where this is going].  Then headed up the mountain, once they felt they were close enough they used their fire magic to cook all the bacon at once.  With all the freshly cooked bacon they wrapped it around the cow, attached the wineskin of poison around it’s neck and tied the two cheese wheels to its back.  Double, bacon cheese burger on the hoof; sure to attract even the mildest of dragon’s away from their treasure.  Who could resist that much bacon???

And while there is much more to the story, which I will cover in another post someday, I will say that they did successfully part a fair amount of the treasure from the dragon with only minimal party damage.  All through a judicious use of bacon!

Fan by classina

When reading bedtime stories to my kids I am often struck by the quantity of ideas for either game plot or magic items that I discover. Right now I am reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to my 9 year old, and Alice in Wonderland to my 6 year old. If we simply allow ourselves to see the items and situations in these works outside of the structure of the story we can reap a small army of ideas out of this simple bedtime ritual. Here are a few ideas I have been struck with for Magic Items.

Shrinking Fan (Alice in Wonderland) – A magical fan that when used to fan oneself causes the person to shrink at the rate of 1″ per minute.

Boots of Conclusions (The Phantom Tollbooth) – Magic boots that can be used once per day to “jump” to a small island, when on this small island the character may find the conclusion that would happen from a certain action. While on the island the character is not visible where they had been and time passes as usual while they are gone.

Almost Tea Cup (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) – A tea cup that can be filled three times per day. The liquid that fills the cup is “almost, but not quite unlike tea” and will sustain the physical needs of the character in terms of nutrition but still leave the character feeling not quite satisfied.

Hello readers!!

So I have decided that what we need here at The Halfling is a new section with its own special focus. The new area will have information in it that will act like a mini-lesson on different topics. To start off with I am planning some posts covering a variety of weapon types for the fantasy genre game. Sure we all know what a sword and a dagger are, but when we want more flavor in our game we turn to the more exotic weapons like a Yatagan. So be sure in the coming weeks to keep an eye out for the added flavor text for your game. And if you have a topic you would like me to cover be sure to let me know and I will get it in the queue.

Gamers are well known for their imagination, at least those gamers that play rpgs or LARPs. How else can we dream up characters, recreate scenes in our heads, or plan out wild adventures to run our player’s characters through. For us our imagination is the butter for our bread, without we could not be who we are; and certainly we would never change that. We know the difference between our imaginary world and that of reality, to us it is not unlike a movie or a book which we are in charge of. Our games are the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure book.

But we also have strong beliefs. They are not the same collective set of beliefs that we are required to have; no, instead we each have our own set. I would hazard to say that if you took a group of 20 gamers into a room and polled them on their beliefs from politics to religion you would find no two the same, in addition you would likely find some of the wildest set of beliefs out there. This, I suspect, is because of our very creative and imaginative nature we can not help but see possibilities for our world that are virtually impossible for others to see.

I have been reading up some on the power of our beliefs, especially our belief in ourselves, and how we can use that belief to draw positive energy to changes in our lives. So I am experimenting with this concept, to see how much energy I can draw from myself and the universe around me towards my goals. Others have used this idea, to great success, in their lives. But the gamer in me can not help but wonder, if it works, if calling the energy and drawing it to a cause could help us to reshape our world. Could someone use it to gain “real” magic? or to fly? or have heat vision? is it all just a matter of believing enough??? And if it is that simple should we stop telling our kids that they can’t do this or that simply because they are human, maybe their belief is strong enough.

Here I am sitting at the game table playing Call of Cthulhu, we are interrogating our prisoners from the first boat we took over, and I noticed on my laptop that Cafepress was having a sale on hoodies right now. So, being in need of a new hoodie (the rats ate holes in mine) I went cruising.
I haven’t settled on a hoodie yet, but I did find this great shirt that really is appropriate for not only me, but also as a theme shirt for this blog. Having been given the nick-name halfling in high school, knowing that I am not likely to get taller (I am only 4’10″) it seemed best to embrace the moniker and be a proud halfling. The image was only added to by my penchant for being barefooted and love of food.
Guess I will need to add this one to my closet too. If I keep finding all these cool gamer shirts I am going to have to buy some more hangers soon.