Questing's Readings - 18/10/09

There's been some heavy (and sometimes heaty) discussions going on between bloggers of the RPG Bloggers Network on the evaluation criteria of accepting blogs into the network fold. You may have read this post by Chogwiz which sparked the discussion after a nasty retort by a blog that was rejected by the people who form the network.

I'm staying out of the whole politics mostly other than just being a spectator but I do commend to the founding members (Dave, Danny, Graham and Phil) for being very open to criticism (and flak) even if everyone had not been too happy with their transparency in running the network.

I really don't like to see these sort of things happening within such a noble endeavor but things like this happen when love and passion boils over into something less pretty.

I hope this mess gets sorted out soon and peacefully. Perhaps this will make the RPG Bloggers Network a stronger community because of it.

In the meantime, the highlight for this week's readings is a couple of post on giving narrative control to players.

Back to (Role-Playing Game) Basics
Hey, you got your story in my game!
A very charming way of introducing narrative control to your players. While I do the first methods introduced but I've never thought of giving out treasures when the players are on to something. I think the 4E treasure parcel system would work nicely with this idea.

Campaign Mastery
Ask the GMs: Giving Players The Power To Choose Their Own Adventures
A really great article on sandboxing and how to design rumors as plot hooks.

Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer
Learning a new RPG: a Step-by-Step Process
It is not very often that I read new RPG systems and the task can be pretty daunting at time. Although I might do things in a different order than what he suggested but it might help to speed up the learning process.

LivingDice
DM Resource: Warscholar.com
A useful link if you are researching for a wartime campaign. It has a timeline from the ancient to modern wars, information about equipments used and other military technologies.