September 06, 2003

Contributions and Other Value Adds

WISH 63 asks:

What kinds of game-related things do you do when you're not gaming? Do you write journals or fiction, create web-pages, make character images, or indulge in other outside game-related business? If you game regularly face-to-face, do you play by email or chat outside the game? Does your GM give you experience or character rewards for your efforts? And if you don't do any of these things, what are your reasons for not doing them (disinterest, insufficient time, etc.)?

A good question, and one that should provoke people in to revealing some good ideas.

Lets start with a character I rolled up for a campaign a few years ago, for some reason, that I can not longer remember, I put together some artwork. I can't draw for toffee, so I sourced some images from Google, some magazines and books (scanners are great), and composited them in my favourite graphic manipulation software. I think it ended up with 7 different source images, and a couple of hand drawn components.

That game also involved a lot of in character plotting out of sight of most of the rest of the group -- it was that kind of game.

Character backgrounds were discussed a few weeks ago, so I won't go over them again.

For the B5 campaign I'm in at the moment, which runs over a real time chat system called OpenRPG, I started a Movable Type site and gave access to the GM and players. The XP award I received for this quite unexpected, not that I'm complaining!

The MT was designed for character journals, but has begun to be expanded for other uses. It is going to be interested watching it evolve.

As for the view from the GM's side of the fence, so far I've had to (metaphorically) beat my players to get so much as a short background out of them -- so nothing to report here at present.

A WISH response from me just wouldn't feel right if I didn't head off towards the land of "What If?", so lets go there now...

Matt Haughey has done some hacking away at PHPWiki and created a fantastic looking site. I've been itching to put the code to use somewhere since I first laid eyes on it.

The question is "What?".

  • In an Investigative campaign it would make a great place for players to put clues and allow the players to annotate them.
  • It could be used for world building -- which is great so long as you don't want to keep most of the details about the world secret until the characters discover them (as I do).
  • OK, I've run out of ideas for the time being, but how about your idea here?

Now, while reading through Ginger's trackbacks before posting this, I notice that someone else is using a Wiki which I will have to study for ideas.

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