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Old 10-05-2024, 12:00 AM   #1
RoboAdmin
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Default October 5, 2024: Put A Pin In It

October 5, 2024: Put A Pin In It

Read this article on the Illuminator.
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Old 10-05-2024, 06:49 AM   #2
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Default Re: October 5, 2024: Put A Pin In It

Variation on the idea is to use one of those magnetic white boards like is often featured on TV police shows as a 'murder board'. Or even a simple chalk board. Plus you can take a picture at the end of each session as 'notes' for players to review before the next session and in case wandering monsters abuse the note board between sessions.
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Old 10-05-2024, 09:11 AM   #3
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Default Re: October 5, 2024: Put A Pin In It

I sometimes use a cork board to plot out adventures. It gives me a visual way to try to figure out what kind of bizarre chaos my players will create while my villains' carefully planned schemes play out in the background.
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Old 10-05-2024, 12:56 PM   #4
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Default Re: October 5, 2024: Put A Pin In It

Call of Cthulhu is an RPG notorious for using lots of handouts and physical items to build suspense and give the players tangible items to handle and read during scenarios. Several third-party adventures/campaigns have used this "evidence board" idea to create complex handout/evidence displays as part of the actual game. A couple that come to mind are from "The Sons of Singularity" with their "campaign dossier" sets produced as part of the package. The most recent one they've delivered is The Blessed and the Blasphemous, and they are in the process right now of delivering on a second Kickstarter with the same kind of thing.

I've always found that giving the players the documents and other tangible evidence is well worth the effort, since it allows them to really immerse themselves in the story. I've gone to garage sales and bought scruffy old wallets and stuffed them full of "personal effects," costume jewelry to use as part of a pirate's hoard, wooden treasure chests (small) for the players to find and open, little tiki statues to use as statues of gods or demons; anything like that helps. I personally have also used Ipsum Lorum to generate some Latin babble my players had to chant in order to reverse a terrible spell while they were being attacked by the monsters in the scenario -- if they failed to chant the (long) "spell" three times in a row, they would be destroyed by the spell (and/or the attacking monsters) and fail the scenario.

Little things like this go a LONG way to really pulling the players into the scenario, and CoC was the first RPG that really emphasized this kind of thing back in the early 80's -- one reason, I suppose, why it's still one of the top-selling RPGs out there. But there's absolutely NO reason why the same ideas can't be applied to a Fantasy RPG, like TFT, or any other one for that matter. In fact, I think SJG should give some consideration to producing some props like this for some of their more involved scenarios. Tollenkar's Lair might be materially improved if a "pre-scenario" involving player investigation to discover what's "really" going on by finding evidence, correspondance, old books, etc., elsewhere in the Duchy which eventually leads them to the lair were added to a "second edition." Just thinking out loud here, but it might be an idea worth exploring...

There are some pretty amazing third-party prop producers out there generating props for CoC (HPLHS and an outfit down in Australia doing some amazing sculpts, plus Delphes doing her sculpts for prop sets for things like Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express). I would think some of them might find it challenging to do something similar for Fantasy roleplaying games too -- an actual idol the players have to find and pry the eyes out of, etc... And with 3D printing, you might not even have to ship anything physical!

Something to think about, anyway...
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