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Get over $1000 worth of pen-and-paper RPGs for donating $20 to Haiti
Like tabletop RPGs and want to help Haiti? That should include every single one of you. Otherwise, get off this site right now and go roll yourself a 20-sided die and see how much fun it is. Then come back, and go donate $20 to Doctors Without Borders through the Gamers Helping Haiti program on DriveThruRPG.com. Just by throwing a Jackson in the pot, you'll get the chance to download $1481.31 worth of old school pen-and-paper RPG rulebooks, scenarios, campaign settings and addendums. That's more orcs, droids, bards, free actions and critical hits than you'll ever need in your entire lifetime! The set includes the full Serenity RPG, the Castlemourn campaign setting and full sets of rules for both pirate- and zombie-based roleplaying games, among about a million other little RPG related downloads. Not to mention that by donating, you're helping out the cause of Doctors without Borders in Haiti, and you don't have to be watching CNN to know that those folks need all of the bonuses to Strength they can get these days. What are you waiting for? Don't roll for initiative -- just go do it! [via The Escapist]
All the World's a Stage: We don't need no narration
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles. Throughout my career as a roleplaying columnist on WoW.com, I've been talking about roleplaying as a way to tell stories, but last week a comment by Zombie, as well as those made by a few others on the same topic, caused me to think about roleplay stories in a new way. Perhaps what we roleplayers do isn't actually storytelling so much as it is character development through interesting and somewhat disjointed anecdotes. There's really no beginning, middle, or end to a roleplayed character in WoW. Instead, what you get is a mishmash of events and experiences, which you may then string together into a story in your mind if you like. But even if you don't, you can see that most of us don't really expect for a narrative to develop from a clear beginning, through various plot developments, and finally lead into an exciting climax. There is something else roleplayers want to get out of their experience, even if many of us have trouble articulating exactly what it is.
DS Daily: Too much of a good thing?
We were just talking yesterday about the ridiculous amount of RPG love the DS has gotten in the past and is getting in the future and wanted to ask you all if you thought the genre was being overused on the DS. Do you think the DS has way too many RPGs? Is there a genre of games you want to see more of on the DS? So what do you all think? Too much of a good thing? Or do you love the RPG love the DS has received so far?
All the World's a Stage: Magical table, magical screen
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.As with many other people, my first experience of roleplaying was with a "tabletop" roleplaying game in high school. The older kids introduced me to Vampire: The Masquerade, and although I wasn't enthralled by the whole "bloodsucking" thing, I quickly realized that the basic activity was lots of fun, and I ended up starting my own roleplaying group with Earthdawn, a more traditional (yet surprisingly original) fantasy setting. Those games were my some of my happiest memories from high school.In college I couldn't find many people who were interested in playing with me, and when I came to live and work in China after graduating in 2000, I thought that my roleplaying days were over for sure. You may imagine my surprise when in late 2007, I came across another foreigner here in Nanjing, discussing Dungeons and Dragons with his Chinese wife in one of my favorite restaurants. It turns out he needed another player for the group he has going here, and although his wife wasn't interested, I happened to appear, ready and eager to join up.Originally I had thought that WoW would be the only way I could continue roleplaying while living in the far East, but starting to get back into my old hobby has given me a chance to see more clearly what the differences are between tabletop roleplaying and roleplaying in a game like WoW. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and different people have their preferences. Both have a special value which is mainly derived from connecting creatively with other people.
