Lupinator

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    • Hey Scott, I was just checkin up on Shard and decided to get an account here. How you've been? Keeping busy?

      I'm going to art school in the fall, so that should be fun.

      To everyone else, my name is Bryan Mischke and I'm a fairly decent pencil artist. I do a lot of other things more tempararily than that.

      If you want to see my work you can find the link in my profile.

      See ya.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Lupinator ().

    • RE: Lupinator

      Hey Bryan!!!!

      Welcome to the forum!

      It's really great to hear from you!

      I actually just got back from two conventions in a row! So, sorry it took several days to answer back...

      The first was Origins, in Columbus,...and the second was Anthrocon in Pittsburgh! I'm exhausted!

      Let me tell you,...our reception in both places was phenomenal, but ESPECIALLY at Anthrocon, where the game of SHARD was embraced wholeheartedly! We sold out of the Basic Compendium (our core rulebook) in the first day and a half! I never imagined there would be so many gamers there in attendance!

      Cool news about you attending art school! Great to be back in the states eh? Let me know how all of that goes!

      Scottie ^^
    • RE: Lupinator

      Haha... I know this is a little late :3 but yeah man, furries are some of the biggest nerds out there. They are all over the gamer market.

      Anyways, I know you are gonna be super successful so long as you just keep on advertizing your product and I can tell you're gonna be a cult hit at the very least.

      As for the rest of my life... it's gone through great transformations. I'm now trying to make some bucks so I can do this study abroad thing this fall. Sorry I've kinda fallen off the face of the planet, I have a habit of foresaking my online life when IRL gets too busy.

      Anyways, I hope by now you have lots of business and ideas for other productions well on the way!

      You take care man.
    • RE: Lupinator

      Hi, Do you know much about the Shard game? I just got the RPG and love this world they created. I have been only invloved in gaming for a short while, it been just about a year. I am involved with a Savage World game everyother Sat and Sunday we play Ironclaw where my boyfriend is GM and then we do another game on Monday. I have learned to love the creative end of gaming. You here so many horror stories about gaming if they only new the truth. Well, I am thinking GM Shard as my first game what do you think? I am a little nerous because I don't know to much about GMing. What advice would you give me? I would love to here from whoever can help me understand the game from the GM prespective and what his job intales.
      8)
      Barbara C
    • RE: Lupinator

      Hey there Barbara!

      I met Bryan (Lupinator) online awhile back checking out his cool art, and he and I have been gabbing about SHARD, RPG stuff, and art stuff off and on ever since!

      I'm hoping there may be a free moment in his or my hectic schedule to collaborate on a piece I can use for some future publication!

      Whew Barbara! You've asked the million-dollar question about running games!

      GM-ing for me (especially during the development of SHARD with Aaron) has always been a matter of two really important things:

      1. Setting up a good initial story-line upon which to base an ongoing campaign plot, specifically one that can fairly easily include all the chosen characters of the players.

      2. Creating a fairly full cast of NPC's to include, generally, the members of the House, village, or other such organization the characters belong to, the primary allies that he players might interact with, and the primary enemies the characters will eventually have to deal with during the course of at least the first part of the campaign...

      The process of setting of both these things will automatically create opportunities of inspiration that will help you come up with great individual encounters and adventures that you'll enjoy stringing together like beads on the "campaign necklace"...

      I found it most useful to record the storyline line as a big, multi-level ongoing outline that I keep in a little binder that I can reference and page through as necessary during play... As any particular gaming session continues I'll jot down all sorts of notes during the night, and then when the game is done I'll take a few minutes to sit down and fill in any further details that happened, thus continuing to expand the campaign's outline... This outline then serves the purpose of always allowing us to look back and compare notes when we start to forget some important story detail later on...and to give me something to use to catch players back up on whatever was going on last game to get them right back into the "moment" where we left off playing last time... (it helps to end the game on a cliff-hanger for cinematic effect)...

      Soon you'll discover that your setting has become a living, breathing world for you players, a veritable fantasy soap-opera filled with NPCs that they either love,...or love to hate... and a whole series of adventures linked one-to-the-other that you can easily look back on to inspire new threads of interaction or re-introduce old problems and villains that the players had all but forgotten!

      Just pretend that you are producing a SHARD version of LOST, with your players as the heroes!!!

      Oh,...and music... Oh yes,...theme music... I actually collect CDs of movie sound-tacks and scores that I ALWAYS have set up to play key, chosen pieces as a background to various parts of my game's scenes... I have literally HUNDREDS of collected CDs that I choose from,...and I have specific tracks that I use from each one that seem perfect for the various different scenes that crop up in each game session... I've got several pieces I use as intro theme music when I'm first starting the game, and I have somber music that I use when discussing dire events, or when the players are having some serious council with other NPCs... I have music during sad scenes, and music I use when the players are in the heat of combat or deep in a magic ritual,...etc...

      NOTHING adds gravity and depth to a scene like a great piece of background music... And my own players will now demand that I put some piece of music on when I sometimes forget... It's awesome! When things really get going, I've actually been able to make my players cry when mixing a really emotional scene with a well-chosen piece of music... Listening to some of the special music we had made for our main SHARD site might give you an idea of the "flavor" of music I often use...

      Anyway,...a good place to start with getting ideas for running your own games is the Downloads section here on the forums, where you can get PDFs of the various mini-adventures that we've created to help new fans of SHARD get started... Reading through those will help new GMs start to get a good feel for the "flow" of running a game, and will inspire new situations that can be easily based on the presentation of the simple scenarios we present within those little adventures...

      Check 'em out,...and let us know what you think!

      Scottie ^^