I have been playing table-top RPGs since 1980, and painting miniatures since 1983. Not once, in that entire time, have I thought that paper miniatures would be a viable replacement for 3-D figures. There is something immersive to the art of gaming with miniatures; playing with well painted minis helps pull me into that world.

“Ere we Go! ‘Ere We GO!!! OY! OY! OY!”

This past weekend, I played Pathfinder at a friends house. He had the cardboard pawns that come with the PF Beginner’s box set, and a somewhat sad truth hit me: I was having just as much fun with the 2-D pawns as I have with a full set of miniatures. Even better, paper miniatures and pawns cost a lot less, too. A brief tour of Paizo’s web store shows entire pawn collections based off of Adventure Path series, so you can field every monster and NPC in your module for less than $20.

Another aspect of table-top gaming that I have been enjoying is the Virtual Table Top. Systems like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds allow you to set up a dungeon with overhead tokens and game with your friends online. Both systems work pretty well, and are a great way to game with friends that don’t live in the area. My only hang-up with either system is that the actual table-top part of the game can be a little clunky to navigate.

3D Virtual Tabletop changes all that. While this system does not manage game mechanics for you, it does manage your dungeon set up beautifully. 3D Virtual Tabletop takes the pawn idea to the next level, allowing you to move 3-D tokens about the virtual battle-mat. You can change direction or facing, load new maps, and even design your own pawns for your game.

One of the most exciting things in 3D Virtual Tabletop is that you can drop just about any picture into your library to be used as a pawn. I did a series of drawings a few months back for a Steampunk fantasy game; using 3D Virtual Tabletop, I was able to make a pawn of my Elf Gunslinger and import it into the game, which led to a lot of excitement in the house. And the real icing on the cake? You can do all of this on your tablet. So cool! If you don’t like the idea of huddling around your iPad during a gaming session, you could always put it up on your television. I did this last night with a mini-HDMI cable off of my Kindle Fire HD, and everything looked amazing.

You can zoom about the tabletop with your fingers, change your facing, rotate the table, or even flip the table-top up for a cool overhead view. When you switch to overhead, your pawns get turned into little round tokens automatically, which allows you to manage your game more tactically. When your done with overhead, you can switch right back to the side view and get back to your game!

Maps can be imported, too. I was able to take one of my Paizo map PDFs and import it right onto the 3D Virtual Tabletop, and even match the snap-to grid right to the same scale as my map. The possibilities here are endless, and you could run just about any game you wanted off of this system.

The only downside to 3D Virtual Tabletop right now is that it is still in early development. There is not a way to share your maps across devices, so you couldn’t use the system to game with your long-range friends. This is being remedied soon, with servers being set up to allow you to host games eventually. The developer is constantly updating and tweaking the interface, with noticeable improvements with both iOS and Android versions in the past weak.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1J5EZ2JyM

I was really dumb-stuck with this system for gaming, and cannot wait to put it to use with my Pathfinder group. I have already started to put together my own set of Pawns, and have been making new pawns using PDF images from Paizo. This is some real high-octane stuff! Highly recommended.

Fantasy Flight Games just announced the very first module for their new Star Wars role-playing game, Edge of the Empire. EoE is the first of three sets of rule books planned for the Star Wars license, and focuses on the “scum and villainy” of the Star Wars universe. You can play a smuggler, bounty hunter, technicians, and explorers. Further rule books will explore the pilots and warriors of the Rebellion, and then finally throw players into playing characters that are strong in the Force.

The first module for Edge of the Empire is already looking great: Beyond the Rim will send players off to the edges of Wildspace, a jungle planet, and Raxus Prime. Long time fans of Star Wars will be happy to know that Fantasy Flight will be drawing on inspiration from both the original and prequel movies, as well as the Clone Wars series and comics!

For the full press release from Fantasy Flight Games, please click here…

Those who have been reading BSR for awhile should be familiar with Swankmotron’s exploits as GameMaster in the Pathfinder RPG (here is a list of his articles), and as a participant in his games, I have fallen completely in love with richness and fun this world has to offer.

Even more exciting is the fact that OffWorld Designs has teamed up with Pazio to offer their very own collection of Pathfinder shirts, starting with one that features the iconic cover of the Core Rulebook, and they have been gracious enough to offer us one to give away to a lucky reader.

To enter, please email the following information to sithbotbsr@gmail.com:

Full name, mailing address (no PO Boxes and in the US only, please), email address and shirt size

The contest will run until June 10, and the winner will be contacted by email.

Also, please be sure to check out OffWorldDesigns, because, as one who is a sucker for web sites with awesome t-shirts, I can promise you that they do not disappoint, and I’m already afraid of the damage it’s going to do to my wallet.

Good luck to everyone!

I’ve been playtesting the new Neverwinter MMORPG from Cryptic since the open beta launched last month, and I have to say, it’s a ton of fun. But one thing seriously missing is Alignment. For those of you unfamiliar with Alignment in Dungeons and Dragons, let me sum it up: Alignment is essentially your moral code. A Lawful Good character follows the laws of goodness, where as a Chaotic Good character is just good for the sake of goodness, but doesn’t follow any rules to be so. A Lawful Evil character has a code that she follows in her quest for evil, where a Chaotic Evil character is just a rampaging lunatic, wreaking havoc with no rhyme or reason. You also have your Neutral alignments, which gives you more of a grey area to operate in.

Without Alignment, certain character classes have little in-game consequences for playing out of their “moral” role. A Paladin could wantonly kill without any repercussions, an evil Cleric could avoid cruel deeds and still hold favor with his gods. With Alignment, there are consequences. You could lose your powers, or your god could curse you.

Alignment is a hard thing to implement in an MMORPG, but it looks like Goblinworks is doing just that with their Pathfinder game. Here is Rich Baker (one of the Goblinworks game developers) with more information:

Including a reasonably faithful implementation of the alignment system helps Pathfinder Online provide a better translation of the tabletop game into a MMORPG. After all, what’s the point of including the paladin if we don’t define objective standards of “lawful” and “good” in the game? Without those, the paladin would be just another fighter with some cross-training in cleric, or vice versa. Likewise, clerics dedicated to serving good-aligned gods should experience real consequences for committing evil acts, and monks who abandon their lives of discipline and community should likewise suffer the loss of special abilities arising from their devotion to a philosophy greater than themselves.

In addition to specific character abilities dependent on alignment, alignment also matters for dealing with NPCs, equipping certain magic items, and the alliances a character can join—the Hellknights don’t have much use for chaotic folks, for example. Settlements also have alignments; a settlement’s alignment is selected by its leader at founding, and anyone who wishes to join the settlement must have an alignment within one step of the settlement’s alignment. Unlike Reputation, alignment isn’t immediately apparent on inspection. There are spells and abilities that allow you to discern a character’s alignment, but without magic, you’ll have to rely on careful observation to determine if someone is evil or simply misunderstood.

What’s exciting about this to me, personally, is that Role Playing will end up being a much stronger part of Pathfinder Online’s core game mechanic. I love playing Neutral Good Rangers, and now, the game will expect me to stay in character. Playing a Paladin as a paragon of virtue is going to be more than just a choice; you will need to conduct yourself accordingly, or risk losing your powers.

For more information on how Alignment will be incorporated into Pathfinder Online, check out the dev blog here!

The official launch date for Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire role playing game is loosely set for early July. There a a few online retailers showing the release as early as June 25th, so we’ll just have to see! Regardless, the Big Book of RPG Goodness should be in our hands in about 2 months!

Fantasy Flight released the Edge of Empire Beginner Game early in the year, and I can honestly attest to how much fun this game is! Only problem is, the amount of NPCs available is somewhat limited. To help alleviate the wait for the full game, here’s a fresh NPC card… Just print it off, cut it out, and fold it in the middle. I keep mine in trading-card sleeves, and use dry-erase markers to keep track of soak and wounds.

Next week we’ll post another NPC card (I’m taking requests), until then, here’s the Aqualish Thug!

Now, credit were credit is due: The artwork is mine. The stat card is modified from the old Star Wars Miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast. Rules and stats are adapted from the Fantasy Flight Games ruleset, and Star Wars is copyright 2013 Lucasfilm Ltd. Big Shiny Robot in no way makes or implies any claims towards the intellectual property of any of the above business entities. The above card is intended purely for fan use with no intent for resale or profit.

Roll20 is an excellent Virtual Table-Top application that allows Game Masters and players to get together and roll dice anytime, anywhere, even if everyone involved is scattered across the four corners of the world. Best of all, Roll20 is FREE, so you can game on without everyone in your game having to own their own copy of the game client, like you would with other VTTs like Fantasy Grounds.

Roll20 is system agnostic, which means you don’t need to have separate rule-sets for each of the games you want to play. You will have a little scripting to complete in order to play, but that little work goes a long way when you get to play Pathfinder with old friends! Roll20 also has a built-in webcam interface, so you can communicate directly with your group.

Roll20 wrapped up their Kickstarter campaign one year ago today. To commemorate the occasion, the development team is adding some shiny new functions to the application. Here’s the official press release:

Wichita, Kansas (April 30th, 2013) – One year ago, on May 1st, 2012, virtual tabletop Roll20.net had finished it’s eighteen day Kickstarter, gaining over $39,000 in backing from 1,580 users.  A year later, their users have grown one hundred fold to over 170,000.

“We still regularly talk about those first 1,580 users and their importance to us. We didn’t have a thousand Facebook friends or Twitter followers among the creators we we started– it’s all the users and their word of mouth that’s brought us this far,” said co-creator Nolan T. Jones.

A large part of the appeal found in the initial Kickstarter project was the developers’ focus on Roll20.net being focused on table mechanics instead of specific games– less automation and more ease-of-use.  Since growing, however, more and more feature requests continue, so today the Roll20 team offers a programming solution for advanced users: an-JD8I8T_ic” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”> “application programming interface” or “API” for their mentor level subscribers.

“The API is going to allow advanced users to create and share scripts to do all sorts of creative things.  If you’re using the Dynamic Lighting element of Roll20, you could track the number of squares a token moves, and have the light related to that token diminish as if their visibility was being lost, for example,” said co-creator Riley Dutton.

Jones added, “Perhaps the best part of the API is that it gives those who want these advanced elements a place to play, while letting us focus on the tabletop gaming mechanics that make the system accessible to all.  We’re honestly excited to dive back into bettering the card deck feature next.”

Hand-in-hand with the API is a new Wiki system for help documentation, that will allow users to assist each other in taking maximum advantage of the browser-based program.  As part of the wiki launch, the developers will be running a two week content rewarding the best contributors.

Beyond these changes, the creators are also expressing their artistic muscles via a new webcomic entitled “House of Orr”, a nod to the company they founded to run Roll20, “The Orr Group, LLC.”  The first installment of the comic went live last Friday, and is illustrated by Victoria Grace Elliott.

“It’s a big storytelling gamble; we’re writing a batch of pages and then allowing mentors to vote on elements of what happens next,” said co-creator Richard Zayas.

Roll20 began as an effort to keep developers Dutton, Jones, and Zayas in touch via long distance gaming. It continues as a free service, with paid elements optional for advanced users.

 I’ve been using Roll20 for the better part of six months now, and I’ve been subscribing for the last three. The system is pretty intuitive, and unlocks a lot of story-telling opportunities during game play. I’ve even used it in my face-to-face gaming sessions, since it supports maps, tokens, and even visual props like wanted posters. Check Roll20 out for yourself here.

Welcome to another installment of The Gamemaster! For those who don’t know, this is my weekly column to discuss things I’ve learned or noticed in my sojourn to become a halfway decent Pathfinder Gamemaster.

Unless you’re a complete boob, your villains aren’t mustache twirling badguys, constantly trying to tie damsels to roads for no better pleasure than to bedevil your days. That’s pretty boring. More than that, it’s bad storytelling.

As a Gamemaster, you have more control over your villains, their stories, and motivations than almost any other aspect of the game. Bad guys are the characters you create to interact with your players, why would you want to waste time crafting them out of cardboard? Why would your players waste time playing against a villain who has nothing more important to do than screw with them in evil ways?

I’ve been having a lot of fun, both in my fiction and in my gamemastering life, crafting bad guys with motivations other than “Do evil.”

It’s always my favorite bad guys that are able to sit down with the heroes and have a conversation with them. Renee Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark is infinitely more interesting a bad guy than Hitler. Hitler’s a Macguffin. All you need to know about Hitler is that he’d do bad things with the Ark. Belloq on the other hand exists in shades of grey. He and the hero have the same goal, but the outcomes of their success would be wildly different. Their motivations are also the same and not, but it’s those shades of grey that help tell an interesting story. And Belloq doesn’t think he’s a bad guy, he thinks he’s just willing to cross the line further to be the best.

So, here’s my advice to you to be able to create and play three-dimensional villains that can act and react on their own without railroading your players.

First, I think it’s interesting to create villains that are good, or, at the very least, think they’re good. Figure out what their motivations are. Are they local law enforcement sick of the rabble coming into their town to seek treasure? Are they low level enforcers for a criminal mastermind, working to thwart your players to feed their family?

Could it be interesting if their goal is something only sort of related to the players and their paths intersect? If this bad guy is tasked with preventing the use of magic in a town, and your characters are forced to use it, they’d be on his radar and he’d just be doing his job to pursue them.

What if this villain is the relative of a pickpocket who tried thieving the players and they summarily dealt with? Having been wronged in a way the characters have to guess at is something that could cause lots of interesting questions and roleplaying opportunities.

There are thousands of motivations you could use.

Once you’ve determined what motivations the character has, you’ll have a reasonable idea of what sort of things they would have access to to pursue their goals. Would they have a house? A horse and carriage? Minions? A mistress? A debt with a shylock? Protection from the local law? A kid he’s contracted to act as a spy and sneak thief?

What you need to do is create this list of assets this character has at their disposal and when the characters act, you’re able to look at the list and know exactly how he could react in kind.

When you’ve come up with all of their resources, new ideas for the story to turn will present itself. Say he does have a mistress and the characters are wise to that. Could they try blackmailing him? Would that work? Would he send his minions to pay the ransom? Or would he send them to kill her? I think the correct answer lies with the motivations and alignments and back story you’ve created for the character. This is when you get to roleplay, even if the players only see 1/10th of the machinations at work.

You truly get to be The Phantom Menace. Do your best to make it interesting.

Until next time, I hope this has given you something to think about it for your own game. If it hasn’t, see more pieces in this series for inspiration.

Welcome to another installment of The Gamemaster! For those who don’t know, this is my weekly column to discuss things I’ve learned or noticed in my sojourn to become a halfway decent Pathfinder Gamemaster.

For me, coming into the game as a writer, I knew I wanted to create my own world and stories with the collaboration of the player’s I’m gaming with. The different worlds and realms set aside for other fantasy roleplaying games all seemed fine and dandy, but I was confident that I could create a place where all of my players would have a background that would cause some truly fun gaming.

I chose to create the kingdom of St. Argon. It’s a coastal territory with mountains to the north and a river as the border to the east side. There is plenty of territory to explore beyond the kingdom, but I wanted a place where we could have enough adventures together so that we didn’t exactly have to travel much further for danger.

When putting together the world, I wanted my players to have enough context from the get go so they could figure out what they wanted their character to be and how they wanted their character to fit into the idea for the campaign I had (and presented to them.)

Here’s that first document I wrote and printed out for each of them on our first day, then read aloud before our first session began:

It is a dark time for the kingdom of St. Argon. Sitting on the throne is a man named Wulfric that many believe to be in league with forces of the underworld. He’s increased the taxes across the land, instituted martial law with checkpoints everywhere, and has even outlawed the use of magic. Many believe the restrictions have been put in place because the whereabouts of the deposed king, Robert the Goblin-slayer, are unknown. Some think he fled the kingdom, others believe him dead. Still others believe he’s hiding inside, slowly gathering supporters, and working to recapture the throne.

There are still a few strongholds scattered across the northern parts of St. Argon, away from the coastal capital of Argonan, that are loyal to king Robert and Wulfric’s army is slowly marching to them, snuffing out their defiance one by one and unifying his new kingdom.

The political situation abroad is every bit as challenging. To the west and south is the sea, where strangers from foreign lands come and go, but they’ve been increasingly more hostile and less willing to trade since Wulfric began his reign and enacted more and more tariffs on their goods. To the north are forests mountains which take months to cross before reaching the kingdoms of Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins to the north. Little news and trade from parts north trickle down to St. Argon and few seem interested in anything but trade with the mountainous dwarves. If one travels far enough to the east, they will cross a number of rivers, halfling towns, and wilderness territories until they come to the arid desert of the Turqs and the Archduchy of Ashiq Hassan. Archduke Hassan has remained neutral in matters concerning the Kingdom of St. Argon.

There’s enough information there for them to know where they fall in the grand scheme of things and to know that the kingdom they’re in is going through some problems.

One group I’m playing in this world is tasked with rallying the free people in the unconquered portions of the land. The other group is tasked with building a resistance in the capitol city of Argonan. I can’t tell you which game is more fun, they’re both exhilerating for totally different reasons.

But I’ve got a lot more in my head about the world than the sheet I created. I’ve been brainstorming many myths, legends, bits of political intrigue, and anything else you can think of to slowly dole them out every session. When characters ask questions or seek to take a knowledge roll, I let them in on a little bit more about the world and its history.

Over time it builds a context and a set of rules for your world and what your characters can expect. And when you bring new players in, it’s fascinating to see how the world is described by the more veteran players. If you’ve done your job well, you can see the excitement in their eyes when they’re describing the world as though they’ve been there and lived it.

As a Gamemaster, that’s a very good portion of your job: make the players feel as though they’re living in the world. But you can’t do that unless you know the world yourself. As a regular exercise, ask yourself what questions you think a player might ask about the world and answer it. Take notes about your answers and have them ready to refer to. I guarantee it makes the players feel a lot more confident about the game and less likely to argue with you about things. You put on that air of knowledge and they can sense they’re in the hands of someone who knows the ins and outs of the world as well as anyone could.

If they see you struggling to reach for details, they’ll pick up on that and they’ll play accordingly.

So, the take away is this: whether the world is one of your creation or one of someone else’s creation, know it by heart, forwards and backwards. There should be no excuse for being unable to answer any reasonable question.

And when in doubt, fake it. Sometimes they still won’t know the difference.

Until next time, I hope this has given you something to think about it for your own game. If it hasn’t, see more pieces in this series for inspiration.

Welcome to another installment of The Gamemaster. You can read past columns in this series here.

In every book on gamemastering I’ve read, one seemingly universal piece of advice I’ve seen is to never, ever, under any circumstance, split your party up.

I understand that. I really do. You don’t want to split up your party doing different things because everyone is there to play and have fun and it isn’t any fun to get split off from the group and have to sit and watch everyone else play as you wait for your turn to come up. It also encourages meta-gaming, you have a whole group of people watching things happen and learning information and revelations their characters should have no concept of. Sure, good roleplayers will do their best to separate themselves from their character, but sometimes they just can’t help it, even on a subconscious level.

But…  there’s a way to do it.

I’m in the midst of doing it now and it’s added an incredible dynamic to my game.

The last session we all played together as a group ended with the party getting split up into three groups, all heading in different directions after a different goal, all hell breaking loose, and then planning on meeting back at the same place.

As we were planning on our next session, it was getting difficult to get everyone’s free time to jive, so I suggested I GM each individual group on their own, through their minor adventure and piece of the investigation, and then back to the agreed upon rendezvous point.

I couldn’t be happier or more impressed by how this is working out. Each path of characters has been given bits of other information the others don’t have, and have all witnessed drastically different events. They’ve all drawn their own conclusions with their separate experiences and they all have a different piece of the puzzle.

They’re all dying to get into our next session and I’m confident they’re going to spend the first half hour, or even a full hour, discussing everything they’ve learned on their own and sharing information. And since we’ve been establishing mistrust amongst some of the player characters, there are certainly going to be shades of truth and information communicated.

The best part about the idea is that it forces a couple of my player who aren’t usually savvy with roleplaying into in-character interactions with other players because they can’t simply meta-game the knowledge or information. And after my last two mini-sessions, the enthusiasm to get together with the group to share the information their characters had learned was palpable.

It also helped me maintain a momentum with the game in the light of real-world scheduling issues.  And even if I had organized their schedules to bring the group together at once, there would be two groups of people at any given time waiting around for the other group to get through their piece of the adventure.

Sitting there, watching them struggle with their attention spans, I can almost guarantee that I would have abridged their paths back to the rendezvous to almost nothing. Instead, I was given the time to pay one on one attention with a 1, 2, or 3 players in a group and give this leg of the game a much fuller experience. It’s a bonus for the players, it’s a bonus for the story, and it’s a bonus for me.

If you can manage to pace out a reason for your party to get separated in the midst of an investigation for unanswered questions and on the run, it sets the stage for incredibly engaging mini-sessions. Maybe I’m late to the party on this, maybe Gamemasters the world over have been using this trick for decades and I’m just out of the loop, but it seemed novel to me.

But that’s the beauty of this game, even old ideas can become new.

Be sure to check out other columns in the Gamemaster series!

Welcome to another installment of The Gamemaster. You can read past columns in this series here.

I’m finding through my still-too-brief experience as a Gamemaster that it’s important to vary your sessions and try new things every time. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

It’s no fun to have every single session feel the same way. Crawling layer through layer of a dungeon and every bit of roleplaying being consumed by combat situation after combat situation can get boring. The best sessions I’ve had so far mix combat, roleplaying, mystery, puzzles, hard decisions for the characters. Finding the right mix for your group is like a form of alchemy and the only way to get that perfect mixture is trial and error.

A couple of sessions ago, I opened up the game with a puzzle for the players to solve. I designed enough clues and intrigue to get them through the puzzle, offering them to take rolls for hints if needed. The players worked together in character to determine how to make the door in the room they were locked in appear and move forward. I had no idea how that game mechanic would play out with these players, but it worked wonderfully. Since this group of players like those sorts of challenges, I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate more of those problem solving situations. I haven’t found one yet, but I know that if the opportunity presents itself, it won’t be wasted on these players.

In the last session I GMd, I was excited to try out yet another new game mechanic, confident that it would work really well. I knew the characters would be on the hunt for the man they’ve been working with to form the resistance, who had been abducted by a Captain of the Guard. They took a number of unexpected turns before finally deciding to bite that particular plot thread, but once they did, I knew there would be a chase when they finally stumbled on the place he was being held. Once they tripped the alarm, the guards would knock out their captured compatriot and run with him covered in a burlap sack.

Then, once that chase began, another pair of guards with a similar sack would light off in another direction, and another would do the same. This was to serve to split the party in three different directions and add an element of the unknown, since they weren’t sure which group to follow.

I had purchased Paizo’s Chase Deck which builds on the alternate rules for chases that were presented in the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide. Basically, you plot out the chase in advance, creating skill checks on every card for players to pass before they can move to the next card. Instead of playing it out on a massive swath of map, you can place characters on the backs of these cards, each representing about 40 feet of space.

I thought it was going to add a layer of dynamic action to the chase that would aid in keeping the story pace up.

I was wrong. For one, I’m not sure I adequately explained how the chase would work, which was a failing on my part and made a couple of the players confused. Additionally, since there were moderate to difficult checks on every card, there wasn’t much chasing, there was a whole lot of rolling.

Though I wasn’t happy with how this specific game mechanic worked the first time I tried running it, I’m very glad that I tried it. Having tried it, I understood that if I introduce a new mechanic to my players, I need to first explain how it’s going to work thoroughly. And I know that if I want to use cards to recreate a chase, I should have plenty of blank cards in between the harder checks to keep the characters moving forward and add that sense of tension to the chase and like their quarries would get away. I also know that I need to not lose the stat block I’d originally created for the guards, and use stats for some random guard picked out of the NPC codex. The statchecks I’d assembled on the Chase cards were easily passed through by my players, but the guard NPCs had negatives to every check and didn’t really move anywhere at all.

But I’m not going to let myself be discouraged from having tried these new things. I’ve learned a lot, my players have learned a lot, and we’ve evolved one step further as a group telling a collaborative story.

I can’t emphasize that enough: vary the sessions and try new things. It’s the only way to grow.

Be sure to check out other columns in the Gamemaster series!