..and I use it in my game

[Crothian]

Late night television is so much fun. I just saw a ommercial for some sort of scent think that advertises different smells that people would like; they had the beeach, woods, etc. And I'm sitting there thinking how cool would that be to use when I'm gaming. Not only can I describe the beach I can insert the disk and get the beach smell going as well. I will admit, I am tired.

So, what odd item have you seen or actually gotten that makes your gaming better?

 

[Edward Kann@StoryART]

Years ago we maintained a halloween RPG game tradition. These days with everyone having babies / kids it is harder to get together.

Anyway.

I recall running one game that was the classic archeologists enter the mummy's tomb game. At least to start out. For props I went nuts.

Everyone had their own pith helmet which I supplied. I had sand colored sheets that I draped over the background furniture. Created an "inside a camp tent" feel by setting up some canvas that hung from the ceiling and down behind the player's chairs. I had a fan running in the other room to make the flaps of the tent billow a little like the wind and had one of those old tapes of sound effects that we played of wind and storms behind the background music. This was in the days of the old tape cassettes so I had to stop every hour or so and go rewind the tape and set it to playing again.

We set up some battery powered camping lanterns on the game table and had a couple of little plastic kids sand buckets with little shovels filled with sand. The better to scoop down onto the game table to bury our minatures alive in...

Ah college. When you could totally destroy your apartment all for a single night of gaming.

=)) Those were the days.

Edward Kann
StoryART Guy
www.storyartgames.com

 

[Edward Kann@StoryART]

Oh. Here's another good one.

Combining favorite computer games with RPG games.

I ran a long Legend of the Five Rings campaign a few years back. The game was fairly scaled in that all five of the player characters were brothers and sisters of one of three feuding minor noble families. The families were fighting one another for control over a chain of mountain valleys and passes and castles.

Anyway. I was a big fan of the game Shogun Total War (and still am). As part of the game I played the generals of the two opposition families. Legend of the Five Rings had this great battle system where you would determine how much glory your character earned by their actions in battle and where they stood in the battle..in front, leading an attack, or back in the rear with the gear.

We hooked two computers together, determined which units each player was commanding in their home army and they would march out to fight all of our mass battles using Shogun Total War. I used an egg timer to pause the combat every minute or so (Total War combats only go for about 20 minutes) and we would roll on the Legend of the Five Rings battle charts to see how the player characters were doing..fight any duels or specific small actions called for our in miniature scale and keep going.

We had ambushes, betrayals, castle raids and seiges. It was an AWESOME shtick to use. I recommend it HIGHLY.

Edward Kann
The StoryART Guy