The First Four Rooms

The bottom floor of the temple to Jarraka is occupied by four rooms, obviously this being a temple to a goddess of chaos the rooms would not be encountered in any particular order (For details see this page).

1. The main entrance to Jarraka's temple was once grand, but now the marble walls are only decorated with tapestries that are black with mould, they fall apart with the slightest touch. A large gold candelabra hangs from the ceiling and two large ceramic urns flank the entrance. At the opposite end of the room there are two large doors covered with gold leaf. The urns are both about half full with small silver coins, a more thorough examination (DC25) of the room reveals that the candelabra is hiding a hatch in the ceiling. One idea that I had for this temple was that there would be more wealth than my PCs could realistically carry. This type of situation forces them to make decisions and to focus on what is really important ~ their story.
2. This room's walls, floor and ceiling are made of steel, deep gouges and cracks crisscross three of the walls. A barely audible whine fills the air and a beautiful statue of a nymph or dryad occupies the center of the room. Nearby a large steel mace is chained to the floor on a 5ft length of chain. When the PCs try the door they don't open. This room is designed to confuse/frustrate the players a bit, any interesting/creative attempts to open the room should be rewarded. In my game Laqar, our fighter, went up to the statue and kissed it and I had it come to life.
3.  A small stream divides this room as it bubbles over the floor made of mossy boulder, it flows through a grate to the outside (Alternative entrance/exit). On each side of the stream there is a rough wooden door and a large wooden chest; scattered across the floor are coins and gems. After interacting with them the PCs should realize that battle-scarred chests are animated and bitter rivals that often fight each other for territory in the room. The chests are aggressive and will either attack anyone that tries to open them or if the opportunity arises flee the room to a more spacious territory. I came up with stats for the chests that included a gaze attack that captivated the victim for 1d4 rounds on a failed will save "Oooohhh shiny...."
4.  Another puzzle room, this one has no doors, once the players are inside the room the door they entered through disappears. In the center of the room stands a large marble pillar, it separates metal grates in the floor and the ceiling, preventing them from being opened. The air in the room is cold and has a metallic taste. Upon closer inspection one of the walls is slightly warmer indicating a secret door out. If the players try to move or break the pillar in order to access the grates a demon is summoned which immediately attacks the players. I used this abomination to gross out my players.

Tune in next time time for rooms 5-8. 

Scenario Sketch - Jarraka's Temple pt. 1

One thing I would to do is to provide resources for other GMs to use. I recently ran a successful session that I  thought I would share. The setting is a temple dedicated to Jarraka, the goddess of chaos and destruction in my campaign. This could obviously be adapted to fit your world.

The PC's first clue that the temple was nearby was stumbling upon a large gem as they crossed a stream (Inspired by Alfred's story from the Dark Knight). They eventually got drawn deeper into the jungle and happened upon the temple.

Jungle - greg_mks

I decided that I wanted to start creeping the players out even before they got into the temple so I came up with a couple of conditions that could be fulfilled before the door to the temple would open (There are two other ways into the temple so I wasn't road blocking the PCs). Jarraka is vain and relishes pain and suffering and thus the doors would open if any of the following occured: Someone worshiped her, someone screamed in terror or blood/vomit were spilled on the ground in front of the temple. 

The other two potential entrances were a hole in the roof of the temple and a drain at the base that flowed into a stream [SPOILER] the gem/s were carried to the stream from the drain.

Once inside the temple the PCs would soon realize that things were not as they'd seemed, as it was a temple devoted to chaos that had been abandoned for centuries the layout of the temple changed randomly. Inside there were 12 rooms, on the bottom two floors there were four rooms, on the third floor there were three and on the top floor there was one room.

The PCs entered into room one and shortly thereafter found that the doors in the temple opened to a random room in the temple. Hatches in the ceiling always opened to the room above them and hatches in the floor opened to a random room that they hadn't been to. These rules were simple and pretty effective, although I'm sure there's a better way to do this.

Over the next two posts I'll go over the twelve rooms in detail and share some stories from my players' adventure. As a wrap up tonight I decided that if the players decided to rest whilst in the temple that something weird should definitely take place so I came up with six potential creepy happenings: 

1d6	Creepy happenings
1	An army of crazy ants march through the room biting anything that moves.
2	The walls and ceilings have blood dripping from them, it's starting to pool.
3	A piece of your equipment is gone. You find it three rooms away rusted.
4	You dream that you are a hyena arriving at a fresh kill.
5	A patch of your skin has turned as black as coal and is now fully hairless.
6	You can't speak common, only Draconic or Antiquant*

 *Antiquant is a ancient, lost language in my game.  

How to Run a Great Game

This blog is going to be primarily focused on advice for game masters and today's post is no different, but it is inspired an awesome game of Traveller that I got to play in yesterday. 

A few weeks ago five of us got together to roll up characters and start piecing together backstory and connections. After a few hours of working with Jonnie, our GM, we ended up with Sir Roderick, a veteran player from my Pathfinder game and various other systems. Sai, a friend of Jonnie, also an experienced player, Aliah a player completely new to role-playing games and Mace, played by myself. None of us had played Traveller before but we all enjoyed character-gen and wrote up some backstory and sent it to Jonnie over the next few weeks.

Today we finally got to play for the first time and I was so happy with how things went that I figured I'd share some of the highlights and what Jonnie did to facilitate the good times as a GM.

1. Authentic world-building: He created a rich world for us to interact with which meant that it was easier to get into character as the world felt real and true to itself. Not every game should feel realistic or make sense, but it should have a consistent internal logic so that they players can make valid decisions.
2. Strong plot hooks: Next he provided us with a strong plot hook as we had been tasked by our patron to complete an investigation in ore that was going missing between the mining planet and the processing system. Plot hooks should motivate your characters into action, they don't always have to be altruistic or noble, but they should necessitate action. 
3. Yes and... Jonnie didn't railroad us into following a predetermined story, we were able to carry out the investigation however we pleased which included interviewing a number of NPCs; turning the nervous secretary, Sally, against her boss; snooping through computer files; and checking out all sorts of odd places around the base. Anything we wanted to try was possible, sure not everything worked the first time around, but role-playing is about player agency and we had that in spades. 
4. Consequences and Complications: At one point our party was traveling along an underground tunnel in a digging vehicle when it was attacked by a large subterranean worm. We got out of the vehicle to fight the creature and my character used grenade to kill the beast. I succeeded on my roll, but not by much and Jonnie had the grenade trigger a cave-in. This made for a really exciting sequence as we tried to flee in the vehicle whilst being pursued by a second angry worm. Having appropriate consequences and complications adds excitement to the game and make players' decisions relevant.
5. Minimizing complexity and confusion: Aliah being completely new to table-top role-playing had a lot of questions and Jonnie was great with answering them. He also decided to gloss over a handful of the more complex rules for the session to ensure that the learning curve for all of us wasn't too steep. Over the next few sessions we will start including more complexity until we are doing everything by the book (or house-rule), but until then the focus is on having fun and keeping the action moving. 
6. Improvisation: We experienced this when we confronted the manager of the mine about how he had been smuggling alien artifacts out of the mine and how he was driving down productivity so that he could convince our boss to sell the mine. The manager it turned out was innocent and that his secretary had been using his computer to coordinate these nefarious plans without his knowledge (no wonder she was so nervous and didn't want is in his office). This change in villain was a last minute change that Jonnie made and it was executed really well, it fit with the story, added drama (as she had already started fleeing) and led to us having a much more exciting story overall. The ability to adapt and changing details on the fly is one of the marks of a great GM as it keeps the story relevant and fresh.

I'll stop here so Jonnie's ego doesn't get too big, but I think it's obvious that I had a blast. My character got to shoot down the spaceship that Sally was fleeing on after all! I hope you enjoyed the read, I'd really appreciate your feedback. 

A Warm Welcome

Hi, first up thank you for dropping by. I hope this site will be useful to you in your gaming adventures. If you have any questions about table top gaming feel free to send them in and I'll do my best to answer them as soon as I can.

In the mean time here are some helpful starters: 

• How do I get into table top role playing? I'd start by finding out if you have a friendly local gaming store (FLGS) they will often have a good understanding of the local scene and may be able to put you in touch with some helpful people.
• I'm thinking of running a game for some of my friends, where do I start? Start by either asking or figuring out what type of game your friends would be interested in playing. A hack and slash fantasy, a gritty detective game, a sci-fi exploration game and from there determine what system you want to use. 
• System? There's more than just Dungeons and Dragons (DnD)? Yup there are a huge number of systems that you can run games in, generally there are two main types of system: setting specific and generic. Setting specific systems are built to run games within a certain framework; DnD and Pathfinder are great for fantasy games, whilst Traveller is made for sci-fi games and Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) is set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan. Alternatively generic systems aim to provide a set of tools that can be applied to any genre. The classic generic system is GURPS and a more recent addition is Savage Worlds. Both have their benefits; generic systems can serve you well across a variety of campaigns which means fewer rules to learn, but setting specific games can have more flavor and intuitiveness at times. If you're just starting out and aren't sure what exactly you want I'd go with Savage Worlds for some fast and furious fun. 
• How do I convince my friends to take part? This is probably a topic for a whole post, but for now I'd say if you're confident running a game invite them over for a games night and have a one-shot, action packed adventure ready for them to play (Using a simple system preferably). If they grumble ask them to give it two hours and then if they aren't having fun you'll agree to do something different. If you aren't confident running a role playing game perhaps get their toes wet with a co-operative board game; something like Zombicide or Shadows over Camelot. 
• My friends suck and refuse to play with me. Well maybe one day they'll wise-up, until then try out your FLGS or a Looking for Group page.