February 2017 – My 20 Sided Life

Set Piece: The Reverse Pickpocket

Posted on February 22, 2017February 23, 2017 by crimsonphotog

Introduction:

Will Smith is in a lingerie shop buying a present for his wife when an old friend (Jason Lee) runs into him. The friend slips something in Will Smith’s bag, then runs off proceeding to get himself killed. This, however, kicks off Will’s involvement in the wonderful suspense film Enemy of the State. The reverse pickpocket idea is not a new concept. It’s been used in fiction, film, and television for years. Scott Lynch’s book The Republic of Thieves has got a great scene where the method is used multiple times by two opposing thieves on some unsuspecting officials. Needless to say, you can kick off quite an adventure with a scene like this, without requiring much of any buy-in from your PCs.

Scene:

The PCs are in a crowded market buying good our trying to find a buyer for their cargo. When someone runs into them. Classic pickpocket scam right. They check their belt pouch or wallet. Their cash is still there. What they don’t realize is, something else has been added. A crowded market of any type does well for this. However, any public space or city street will do. Even an Inn, Bar, or shop could be a great location for this scene. Continue reading “Set Piece: The Reverse Pickpocket” →

Fan Friday – LARPs – A Beanduck Web Series

Posted on February 10, 2017February 8, 2017 by crimsonphotog

A couple of years ago, a saw a video on Geek and Sundry’s YouTube page about a web series called LARPs. I personally was not a LARPer; I knew people in the Camarilla ( a White Wolf World of Darkness LARP group) in college, and I knew of the existence of boffer LARP, but LARPing wasn’t something that interested me. However, something about this video caught my eye. The production quality was top notch, these people obviously studied filmmaking, the acting was nothing to sneeze at either. I quickly looked up the show and binge watched the entire first Season. Then I went and helped Crowdfund the Second.

LARPs is a show that follows a group of gamer friends as they maneuver through life, while the characters they play brave a fantasy realm. The writing and direction are quite good. Each cast member is given their own moments throughout the series, and the show expertly weaves between the in-game drama, as well as the real-life drama.

From the tranquil forest opening of Episode 0 to the Epic Finale of Season 2, I can say I enjoyed every frame. If you missed this series when it first came out, or overlooked it because you weren’t into LARPing, I highly recommend you give this short series a moment of your time. You won’t regret it. LARPS is one of the best short form series on the internet.

While writing this article I discovered Beanduck now has their own YouTube Channel, and promises more original short film content. I can’t wait to see what they have in store. Check them out here: Beanduck Productions

General Writing

State of the Blog

Posted on February 8, 2017February 7, 2017 by crimsonphotog

Hello, Everyone… if there is anyone out there. 🙂

I created this blog a while back to write about my life as it pertains to gaming. I quickly established my Set Pieces and planned a lot of other things that life got in the way of. You see I sort of started my blog prematurely. I bought a house in Late November so the last few months have been all about packing, moving and unpacking, all while going to work, raising a 5-year-old and trying my best to keep up with my wife’s honey-do list. Seriously I think I put together about dozen pieces of furniture. (6 shelves 4 curio cabinets, 2 storage units and a teepee… ok the last one was easy) We had Christmas, My Son’s Birthday, and we now have an exchange student from the Czech Republic.

It’s been a busy few months. I have also done a lot of gaming. It is interesting because a year ago I was running 2 games and playing in none. Now I am playing in 4 games and running none. Quite a change for me. (I’ll talk more about them in future posts)

So, I wanted to write this piece to talk about my plans for this blog. Set Pieces will still be a thing. Hopefully still on Weds and on a more regular basis. They are long pieces and take quite a bit of time so I might have to schedule them for every other week or so.

I still want to do adventure write-ups. We just had Session 4 of Gods of the Fall so I am a few sessions behind but plan on catching up. My Android Cypher game ran into a few problems that made it hard to write about. A player left the game and the plot got complicated. I misplaced my notes during the move so I couldn’t continue the write-ups for some time. After that, well, we found new players but have decided to change to a different game. So sadly, I’ll have no more write-ups from the world of Android.

I’ve been working on a couple ideas for making a Dark Souls-like Cypher game, that includes adapting some of the rules for a solo campaign (1 GM 1 PC). I haven’t started playtesting yet, but I might put some of that material on here.

I’ve also been experiencing quite a bit of gaming awesomeness. Whether it’s some cool Actual Play Podcast I’ve been listing to at work, or some fun Board games I’ve been playing at home, I plan on writing a bit more about things I find that I think are cool.

Another thing I want to start putting on here is some fiction. I had thought about doing NaNoWriMo and posting the stuff up here but I was in the middle of packing up and moving in Nov, so I didn’t have the time.

I don’t want to commit to a schedule for this blog because, A. I don’t want to disappoint people when I inevitably can’t stick to it, and B. adding a schedule makes it feel like an obligation to me so it ends up being less fun. But I will commit to having more post more often.

Thanks, everyone for bearing with me. I hope you enjoy what I will put out in the future