GreyGhostGames

Here you will find all the information regarding Jonathan Snyder's projects released for the awesome FUDGE game system.

I GMed my very first game!

This blog entry is a little late, but I still think it's important since many new people are always wondering what it would be like to GM a game.

I know for me I was extremely nervous thinking of all the worse case scenarios that could happen to me. From completely botching up the story to being ostracized from the Fudge IRC channel. All of these fears were completely unfounded as you soon will find out.

My first GM experience crept up on me. My original plan was to watch, practice on my own, and ask questions of the experts. This changed when my good friend Jonas aka "Fudgebob" on the IRC chat said to me, "Hey, why don't you run a game?" I immediately began the wishy-washy-maybes, but he smoothly talked me in to running a game that Saturday.

As I logged off the computer the realization sunk in of what I had just done and I did not even have a story! So, for the next two days (as Saturday was only three days away) I worked feverishly on a story and with all my own print outs, cheat sheets I made to keep from screwing up, and a step by step of the story I logged in to run the game. I lucked out with have only fudgebob and I thought to myself, "Whew, this shouldn't be to difficult."

Boy, was I wrong! To all you Newbie GMs, the first thing you need to get out of your mind is that the story will go the way that you thought it out. It NEVER goes that way. Players are a unpredictable variable in the world of RPGs. When you would think they would try one thing, they try another and that is usually something you did not plan for.

My first experience in the game is when I had a little dinosaur steal a piece of vital equipment and I wanted fudgebob to chase it in to the field and wind up in a nest of them, but low and behold, Fudgebob decided to try to charm it and he rolled pretty good that I'm like, "Great! He just tamed the reptile. That wasn't part of the plan!" Let alone, he wouldn't enter the plains where I wanted too, try to forge the river where I had dinosaurs waiting for him. He just simply went his own way.

After two sessions though, I was graced with another player, shyann (another original thinker who threw me for a loop). After battles with veloci-raptors and collecting their weapons fudgebob and shyann finally got to the goal where I had a sleeping T-Rex waiting for them. I made sure the weather hampered their ability to see so I could at least have one surprise on them. The surprise worked and I sat there chuckling to see how they were going to get their goal without getting eaten.

Low and behold, they wanted to rig all their grenades together to make a super bomb to blow the T-Rex up! I couldn't believe it. I made the task hard to do, but they succeeded! I made their ability to sneak up on it hard to do and they made it! suffice to say, my only little surprise wound up being pummeled by a energy grenade explosion. Suffice to say, the mission did not go according to how I wanted it to go, but this is something I'm glad that happened.

If the story had gone by the book, my job would have been boring. I would not have had the chance to think on my feet without letting my players know that they had just stumped me. It is something that you should revel in and try your best.

Fudgebob was excellent in pointing out mistakes I made and taught me how to go with the flow, How to allow the players to describe their victory when they won instead of me. Do not be scared of GMing. It's a fun experience that I enjoy more then playing. To be able to watch my players panic because they think they are about to be eaten gives you such a happy feeling (in an evil sort of way). Stories are interactive and I know these adventures will live in my mind longer then any video game will.

If you want to know more about the game that was run or want to try it yourself. You can find it on the FudgeRPG repository as “A Fudgey Tale: Tears of the Jungle”.

Role-playing with Camels

Do not take the title seriously. I have not mastered the art of teaching a camel how to role play let alone throw fudge dice...yet. I thought it would be a catchy title for this blog entry. The subject, which was inspired by a conversation with our Ann Dupuis, is about role-playing in the combat zone.

Role playing permeates our society on all levels and the military is no different. The men and women in uniform do not just deposit their love of games and their hobbies at the door when they put on this uniform.

I, myself, am in the United States Air Force presently deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation: Enduring Freedom and nothing has changed for me. I sit at my little section on the maintenance work bench with my laptop running, with my Fudge dice lying beside my machine and the Fudge rulebook open to the page I was just reading. The only difference being that I've got sand in my rulebook. Life is stressful over here with many people stuck in together in close quarters with each other and games are a way of relaxing.

What is the thing I'm trying to say? Am I just rambling? There is a good chance of that, but what I want to say is games are important here. It keeps our minds off of what is going on outside the wire and the possibility of some random mortar coming in silently and taking us out.

I sit at my little spot with my computer online, papers all around me for the FUDGE game that I'm GMing through the IRC chat listening to the advice of my friend Jonathan Susara on how to run the game while trying to keep up with all the information and questions being put to me. It is great to just concentrate on the game that I'm playing instead of what is going on around me. You do not know how nice it is to look up from my computer thinking, "where am I? oh, that's right. Afghanistan." Role playing is a way that I can escape the stress here temporarily.

This is the first part of a little blog post I am going to try to write. I am a FUDGEr and have not yet been able to convince my friends to play just yet, but there is a Gaming group here in Bagram that I have not yet been able to make contact yet (as of the workload and they are on the other side of the base, a good hour an half trip by bus there and back). They play Dungeons and Dragons and I'm hoping to go and see them and maybe get their stories for all of us here.

So, look forward to that post hopefully forthcoming. Have a great day and keep throwing those fudge dice!

Snyder's Insanity & A Fudge Tale: Ice Princess

I don't know what came over Ann. She allowed me to have a blog on her site! Is that crazy or what?

Well, greetings and welcome to the official Blog of JTGames (a nifty little name I came up with for the release of FUDGEy and gave me an excuse to use my little mascot).

I've got to admit it. It's probably the reason that I like RPGs all together, but I got a thing for Princesses and Princesses in distress. So, here I have an age old concept that has been used more times that I can count (cause I can't count that high) and I wanted to give it a little twist.

So, uploaded to the Repository of knowledge on this great old Grey Ghost Game site is the JTGames release of "A Fudge Tale: Ice Princess".

I do have a goal of releasing new Fudge Tales per month so there is always an influx of new content and ideas for all you FUDGErs out in the world so stay tuned!

Shallow Graves - My First FUDGE game!

What do you get when you have a loud mouth trash talking Ghost Knight and an executioner with a sense of humor? I had no clue either until I played my very first FUDGE adventure!

I know, I know. How can this be my first FUDGE game when I'm writing content for the game system? Well, that just shows you how awesome FUDGE is, when I can put my creativity to it and just from reading the rules. Thanks to IRC, I was able to join a game with Knaight as our GM and Jonas "fudgebob dicepants" Susara as the humorous executioner.

Our GM, Knaight, had us pick a setting and we opted for his Shallow Graves. A high medieval fantasy with whole bunch of undead running around with as many cheesy moments as zombies. He had asked for a description of our characters -- I later found out we were using the Fudge on the Fly system (more information here) -- and I chose to be a Ghost Knight, a soldier out to hunt down and destroy all things evil while Jonas picked up an executioner out of work since his master was turned into a zombie.

Like any good story it started off with Sir Gossam, the Ghost Knight and AxeBeard the executioner sitting at a table eating their meals.

The two of you were interrupted from your meal in the tavern by a most unfortunate coincidence. A "lightning strike" hit the roof, and now its on fire. Furthermore, there is a sound outside that sounds something like bones clattering and something like a xylophone.

On exiting the burning building (which in hind sight we completely ignored) we found a large spear-wielding skeleton in mail armor, 2 smaller ones, a fat necromancer, and another skeleton playing on some sort of bone xylophone. Why was he playing? We never found out as Axebeard went to smash the skeleton in, wound up blocked by the larger one and then we were both challenged by the necromancer to beat his new creation.

The whole thing turned out to be a test of a new abomination. The necromancer even had company, a beautiful woman who could float in the air with her own fancy sword with strange markings on it. The battle began with the Executioner using his battle axe, Matilda, against the new spear wielding skeleton, while my idiotic Knight decided to take on the woman who was far superior in all ways.

The battle was fun with Axebeard smashing through the skeletons and Gossam getting pummeled by the flying female.

The floating woman parries Sir Gossams strike effortlessly, then pounds his face with her pommel. "This is fun. We should do this more often."

SirGossam stumbles back spitting out blood and glares at the woman. "Gloat all ya want, wench. We'll see how you like it at the end."

I'm fighting with already a -3 on my superb swordsman skill since the dice only give me a zero or a one. I honestly was laughing out loud while playing cause I found it funny that Gossam's loud mouth continued to trash talk while these girl was effortlessly pummeling him to death.

Suffice to say after I nicked her (and that nick was a Superb roll on the dice!) she kicked a hissy fit and left accusing me of damaging "art". So glad she did not turn around and turn me in to something like a undead gnat. From that point on we chased the Necromancer through the city, fought off his magical serpent (which by the way, Jonas got a nice +3 snagging that ornery snake and then pummeling it to powder).

We found that the Necromancer was trying to get in to the Viper Cult with his new creation, but thanks to a bad perception (had fair and rolled a zero) the necromancer wound up getting the floating woman's sword through the head. We ended the session with discovering a strange spider tattoo on the dead necromancer and the executioner removed it...quite graphically.

I cannot say how excited I was after completing that session. I had looked up from my computer for the first time since playing and found three hours had gone by! I am definitely hooked on continuing to play the FUDGE system. It took a little bit in getting started, but thanks to the patience of both Knaight and Fudgebob, I learned why everybody enjoys the system so much!

In ending, I absolutely enjoyed playing my trash talking Knight even with him getting pummeled and beat around by a floating girl. I learned a lot about what goes in to playing the game and how fun using your imagination truly is. Those kids with their video games are missing out on a lot!

Also, Knaight wanted me to add this disclaimer so here you go!

<b>Knaight claims that Alchemquest is a far, far better setting and this is deliberately cliche ridden!</b>

You can find the full game log at:

http://www.jtworld.net/JTgames/sessions/20101127_shallowgraves.txt

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