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Roleplaying

Nerdarchy > Roleplaying (Page 22)

Dealing with PTSD for RPG Characters

PTSD in gaming

PTSD symptom

Many Marines return to the states with vivid memories of their combat experiences, and the array of emotions they face internally may be hard to detect. While changes in behavior are more obvious, symptoms can also manifest in physical form. [Marines from Arlington, VA, United States/Wikimedia Commons]

Alrighty, well many a statement has been made about PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Many a facet and corner of the internet is about how to diagnose yourself or whatever, and I only state whatever because that is not what this article is about. What this article is about is how to show and bring this intense aspect of recovery from stress into your game. I bring this up for two sources of inspiration in the last 24 hours. The first being a game session one where one of our players chose the background of soldier, and I was thinking how this is portrayed or roleplayed. The other is that I watched the movie Wonder Woman, in which there is a character that has obvious PTSD or ‘shell shock’ as it was known back then. This all combined to get my mind working for this subject in multiple ways.

Open Legend RPG character

Open Legend RPG character build – Kryzikk

Open Legend RPG character

A kobold from the fifth edtion Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University and I guess I’m up next to talk about my character for the Open Legend RPG game on Fridays at noon Eastern on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. I think that, by now, it’s pretty obvious that I have an affinity for comic books, so I took my inspiration from the comics to get in my character’s head. Open Legend RPG is an open source roleplaying game designed by Brian Feister, who sponsors our weekly live game. The core rules for the game are available for free online here.

D&D Barbarian 5E

Jon Heder’s lesson in design elements for role play

Totem of the Duck is TTRPG design for role play

Barbarian duck. Art by Stephen Prescott (deviantart user stephenartist)

Episode 99 of Critical Role may have irrecoverably changed my perspective of role playing games forever. Well, that’s not 100 percent sure. Jon Heder, who is coincidentally from my home town, made my favorite D&D move I’ve ever seen. He took Path of the Duck Totem Warrior.  That’s right, instead of Bear, Wolf, or any other standard Totem, he went with Duck, which I assume he worked with Matt Mercer to custom make.  My mom and I talked about it, and we kinda figured that being from Oregon played a role in him wanting to be a Duck, because there are tons of other ridiculous animals that he could’ve gone with. But the point is that he chose to do something ridiculous, and ridiculous it was. Not only was it ridiculous, but he used the opportunities to largely squander them. One of his skills was Commune with Ducks, which he used to get completely useless information.

Top 10 Stereotypical Roleplaying Gamers

Here we go again. I like top tens. They have a certain charm to them. Being a gamer, I get to see a lot of roles played by an amazing variety of people such as yourself. I know that they can be good, bad, or just plain hilarious. Can you think of the various role players you have seen at your table? I am sure if you think hard enough, something your great mind is highly capable of doing, you can match up at least a few of those listed below with your table. In no particular order, here is the repeated role player types I have seen. Some of these I like, and some I do not. Though I would love to hear your opinions and stories on such.

Blast from the Past: Nerdarchy Invades the Marvel Universe

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpBK1lZg32c&w=560&h=315] Class was in session when Professor Bill from Comic Book University (aka Nerdarchy staff writer William C.) took a group of mild-mannered nerds for a trip to the heart of the Marvel Universe for a game of the Marvel Super Heroes Role-Playing Game. [caption id="attachment_19932"...

‘Dice, Camera, Action’ never waffles on D&D fun

How can your game go wrong when the lead story designer for the team behind creating Dungeons & Dragons runs the campaign? In “Dice, Camera, Action,” Wizards of the Coast’s Chris Perkins leads a core party of adventurers along with several guest players through a live streaming season of the official published campaign Curse of Strahd in season one. The second season continues the party’s adventures with Storm King’s Thunder.

E19 YR1- What Happens After The GamePlay| Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Wrap Video Podcast

Episode 19 of Nerdarchy the podcast Year One. Here we actually do a wrap video after our 1st 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons Game. It's the normal crew plus our buddy Mark who is playing in the game with us. https://soundcloud.com/david-friant-458990853/e19-yr1-what-happens-after-the-gameplay-dungeons-and-dragons-5th-edition-wrap-video What Happens After The GamePlay| Dungeons...

10 Things You Don’t Need to Know About Your RPG Character

There’s a certain kind of player, and I myself am one, who just wants to know everything about their character and has a tendency to overthink it. If you’re one of those, this article is for you. None of these are things you absolutely have to know the answers to, but they can be fun to think about. So if you’re the kind of player who spends way too much away-from-table time thinking about your PC, have fun with this.

1 – What does your character smell like?

RPG Character Creation: Unveiling the Psyche through D&D

The first thing we do when playing Dungeons & Dragons is character creation. Without the characters, there is no story; we know this. In order to create a character we must first decide which character to make, why that character, and then the details. In order to do this we have a great opportunity to take clay and make a mold out of our own ideas and desires. You may have heard that the way a person views  life, people and situations is based off his or hers own experiences? Well, this is one of those times where we get to use all the tools life has given us and make something with it. Once we take hold of this art form, the opportunities for character building and world building take off. Each character creation has its own unique flare and destiny that drives the adventure to its perfect and final crescendo.

The Name Game, Part III: Last Names, Titles and Sobriquets

names title tagI’ve talked about naming characters before in a previous article (the second one was about places, in case you were wondering), but I neglected to cover last names, so that’s what we’re going to talk about right now. Mind you, my advice before regarding making up names still applies if you want something super fantasy sounding like “Arthainas” or “Cerdoth,” but this one is all for the more naturally occurring names.

The TitansGrave role-playing game show is a top-notch production

Returning readers might make me eat crow for the RPG encounter planned for this session. D&D is hiding in shadows and moving silently this week while the Fantasy Adventure Game Engine sets the stage for Geek & Sundry’s TitansGrave: The Ashes of Valkana. There is a huge variety of live streamed and recorded RPG play sessions out there. The merits, value and impact are debatable among many, but not me – I enjoy them as entertainment and believe they add value to the hobby. For those reasons, I’m taking a closer look at my favorite programs and sharing not only what makes each program fun to watch, but what gamers can take away and bring back to their gaming tables.

The C Team innovates live streaming roleplaying games

As promised last week, I’ll be taking a closer look at the myriad online roleplaying game programs that I enjoy to offer some reviews and analysis as well as any tips or pitfalls therein. The criteria for me as a gamer, fan, audience member and for the purposes of this series are the entertainment value and the takeaways I can bring back to my own game group.

C Team

Most of these shows (okay, all of them on my initial list) are Dungeons & Dragons games. In keeping with that spirit, I’ll rate where each program has a Success or Failure along with where it scores a Critical Hit or a Critical Fail, and wrap up with a Perception Check for miscellaneous observations and standouts as a viewer.

Friend time: Does your group get together outside of game night?

friendsThis is one of those topics most of us would like to claim we do and, while there are a majority of us who play with close friends/family members, there are still those of us who only participate in the game and not in the after-game relationships to the people we game with. There is a certain level of trust and mutual respect that arises when we play with someone. It’s very difficult to role play when we aren’t willing to bond somewhat with the players we spend those many hours of play with. On the contrary, when we do invest even a little bit of time, we find we have much more than just another acquaintance; we have a friend, which is awesome! Who doesn’t want awesome friends who are open to playing, getting real and having fun?