We have grown up and gotten our domain!

That’s right. If you’ve ended up here you’re a little behind. We’ve moved to our very own domain! Go check out the new and improved They Might Be Gazebos blog.

It’s been too long since there’s been an update

Things have been pretty damned busy.  The Cat Piss Man is bitching that we’re not letting him post about hot elf babes.  The Rules Lawyer wants to argue yet another point of order.  Th3 d00d wants to do a review of the latest Hentai. And there’s just been too much dumb shit on the internet to write about.  We’ve been overwhelmed.

That and a bunch of crappy other stuff we’ve been working on. But no more. We promise that we will update more often. We promise to be sarcastic bastards. Now the posts may not be that long but we are going to get more shit up here.

How to be a GM and Piss Off Your Friends

After the game designer is done with his fun. The next person to make an RPG work is the game master. Now, some games give the position a different name. That’s just game designers trying to be cool. Game Master is the proper title. It is your universe. Your domain. And you are its master.
The first thing you have to remember is that it is your game. It’s your role to let the players know how smart, talented, creative and god-like you really are. The first step is read the rules thoroughly, then change them. Don’t ever consult with the players. They don’t need to know until the middle of combat.
Players will demand that they make their own characters. Don’t let them. You can’t trust players. They fudge die rolls, use fuzzy math when allocating points and use the rules to make effective characters. Encourage the newest and dumbest player to be the most complex and rules heavy character possible. Always ensure the player characters are balanced and inept and your NPC’s are min-maxed and more powerful than the player characters. If things get really out of hand, change game systems and do the character conversions yourself.
A truly lucky GM will have a significant other involved in the game. This is a prefect means to show all the players you’re massive coolness and assert your status once again. You should always let your S.O. bend the rules especially during character generation. So what if she’s the only half-demon, half-elf assassin sorceress in the land. She’s your girl and with a few choice magic items. She’ll be yours forever. Don’t forget to give out extra XP for those “private” role playing sessions.
Once you have asserted you dominance over the players, don’t let up. If they get any crazy ideas about deviating from your well crafted storyline beat them back on track. If that fails, kill them. The characters, not the players. Only those who stick to the story should be rewarded. If the players continue insisting that they go their own way, then let them go off to their doom. Let them ruin your story. Bring the world crashing down around their ears. And bitch like a PMS’ing cheerleader the whole time. It’s all their fault things went to crap. Make sure they never forget that.
Remember, it’s not cheating if you’re the GM. It’s improvising.

How to design an RPG the Gazebo Way

As only we can present it. We’ve learned from the very best.

Consistency is not important. No two skills should work the same way. Some should be a d20 roll, others percentile. While the most important skills should modify other skills. The same system should be applied to attributes as well. Be sure that “figured” attributes require a scientific calendar.

Charts are your friend. Every page should have a chart and there should be a chart for everything. Most importantly the game should be designed so that the charts are actually needed to play the game. This is also a great marketing tool. Now you can sell the GM Screen Version 1, the Combat GM Screen, the GM Screen Version 2, the Magic GM Screen and random chart generation screen.

The longer it takes to make a character, the quicker it should die. This will keep the players busy for the entire session generating new characters. Truly great games can kill a character before generation begins.

So you want to make a game but someone else has a really cool setting. Just change the names a little bit. All the gamers will know and the true copyright “holders” will never be the wiser.

Proofreading is unnecessary. All game rules are a work in progress. This causes local gaming groups to come up with house rules to be used in the second edition. Additionally, it is a well known fact that no one uses an index. Since there is no need to proof read, there is also no need to put the rules in what some folks would call a “logical order”. This ensures that everyone reads the entire book and all the rules.

More complex rules raise the entertainment value of the game. This will lead to hours of loud discussions around the table. Remember RPG’s are meant to be simulations and not entertainment. Complex rules also prove again that proofreading is for anal retentive wimps.

The book needs to be artsy. Gamers are easily distracted by pretty pictures. It works even better if said pictures feature scantily clad elf maidens. If you can’t afford a good artist then using an illegible font works almost as well.

Now go out there and amaze the fans.

Old School @ Will Powers

Those fancy “at-will” powers in 4^th Ed D&D ain’t nothing new. We had those back in the good old pure days of the One True White Box. Now it was simpler back then we didn’t mess with all those fancy Feats or “Skills” but each class had it’s own “at will” powers. Let me break it down for all you youngsters out there.

Fighter kill shit.

Thief steal shit. (There were no sissy Rogues. They were thieves. Dammit.)

Cleric heal shit.

Magic User blow up shit. (No, emo goth sorcerers. Just Wizards and we called them Magic Users.)

Now, get the hell of my lawn.

Save the Orc Children

How many have you seen this? A party of low level adventurers tear through an Orc village leaving behind dozens of orphans. I know they always say ”It’s not my problem.” or ”We needed the XP.” But what about the children. For only a few copper pieces a day, you can sponsor an Orc child like Gutgnash here. You can make sure that he’s clothed and fed. And just for the cost of few XP per level, you can assure he gets an education and a couple of class levels. So, when a crazed Orc orphan driven by revenge comes looking for blood years later; he’ll actually be worth some XP to you. It’s an invest in all our futures. Won’t you please help?

Never Let the Psycho DM . . .

…especially when the conversation starts with ”Let’s play test my new game.”
First, there were the stats. Strength, Stamina, Constitution, Health, Resilience, Body, Toughness, Dexterity, Agility, Coordination, Intelligence, Perception, Wisdom, Technological Aptitude, Magical Aptitude, Psychic Aptitude, Psionic Aptitude, Charisma, Appearance, Looks, Chutzpah, Luck, and Karma. Each had a value determined by the square root of 3d6-10.
Then the secondary stats. This was page two of the ”character sheet” and looked like a mathematical doctoral thesis. Calculating my characters base move required calculations not available on most supercomputers. Additionally, values were calculated for the physical attributes of your left and right arms as well as the right and left hemispheres of the character’s brains. By the way, Elves are right brain and dwarves are left brain. Speaking of which, then came the racial adjustments. I still can’t understand why elves needed to be in hexadecimal and dwarves were octal.

Class & Skills: No classes because they are so passé. Instead, there are ”professions”. Individual skills covered any conceivable action. Some of the better choices were Move in Armor, Fight in Armor, Draw Weapon, Draw Arrow, Move in Darkness and Accidentally Set Off Traps (I have no idea why you would need a skill to accidentally do something. Or why you would even take it.) After allocating a meager amount of skill points, it was quickly apparent that most beginning characters would more than likely fail their Walk and Chew Gum Skill roll.

Advantages and Disadvantages were determined by random rolls on a set charts based on some sort of insane combination of Tarot, IRS tax tables and logarithm tables. So my might Elf wizard had one leg, was color blind with a lazy eye and missing his front teeth. On the bright side, I had an aptitude for swordsmanship, dashing good looks (despite the missing teeth and lazy eye) and an excellent runner.
Equipment was purchased via of the random wealth and haggling table. I was luck and got Rolling in Money. Unfortunately, I forgot to get Power Haggling as a skill. So with that I ended up paying outrageous prices for poor quality armor. My low skills prevented me from things like, oh, anything a wizard would need.
After six hours of theoretical mathematics, the characters were done. My one-legged color blind Elf wizard, a hemophiliac dwarf fighter suffering from giantism, a human bard with Tourrette’s syndrome, a narcoleptic halfing rouge (this does give him a bonus to accidentally Set Off Traps) and a Half-Dragon Half-Demon Half-Drow Half-Elf babe (AKA the GM’s current S.O.) were ready for action!

Wandering Monsters

The Cat Piss Man had decided to start a new D&D campaign but this time he insisted that we game at his house. His house was decorated in the styles of Freshman Dorm Room and New World Landfill Chic. It was a geological history of the local fast food industry. The bottom layer consisted mostly of cartons from the Chinese restaurant that went out of business about three years ago after The Great Tofu Substitute Scandal while the newly opened BBQ place down the road had earned a place at the top of the food pyramid. As a DM, he was fast and loose with the rules; part Monty Haul and part Killer. So you always ended up with lots of swag until your 20th Level Half Dragon Drow Paladin/Assassin/Ninja/Wizard got polymorphed into a hermaphroditic paraplegic Halfling just before a soul devouring demon disintegrated you. The game was progressing at a good pace. We survived the obligatory tavern scene. We had given up arguing with the Power Gamer and just let his Fanatic Good Paladin lead the party by divine right. The Dice Bitch was on Master Thief Number 6 and had grown accustomed to his position as trap detonator rather than trap disarmer. th3 d00d’s half elf nymphomancer babe with a tentacle phobia attempted to seduce anything. Rules Lawyer played a cleric and just hoped to just survive. I was playing my usual crafty wizard and just tried to stay out of the way. The session had reached that blurry eyed period somewhere between midnight and dawn when a Greater Mucus Demon attacked the party.
Dice Bitch: I back stab the demon.
th3 d00d: You gonna try a ballista this time.
Dice Bitch: Screw you. Damn I missed!
Cat Piss Man: The demon swivels its head around and attacks you. It does 35 points of damage. Save versus poison.
Dice Bitch: I fail. What happens?
Cat Piss Man: Nothing…yet
Power Gamer: He’s possessed! I know it. I attack him.
Me: You idiot! What about the demon?
Power Gamer: I got this one. You guys take the other one.
Dice Bitch: But I’m not a demon!
th3 d00d: Does it have tentacles?
Cat Piss Man: Yes
th3 d00d: Eek! I attack the giant bug instead.
Cat Piss Man: There is no giant bug.
the3 d00d: Yeah, there is. It’s attacking Rules Lawyer.
Rules Lawyer: I’m being attacked! I retreat!
Cat Piss Man: There is no giant bug!
Th3 d00d: I try to seduce the bug.
Power Gamer: I fly into a berserker rage and attack the demon and the bug!
Dice Bitch: I’m not a demon!
Me: I thought you were a paladin.
Cat Piss Man: There is no giant BUG!
Power Gamer: I’m a paladin/berserker.
Cat Piss Man: You can’t do that.
Power Gamer: You’re trying to screw me. You approved of the character. Here’s your initials on the sheet.
Rules Lawyer: Can I get away from the giant bug?
Cat Piss Man: THERE IS NO GIANT BUG!
Me: It’s right there.
Rules Lawyer: Yes, there is. Right next to my mini. Wait, it was there. Where’d it go?
Dice Bitch: It’s on the pizza.
Me: My God. That is the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen.
Rules Lawyer: I don’t feel well. I think we should call it a night.
We all agreed… to never game Cat Piss Man’s place again.

So just does what one round mean?

Yeah, there was debate about this on one.  Wait do we need to tell you that one is the loneliest number? It’s fascinating like a train wreck when people bicker over something as silly as what does the wording of 1 Round actually mean. It’s simple. One round means just that one round.  Oh, don’t go all rules lawyer on us.  This should be a pretty simple matter of counting to one.