Predator societies are based around the hunting of other survivor groups. To a predator, a measure of one’s value and status in the community is his hunting prowess and the collection of trophies he’s collected over his lifetime.

These people use their considerable natural ability combined with rigorous training from the time they can walk to stalk prey in a multitude of different terrains. They make no attempt to communicate with the prey. Also, this culture has it’s own language, both spoken and emotive, making attempts to interrogate captives difficult at best.

There are several encounter types players might face. The juvenile training patrol consists of 4-8 juveniles and one trainer of considerable ability while the solo hunter is the most common encounter.

Predator outposts are placed about a day’s easy walk from the main base of operations. where pregnant women and young children can be kept and protected near a clean water source. This settlement may be only temporary as the prey move around an area in a semi-nomadic lifestyle hunting a variety of prey groups.

Predator attributes will include high health and physical aspects as well as good reflexes, willpower and movement abilities. Average intelligence or better is common amongst older hunters while younger specimens will have a mix of intelligence and innate cunning. Skills will often include disguise, endurance, an ability to resist physical hardship, awareness of their surroundings, archery, the ability to shadow and track prey, wilderness survival traits, dodge capabilities, a variety of melee skills, stealth, first said, evasion and performance abilities to mimic prey sounds for ambush.

Gear will be lightweight and mobile with leather armor likely being the heaviest a predator would consider wearing. Bow, arrows and a knife are common.

When populating your post-apocalyptic world, keep in mind the prey/predator relationship. There needs to be enough prey to support the predator community and a good ratio is 30-40 prey to 1 predator.

Originally posted at The Roleplay Media Network.

Here’s the contest winner. More ideas and all contest entries can be found at the link above. There’s something for almost any game setting.

Caves are a big part of the draw of the Karst region in northwestern Slovenia. Škocjan Caves is a famous limestone complex with a bridge to rival the bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria, and underground chambers over 100 meters deep! Looking up at a writhing mass of bats on the ceiling, or peering at the bobbing lights crossing the bridge in the distance, we truly felt that we were in the Underdark. As a UNESCO World Heritage site, photography is strictly limited within the caves, but there are a lot of images of the interior that are a quick web-search away. Check it out!

Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia, has a dragon atop a castle for its coat of arms. Dragon statues and images dot the city, and a cool castle sits atop the hill overlooking the river. According to legend, Jason (the captain of the Argonauts) is believed to be the founder of the city. While the dragon bridge is a product of the early 20^th century, it is still an inspiring sight for RPGers. The central library also seemed to have a fantasy flair. Looking at a nearby statue, I couldn’t help but see a spell caster getting ready to unleash some arcane power on a hapless minion.

The Alps have their own magic, and the ravines that are carved by the fast-flowing mountain streams are a great place to find it. Triglav National Park was particularly cool (especially on a hot summer day). I can imagine elven settlements tucked away in deep groves that can only be approached through treacherous ravines.

Hiking into castle-guarded valleys, or exploring dark limestone caverns, swinging two-handed swords, or examining dragon physiology, could all be highlights of any adventurer’s day in a fantasy realm. Slovenia offers a taste of those adventures, and inspiration for anyone interested in creating their own.

Originally posted at The Roleplay Media Network.

My wife and I first visited Portugal about fifteen years ago. The visit was tagged onto a trip to Spain. Ironically, it turned out to be the highlight of the trip. This past August, we finally made it back to Portugal for a more thorough exploration. Our focus was on the castles and other historical sites of central Portugal, rather than the southern beaches that are, perhaps, more well known. Portugal has plenty of castles and ruins, the legacy of a long conflict with Spain, the various Spanish kingdoms, and the Moors.

Portuguese castles dot the rocky mountains along the Spanish frontier. You can climb the walls of a well-preserved town like Trancoso. Or, explore the twisted, narrow streets of Monsanto, a village built amongst giant granite boulders. Mountain villages dominated by castles like Castello de Sortelha are great for evoking a sense of medieval adventure. Looking through an arrow slit, or down a murder hole, puts you in the shoes of a castle defender. Standing at the base of a hill, and looking at the castle above, gives you the perspective of a besieging knight.

Many of these sites are eerily quiet, nearly uninhabited. But once you add the people of Portugal into the equation, the scenery really comes to life. In the walled town of Óbidos, about 80 km north of Lisbon, we happened upon the best of both worlds: The annual medieval festival in full swing. Not only did we see the period architecture, but costumed locals, touring companies of medieval re-enactors, and combat demonstrators filled the streets and nearby fields.

There was a market, with all the usual renaissance-fair kitsch, food and drink stalls of every kind. And enough characters to fill my NPC notebook for years of gaming. A teacher who spent his free time acting and doing combat demonstrations with a group called “O Mestre d’Armas”, was a great creepy apothecary. The black knight of Languedoc was a surly villain in the combat demonstrations, and a truly superior horseman. And the wandering musicians—there were many groups of these—kept the atmosphere magical with their music.

Looking for inspiration for your game? Check out Portugal. Awesome scenery, great tales of battles and exploration, and a fine example of a culture surviving in the shadows of cultural giants like Spain and France.

Costumes

1. Make a zombie face wound.
2. LEGO Costume (for kids)
3. Iron Man Helmet
4. Creating a Realistic Burn
5. Costumes Around the World
6. Tips for Costume Making
7. Witches Hat
8. Wee Gnome (Kids)

Props

1. Gamer booklet handouts.
2. Easy Faux-Pearls.
3. Painted Gemstones.
4. Magic Wand Remote Control.
5. Eye Sticker ala the Illuminati.
6. Cool Pumpkin Carvings. Come on, it’s Halloween!
7. Gummy Body Parts. Toss them onto the map instead of drawing gore.
8. Giant Spider.
9. PVC Yard Skeletons
10. Mana & Health Potions
11. Fallout 3 Helmet
12. Light Wand
13. Cthulhu Toys
14. Pirate’s Treasure Chest
15. Star Trek Command Badge

Food

1. Nerd cupcakes.
2. Scifi Cuisine including spider soup, edible insects and slurm from Futurama.
3. The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Come on, you have to do this one.
4. Vampire Cookies & Cupcakes
5. Dirt
6. 8 Sexy Cocktails
7. Mummy Dogs
8. Candy Sushi
9. Shrunken Apple Heads
10. 124 Halloween Appetizers
11. 69 Halloween Cocktails
12. 8 Gross Looking Recipes
13. Brain Cake

Links

1. Zombie Description Generator
2. Celebrating Life & Death
3. Scary Underground Tunnels
4. Getting Players to Ask for Cursed Items
5. Seeing the Occult in the Everyday
6. Essential Gear for Surviving a Zombie Attack
7. Jobs in a Zombie Outbreak
8. Projecting Fear into Games
9. Wacky Snack Pictures
10. 10 Reasons Not to Bring Someone Back from the Dead
11. Setting the Mood in a Horror Game

Send me pics! I want to see your Halloween game!

My most recent trip was to Athens, Greece. The sights in Athens are likely much more familiar to most people due to their broad historical impact, and the fact that, architecturally, Greek style has been emulated in many countries. Wandering the ruins and reconstructed temples of Athens gives you a great sense of the vibrancy of the culture that produced such wonders. Medieval European cultures, by contrast, had hunkered down into their dark ages, and don’t tend to project the grandeur that ancient Greece does. As a result, I’m modeling one of the countries in my Dominium game world after Hellenic-era Athens. I’m trying to capture the vibrancy, and power that Athens had. Imagine a country dominated by wizards, the scientists of fantasy worlds, that is characterized by intellectual vigor and feats of spectacular architecture.

Riding the metro beneath the streets of Athens, and imagining (with help from the artifact displays in many of the stations) the layers of history through which I was traveling, I found that the names of the stations began to take on the personalities of various NPCs: An ambitious wizard-diplomat-spy named Monastiraki—a sort of James Bond in a toga. Alexandras and Attiki, a pair of soldier-brothers, seasoned veterans of their city-state’s conquering army. Kalithea the temptress, innkeeper extraordinaire. The metro map by itself will lead to hours of gaming fun, and the names have a cultural unity that tells my players they’re in a different country from the one they’ve left.

In future posts I’ll share some castles and a medieval festival from Portugal, caves in Slovenia, a salt mine in Austria, and castle ruins in Estonia, and talk about how I’ve used, or plan to use, those experiences in my gaming.

There’s a demo video well worth watching, too!

Check it out!

Well, I thought everyone was looking forward to it. It turned out there was a huge discrepancy between how I, as the Game Master, viewed Gods in a campaign and how one of my more vocal and involved story-drivers viewed them.

Me? I don’t think much besides another God or perhaps an army of Dragons is going to be able to fight against deities and win, or for that matter, even scratch them. My player felt that if this was the case, it should’ve been an entirely scripted scene, with no dice rolling. He felt that if you’re allowing players to roll dice, they have to be able to affect some damage on some level, even if they die the next turn.

I felt that allowing players to roll dice, even if the target number was absurdly high, was a way to say yes, to allow the chance, however slim, of success.

He felt that his numbers should have been high enough (they were double plus some of the highest rolls in the game).

In the end, we compromised and re-wrote the scene so that the situation never came up. Dice were never rolled, confrontation was completely rail-roaded out of the picture.

Now, the player and I were perfectly happy with this compromise, for this situation. Two other people involved in the game were not.

They felt that I should’ve allowed the combat and killed his character with the God. The comments were that because he was my boyfriend, I’d deliberately avoided the scene in his favor. Three other players present were just fine with the outcome and conclusions.

Can you say yes too often? Would you have allowed the confrontation and killed the character? Do you feel that because we had basic, deep-seated conflicts in philosophy and definitions, avoidance was best?

In the end, my decision stood and everything worked out well but I’d love more opinions on this one. I don’t think there’s any possible “right” answer to it but knowing how other people would’ve handled it would be great.