Stephan Hornick
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Wizard of Story
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Turning Coal into Diamonds – How to Mine Backstories To Create Killer Campaigns
From JohnnFour | Published ???
Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #499
Table of Contents:
- Summer Break
- Contest winners
- New RPG Reviews column
- Mine All Sources for Details
- Ready Your Mining Carts
- How to Mine Your Backgrounds
- Switch to Campaign Logging
- 7 Low-Level Encounter Ideas
- Pinpoint Time and Location for Easier GMing
- More WW2 Supers Campaign Ideas
- Image Resources for Character Inspiration
- Obstacle Course Request
- City Inspiration: Thieves World for Your Summer Reading
- Appearance
- Basic Equipment
- Roleplaying Notes
Brief Word from Johnn
Newsletter on Holidays, Back Mid-August
Roleplaying Tips is taking a short break for the summer. I need to get some Vitamin D and replace my monitor tan for a real one. Next issue, big ol’ #500, will teleport into your inboxes mid-August.
Contest winners
So we made the 500 entry goal with 718 entries all told! Wow, that’s amazing. Congrats and thanks to everyone for pitching in and whipping up over 500 city encounter ideas. A surge in the last week helped us blow by the half-century goal and into the 700s. Thanks also to the sponsors who pitched in great prizes. I’ll be contacting winners this week to arrange for all the prize hand-offs.
Next issue will be dedicated to posting a batch of these entries for you to use in your campaigns. Quite a few entries roughly duplicate each other, so once I combine and sort everything out, I’ll put a batch in Issue #500 and then batches in a couple of follow-up issues until they’ve all been published.
Stay tuned for another contest coming soon.
New RPG Reviews column
RPGNow has made available a few items ongoing to Roleplaying Tips and other websites and publications for review. Thanks RPGNow. The first three reviews debut this week in a new trial column.
This newsletter is about tips for game masters to help you have more fun at every game. Letting you know about new games, supplements, game aids and options might help that mission. I think so, but would love to hear from you whether or not you like the reviews. Have a game-full summer! See you in a few weeks.
Turning Coal into Diamonds
The idea of making the maximum use of character history was covered recently in the newsletter by Kate Manchester. Thanks Kate! http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=494
The topic has also been touched upon in issues before that. However, as I was editing Kate’s article, several more tips came to mind, and I present these below.
Backgrounds, backstories, timelines and histories all cover the same thing – the past. This is compelling to game masters because it is static. The past has come and gone, and players cannot interfere with it. It gives you a body of information under your control for you to shape and use as you see fit.
GMs who are also creative writers find a wonderful outlet in this part of the game. Backgrounds can become short stories, or at least scratch the fiction-writing itch.
If you enjoy creating and working with histories for various elements of your games, then hopefully the following tips will help you get more benefit by extracting extra value from them.
Mine All Sources for Details
A game has several major elements, such as villains, adventures and NPCs. Each of these is a potential source for background details and inspiration. Mine these sources.
Some sources will be obvious to you, and some game elements that have minable histories might not have occurred to you.
Here is a list:
- Game world
- Campaign
- Villains
- Adventures
- Encounters
- Locations
- NPCs
- PCs
- Magic items
- Factions
This will be your biggest background source. The setting itself will have a history, sometimes in the form of a timeline, and other times in the form of prose. Then there is a chance each element in the world will have a background blurb. For example, deities, races, countries, cities and religions.
Campaign
Many campaigns take the form of two or more factions in conflict, which spawns epic tales of how the sides became enemies and their past battles.
Villains
These major NPCs always have a backstory, sometimes a complex one.
Adventures
These almost all start with a background section. Some have a backstory that goes back millennia, and some have two or more sections with historical information, such as the adventure synopsis and the adventure background.
Encounters
Individual planned encounters often have setup information that includes a bit of background. At the least, you might have detailed the setup of who is doing what, where, how, when and why.
Locations
Whether part of a planned encounter or a notable place in the setting information, locations often have background information.
Every site with construction on it, such as buildings, monuments and engineered projects, has at the minimum a building project start and end date, plus the initial reason for the building. Other locations might be the sites of notable events, be the birthplace of important NPCs or have a history of interesting use.
NPCs
Some will have fleshed out backgrounds. Others might offer a few notes to explain their personalities and motivations.
PCs
As Kate mentioned in Issue #494, you would be well-served by asking players to develop interesting backgrounds for their characters.
Magic items
Major items should have a backstory unless they are brand-new. Even minor items can benefit from a few background notes.
Factions
These are groups of NPCs who have organized themselves or become a community for one reason or other. Backstories for these game elements often include why a faction exists, how it was founded, and actions it has taken in the past.
As you can see, there are a surprising number of sources you can mine for historical information once you put them all in a list. This is excellent news!
You can also use this tip as a best practice checklist for what game elements should have background notes to help you weave together a better integrated campaign.
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