Roleplaying Games
From 1ste Gimnechiske Wiki
Several years of RPG have made me a somewhat RPG-geek. Not that I see something wrong with that (though others might). I find roleplaying very facinating, and have done many kinds of RPG, all the way from pen'n'paper, computer games to Live Action Role Playing (LARP).
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Tools
Various forms of RPG need various forms of tools. Some advanced forms such as Rolemaster need more advanced tools, and good tools are much to help, while other, simpler systems, like FUDGE have less need for tools. On these pages I have collected tools I have written, as well as tools I have found useful.
- Rolemaster Character Sheet - written in Open Document Spreadsheet using OpenOpenOffice.org
- Vampire: The Masquerade character sheet, unknown origin, but stored in Open Document Text format, using OpenOffice.org
- Now Playing Questioneer based upon the one in the Now Playing Sourcebook
- Now Playing Charactersheet based upon the one in the Now Playing Sourcebook
It might be necessary to download OpenOffice.org to run these tools, though Open Documant formats should be available on most office tools.
Settings
- Rolemaster - Campaign datas for RoleMaster
- Now Playing - Campaign datas for Now Playing
Computer Games
Background
Various forms of government.
- Captaincy
- Colony
- Faudal Society - A discussion about how a faudal system works, with the aim of aiding GM's to construct sound backgrounds for faudal systems within the game
- Samurai - Background information for running a samurai campaign, or a brief summary of its history and culture for other purposes
- Scotish Clans - Highlanders
- Nomadic Tribes - Such as the Lap people in northern Scandinavia, the beduins in Arabia, and many indian tribes all over America
- Theocracy
Monsters
- A collection of absurd monsters for tales and RPG
Maps
While working on OpenStreetMap I got the idea to make an OpenFantasyMap project, where users could freely make detailed maps from various settings, and share alike between other role players. The maps can be of settings with flat territories, or of planets, and they can also vary between times (such as Middle Earth, devided in First Age, Second Age, Third Age and Fourth Age). The map editor program Merkaartor allows the user to make his own style files for marking of objects, and the maps can be stored in several formats, including OSM XML (OpenStreetMap native XML). If somebody want to help me and have the resources of a web server that can run an apropriate database and API, please contact me.
I will also include links to completed maps or other maps shared.
Let us build a world
To have a world in RPG work one need more than a map and some people. I will try to describe various factors here, and I will later at the end of this article make a link to a project to create a world of our own.
Among the first steps is to draw the map. Remember when drawing the map to keep in mind origin of cultures and resources. It is not very likely that a mighty dwarven culture of mountain dwellers origin from a small mountain in the middle of the plains. Another thing is that resources that likely have been traded or contributed to a cultures powers must be present in abundance, while resources of great value either come from far off, exists in limited quantities, or are extremely difficult to extract. Remember that if the access of gold is higher than of silver, than most likely silver will be of more value than gold.
When the map is drawn, with its resources pointed out I would mark the origin of the cultures. This marks where the various groups spring out from, which in turn dictates how they will conquer the land (location of resources must be known for understanding how they spread). When cultures starts to intersect one can also start trade, and wars are likely to occur. You can continue to spread them until you have covered the map as you wish.
Somewhere in this process you should define how the culture works, like form of government, religion, rites of passage (ceremonies at birth, adulthood, marriage, death, &al), traditions, type alphabet and scripture. Some parts of this should be clearly defined early in the process while other parts can wait until later. All of this with the focus that the finished product (your world) should look realistic in the eyes of the players.
Along the process important events should be recorded. These events will assist later when creating game plots, explaining why certain cultures and religions are in the situations they are etc.
