Blue Lines

Game Prep Part 3 or Who's That? There a re a lot of entities that populate a world even as devastated as Rifts. Every one of them, outside of the play ers is an opportunity for expanding the world, and exploring character concepts and ideas. While you don't need a name and history for every dung merchant and dirt farmer, knowing at least the names and motivations for anyone who might play an important role in your game is a great way to build consistency.  To do this, I scour the internet for images that fit my theme. I use Google Search, Pintrest, and similar sites, and, since I do not plan on making any of my games purchasable, I save a link to any image I plan to use, including artist information in case that becomes necessary. From there I take details about the image, and the position I wish them to hold, and build a personality to fit the role I need. My setting is ruled by a council made up for the head of the School system, the most prominent business...

Game Prep Addendum or How to Keep it Organized Keeping everything organized for a game can be a real pain some times. I have used many different methods over the years, and have some choice words about a few of them.  1) When I first started out, I used a three ring binder and loose-leaf paper to organize my gaming notes, ideas, plans, maps, everything. I had this huge binder for each system I ran, and hand wrote and drew everything I would use. This allowed for some serious hoarding, and did manage to keep me organized, it had some drawbacks. Pros: Simple to implement, and easy to organize. if you need to rearrange things, simple remove the pages and put back in any order. Ease of use. There is no real learni ng curve. It is paper, pen, pencil, and a separator. Ease of memory, writing it yourself helps to improve your retention of it. Cheap. You can get three ring binders and paper super cheap at the dollar store, making a full GM book cost less than $3 with every...

Game Prep Part 2 or What's in a Name? The next step I took was to decide on the name of the town and it's location. I wanted something that was interesting, and would allow for some freedom of creativity. I looked at a couple apocalyptic name generators to get ideas for the town name, I finally went with one I found at  Fantasy Name Generator  and named the town Grimburg. I felt this was a good name that the first people to resettle the area could have come up with in this hot, arid, dangerous area. I decided also to set the location on the ruins of Kit Carson Colorado, so I had a good location on the map, and could use actual places for the archaeological sites that the group will encounter. Once those were out of the way, I looked into how I wanted the town to be run. I decided on a town council with members of the most prominent families, the head of the school, and the sheriff as the one who hear the grievances of the citizens and make decisions for the town as ...

Game Prep Part 1 Or You Must Be Crazy! I have begun the preparation for a new Rifts campaign I have Titled Blue Lines (hence the name of this blog). I have not run nor prepared a Palladium game in a few years, I have been back in college for my BA in IT and Network Administration, so I have been a little busy . In the next few posts I will be going over my process and decisions, as well as the reasons behind them in the hopes of both making it easier for other game masters and to help organize my own thoughts. The first thing I did was think about Rifts in general, and what I might be interested in doing with the system and possibilities of the game. With a setting/system like Rifts, there are so many things possible that it is far easier to decide what you want to do and what you want to avoid long before you even begin talking to your players. If you tell your group straight away that you are planning on a Rifts game, and that character creation will be open, you ...