Aranna's page

I have exciting news for the fans of this Fan Film.
JJ Abrams announced Paramount is dropping their law suit against the fan film. CBS announced it will make "guidelines" for all future fan projects, whatever that means. BUT it does mean Axanar will go forward as soon as the various lawyers sign what they need to sign.

Is anyone else playing this? It reminds me of Myst or choose your own adventure books. Cool game.

This looks awesome!

New Terminator

I first heard this crazy stuff when I went to college. Now he is back with new stuff.

Here he is!

I was looking at the D&D next basic rules and noticed the following things about stat generation: elite array (15,14,13,12,10,8) has been added as a standard for new characters right along side rolling 4d6drop, and the optional point buy system is now far more balanced.

And by balanced I mean you get 27 points with all stats starting at 8 like the old D&D PB, but 14 and 15 cost 2 points each AND you can't buy a stat higher than 15 before racials. That last bit is very new to me. And I am curious how people might react about it. The more I think about it the more I like it... It may do more to equalize SAD vs MAD than anything I have seen done before.

IS this the future of Point Buy? Is that good?

I felt like posting up my efforts so far in SWtoR.

I just spent an entire evening doing the [+10 to all stats] datacron run... Damn... Nice end prize but what a pain getting there.

They place the first key deep in a 50+ level area where since half the group was below 50 meant long hours trying to herd the lowbees out to get the key. And while most of this was likely caused by our own disorganized approach it was still annoying watching them die over and over again.

The second key was easy to get from the museum itself. Then we herded our cats (I mean players) into the catwalks and switches part were all chaos reigned. What is probably a very easy trial of flipping switches in order was complicated by the fact the you NEED 7 or 8 people at switches to do this at all and at least one of them MUST be a Jedi Sage and as many of you as possible should have the mggs gun. All this being done across a bottomless pit filled with narrow catwalks and scaffolding; one mistake by one person and you ALL have to start over.

By the end I think we all wanted the programmer (clearly a diabolical Sith lord) to suffer horribly.

Ok I am curious about what you guys think about a situation that came up while I played in someone else's game.

We were adventuring in a home brew world inspired by warhammer fantasy RP's setting. It used a mix of 3.5e and Pathfinder as well as a few other d20 supplements. I was playing Freya (prideful Dwarf fighter/barbarian), my friend was playing Luna (flirty elf ranger(archery style)), munchkin was playing Krell (unscrupulous ratman thief/ninja or assassin build), hound was playing Peter (enigmatic human priest), and mr perfect was GMing.

We had been hired to clear the undead out of an old graveyard by the locals and had been rather successful in removing this stain of evil from the reclaimed cemetery. So successful that a visiting lord from the Empire asked us to be his guests at a dinner in our honor. We were all given noble finery to wear and allowed plenty of time to clean ourselves up for this important and handsome figure. After all the regal ceremony starting the evening... the lord was taking credit publicly for our actions (his money did hire us, so it was sort of accurate). Then we entered the mayors house to begin our private meal and entertainment. The lord was absolutely charming and made passes at both Freya and Luna. Luna went all flirty over him and Freya decided she wasn't going to get brushed aside so easily despite not truly being interested in starting something with a human regardless of how charming he was. Her pride was on the line so she pursued the lord with plenty of dwarven class and even managed to out dance Luna during the ball. Personally I wonder what was really going on and if this was just a distraction for our characters devised by a clever GM so we wouldn't be too interested in all the back room deals Krell and Peter were making. Either way, though I fought a good fight for the lord's attention, Luna won and she went off to be alone with him after the party. That morning the three of us got geared up for our next mission and wondered where Luna was. We left word at the inn we would wait for her at the town gates. Plenty of jokes flew about just what sort of shameless behavior Luna and Lord Charming had been engaged in over the night. When Luna did appear she was enraged and demanded we all head back and assassinate Lord Charming. I tried to calm her down and find out what Lord not-so-Charming-after-all had done but she wouldn't talk about it. She was however adamant that we kill the beast. I balked... I wanted a reason to go killing, Freya was good after all. I needed to know I was doing the right thing. She exploded with anger and attacked me instead. Well after the initial wound she gave me during the totally-surprised-that-a-friend-would-attack-me round the battle quickly turned my way and I accidentally killed her after two critical hits with an axe back to back. Krell and Peter just watched us and Krell called out "cat fight" while Peter laughed. Now we apologized to each other and the game will continue after she makes a new character... probably a snobby elf wizard of some sort if she doesn't change her mind.

But she wasn't just angry in character and while she is putting it all behind her she still won't talk about what happened. The GM is also silent on the matter. And I am wondering who was at fault here? The likely candidate seems to be the GM... BUT her anger was directed at the three of us NOT the GM. The only things I can see that may have upset her were competing with her for whatever subplot story element the not-so-Charming-after-all Lord was building or refusing to just murder someone without knowing why. Was she wrong? It did feel like betrayal when she attacked me. Was I wrong? Was this somehow Krell or Peter's fault secretly and she just attacked me for not seeing it? Did she overhear some of the off color jokes while she was in the secret room playing out this subplot one on one with the GM?

Maybe the internet can shed some new way of looking at this I am not seeing.

Aranna's Rule of Five: You should limit your helpful rules to just five. This prevents your message from getting watered down and lets your audience really get a good solid picture of what your rules mean.

Lets look at my Rules of Good Game Mastery. They are listed in order from most important to least. And each level gives you new skills as a game master helpful in running great games.

Aranna's Rules of Good Game Mastery:

1- Learn the Rules: At the heart of every game is the game master. And the most fundamental skill is rules knowledge. You can't run a great game without first learning to arbitrate rulings. So the game master should frequently study the rules of the game. The broader your knowledge the fairer your rulings become. I rank this skill as number one because it is the trust builder. It is easy for your players to trust you if they know you will rule fairly. (Build Trust)

2- Learn your Players: A game is funner if you have players. And by studying what each of your players want out of the game you can learn to alter adventures to cater to that special love each of them is searching for. NOTHING draws a player into your game stronger than content tailored to his or her own personal tastes. (Draw them into the game)

3- Learn the Story: Beyond catering to individual tastes is the story itself. The story and it's events both planned and spontaneous are what people will be talking about years from now. Learning how to incorporate good story telling techniques into your play along with the study of the storyline as presented in the adventure you are running will bring that tale to life in a way that is pure magic for game master and player alike. (Make great memories)

While the first three are the most critical the last two will elevate you past stumbling blocks many GMs struggle with.

4- Learn Balance: Beyond the rules themselves there are the challenges the players face during the story that make that moment either a brief footnote or an epic struggle. Learning how to adjust encounters to create just the right level of challenge you want to paint at that particular moment is a skill all its own. It isn't an easy skill to master, too much and you kill the party, too little and the players are bored. Practice makes perfect in this lesson. Try slight alterations to encounters first to test the impact each will make and as your skill at finding just the right adjustment improves you can safely make bigger and bigger alterations. Mastery of this skill allows you to adjust encounters on the fly or as part of a story to get that perfect fight you need at just that point in time it's needed. Whether a player can't make it or the players had some bad luck in an earlier encounter you can confidently keep the game moving forward. From the little fight that depletes resources to the epic final fight and everything combat, skill, or social in between this skill keeps the story moving and removes hurdles. (Make the challenges support the story)

5- Learn Creativity: Armed with the first four skills you are now ready to tell YOUR story. From making an adventure from scratch to crafting an entire campaign setting they all rely on creativity. Look at setting as a good example. Some settings have a strong flavor and an involving storyline while others lack in one or both of those and become uninteresting backdrops. This isn't something that can be taught easily, however if you are reading this then you are a gamer and probably fairly creative already. The best things I can offer as advice here is to familiarize yourself with what works in creative works by others. We all want to tell a tale. Writing classes and being well read both help you focus your creativity and make a compelling tale. (Share YOUR vision)

Have you ever had weird geeky moments where you say or think things in game terms?

I was at a court hearing where my boyfriend was trying to get out of a traffic ticket. And I found myself making a RAW versus RAI argument about the traffic law. You know stop signs by RAI are intended merely to prevent collisions in the intersection. Since he didn't come to a complete stop he was violating RAW. BUT since there were clearly no other cars in the intersection then he wasn't violating RAI because no collision was possible... Yeah, the judge looked at me like I was a freak too. But it got me wondering if other people had similar experiences.