Adventurers' lifestyle

Infographic by Symphonya

How to be a good RPG Narrator

Took from Google images

It has been 7 years I started playing RPGs as a player. Before now I have never tryed seriously to be a narrator. It has been one years I started to try it. It's funny and it's also difficult, especially when your party is composed by expert players. Untill now, I've learnt many interesting things.

1. Read manuals. If you don't know rules, you can't be able to manage well a session. Being a narrator means to entertain you and your friends during each meeting and rules prevent possible arguments. Then, you can use rules as you want, it depends from the kind of RPG. There are some that let you a lot of freedom and others that let you less.
2. Follow the story...but don't force the players. A narrator have to be flexible. It isn't funny for players being forced to do something they wouldn't. Write down the main plot and give your party the right quantity of freedom.
3. Fill your mind up with a good reserve of improvisation. I'm not able to read minds and I have never known anyone who's able to do yet. For each situation, you can think at multiple solutions, your group will choose the ones you didn't think at. You will be taken by surprise for the most of the times but you can't demonstrate it. The show must go on, in any case.
4. Bluff. Rolling some dice behind the narrator' screen is psychologically worrying for players. They can't know the results, so they can't know what should happens. If you roll some dice without necessity the situation become a little more spicy, keeping high the attention of players.
5. Be equally right with everyone. Follow the rules and let your friends do almost anything they want. And justify why they can't do that action.

These are the most important rules I think a good narrator should follow. What do you think about? Have you ever played RPGs? What do you prefere to be: player or narrator? Let's leave comments with your opinions.

Have a nice monday!

Emily.

Playing Character Background #2: Jane, the Brave Student

Hello readers!

Jane was a brilliant undergraduate that have been locked up in a jail because of a bank's theft. While she was in the jail, she had been freed by a werewolf that was chasing her since before the theft. Once she was free, she had been contacted from an unknown person who said her to meet other people in a monastery and there started her adventure that would brought the entire party to fight against the Four Horseman and Lucifer.

Jane was my first Playing Character, thought at school, during French class, and created two days later, with my actually boyfriend the night of my Role Playing Game's first meeting. The RPG was World of Darkness. The common setting is the contemporary era, even if Game Masters can move also in the future (something like cyberpunk style). The precise setting of that campaign was inspired by the fiction "Supernatural": obscure mysteries and a lot of occult.

At the end of the adventure she had to face Pestilence, one of the Four Horseman and it was a fantastic fighting in a disco full of skeletons and zombies.

Unfortunately I haven't got any drowing of this PC, but I hope you liked this description. Leave comments below: do you know the RPG World of Darkness? If you do, do you like it?

Have a nice week!
Emily

Playing Characters Backgrounds #1: Rilka, the Mutagenic Barbarian

Hello readers!

I want start a new sequence of posts where I describe the best PCs (Playing Characters) I created for the RPGs (Role Playing Games) I play with my boyfriend and friends.

The first PC I will describe you is Rilka, the mutagenic barbarian. She was one of the strongest and bravest warriors of her halfling's clan (halfling=race of the RPGs D&D and Pathfinder similar to the Tolkien's hobbits). One day, while she was fighting for her family against a group of soldier she was captured and brought in an alchemist's laboratory. There she was used as a guinea pig for a new kind of mutagen (a potion that changes the person who drink it) and when she came back to her family after being escaped from the laboratory, the clan refused her because of the new powers the alchemists gave her. At that point she went away deciding to live by herself for the rest of her life. And just then she was called by the ministers of the Gods of the world for a special mission.

Rilka is a 12th lv (12th level) barbarian from the Pathfinder RPG. When I created her, I chose the variation of the classical barbarian called "mutagenic rager". Basically, the barbarian class has a special ability called "rage" that let the PC empower his/her phisical scores (Strengh, Dexterity and Constitution). The variation I chose (mutagenic rager) mixes this special ability with the alchemist's one creating special potions that changes the ability of the person who drink it. Creating a PC, players have to choose also the personality, so the allignment of the character. Rilka started as a Chaotic Neutral (CN; someone who do not like law and do good and evil actions equally) and finished as a Chaotic Evil (CE; someone who do not like law and do mainly bad actions, for his/her personal entertainment). Someone of you will ask "Why this changing?", because at the end of the adventure Rilka and her companions had to face five enemies too strong for them, so they had to decide if die or live. Rilka and another companion decided to live, so they sided with the five enemies. Before this strange ending, the outcome of Rilka's creation was a wonderful and powerful warrior.

I hope you liked this post and, please, let me know in the comments below if you want read other backgrounds.
Thank you for reading and following.

Have a nice week.
Emily