The Colorado Team Role-Playing Championship 2006 is coming to Genghis Con!

Of course, whenever I thank anyone, I always forget to thank people,
so here are some belated thanks from RP-Artisans! And read down below
for some exciting news.

The Game Dream is over. Time to wake up and answer some tough questions.

This week's Game Dreams question is very relevant to character provided events.

Participate in this new tradition – this is the fourth year of the championship! Teams of five to six players compete for the title of "Colorado Team Role Playing Champions".

In this first in a series of articles about RPG Player psychology, we'll cover the need that players feel to be useful. Keeping this in mind can help us read our players when Game Mastering, and to write more balanced scenarios.

The results of the TactiCon 2004 GM rating program, sponsored and run by RP-Artisans, shows more interesting trends is what games seem to be more fun & better run.

Also, people seem to be being more honest on the rating sheets.

One often overlooked aspect of play, especially competitive play, is Sportsmanship. Role-Playing Games in general have a dubious relationship with Sportsmanship, as certain games emphasize an adversarial relationship between players, or between the players and the Game Master. However, the mark of a truly great Role-Player? is the abilty to Role-Play? their character to the hilt, while still helping new players, bringing out shy players, and taking an appropriate share of the GM's time. This article discusses why good players fall short of great becuase of poor Sportsmanship.

Once again, RP-Artisans presented the Colorado gaming community with the opportunity to kick their creativity into high gear with Mad-Hacks: Once Upon a [BLANK]. Artisan Scott Dunphy wrote this delightful new take on the Mad-Hacks concept.

24 People took up the 1st Annual Colorado Role-Playing Challenge at Tacticon 2004. The eclectic 2-round event, written by Artisan Mike Kenyon, challenged a number of different aspects of role-playing, and truly demostrated the RP-Artisans motto, "Forging the Future of Organized Gaming(tm). Long-time Colorado gamer Ken Ritchart returned from his convention hiatus, walked away with the top honors, and the coveted Glass Rose.

The image features (heads from left) Round Two players Lance Christensen, Jason Adam, and Ken Ritchart, as well as event author Mike Kenyon, and event coordinator Scott Dunphy

This is the last in a series of articles explaining the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm)

The principles we've gone over in the previous 5 articles apply to players as well.

This is the fifth in a series of articles explaining the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm).

Fun is the whole reason we are here, and too often GMs get caught up in technicalities and forget this core principle.

This is the fourth in a series of articles explaining the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm).

The amount of attention you pay to the game directly relates to how much fun everyone has. If you are chatting with your friends during the game, the players will quickly become annoyed. You owe the players your full attention, and they owe you their full attention. If they aren't giving it, tell them! Chances are, if the game were engaging them, they wouldn't want to talk to people outside the game.

This is the third in a series of articles explaining the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm)

The GM is part storyteller, part actor, and part rules judge. You need to make sure that you treat all the players, and yourself fairly when wearing each hat. One thing that always sticks in players' craws is being treated unfairly.

The is the second in a series of 5 articles outlining the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm),

The GM sets the tone and mood for the game from the first seconds of play. If the GM doesn't want to be there, doesn't like the scenario, or dislikes one or more of the players, their grumpiness will rub off on the players, and can build a mood of antagonism. The more Positive Energy they bring to the table, the more will be generated by the players.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring the RP-Artisans 5 Principles of Great Gaming(tm).

The better you know what you are running, the more you can concentrate on actually running it. The more practice you have, the easier it will be.

The tips below are distilled from a lot of time spent writing character-provided tournament scenarios. They cover a lot of "best-practices" stuff, as well as warning you away from all-too-common "worst-practices".

I get asked from time to time to define what a gaming convention is.

I wanted to give people a guide to what a gaming convention is, and what they might expect to find there.

Daniel Llewellyn, Steve Wales and I sat down one year and created a document that describes all our experiences in running Role Playing at conventions, and I wanted to write this article to bring people's attention to it.

You can find a PDF of it in our file galleries: RPG Coordinators Manual

When sitting down to plot a character-provided event, what process do you use to lay things out? I thought I'd share the process that I have used successfully. This article is a companion to writing PCs for character-provided events.

After participating in one of the events I helped co-wrote, such as Barbarian Lives, people often ask me, "How did you come up with those characters!"

I've learned a lot about doing it over the years, and I thought I would share the process that I and my co-writers (such as Daniel Llewellyn) have used in the past when creating a cohesive party of characters for a convention event.

This article is the companion to Plotting Character-Provided Convention events

This article is in response to "Game Dream 6: Everybody Chaka Con" by Doc. You can read the original article and other responses at:
http://www.docsblog.com/archives/000278.html

In this article we seek to explain what our organization is all about.

A guy named Doc is asking questions as writing/idea exercises on his website. This continues the tradition started by a girl named Ginger. This article is a response to his first question about voice in RPGs.

As promised at GenghisCon 2004, we have posted the criteria used to score the Colorado Team Role-Playing Championship 2004.

Compiled statistics on all of the Game Masters that submitted results for the Genghis Con 2004.

Genghis Con 2004 was a very big event for us. We ran four events in eight of the nine role-playing slots. In all we ran 17 tables – more than we ran in all of 2003!

Results of the RP-Artisans competitions held at Genghis Con 2004.

Download the PCs that will be used for the Colorado Team Role-Playing Championship 2004 at Genghis Con.

Before Genghis Con 2004: Game information for the event will be made available on this RP-Artisans website. This information will include background information and character sheets for all 6 player characters.

Of Swords and Dragons
As told by the late Rautucio

This story begins more than a century and a half before the current year, but it is far from ended. There is sorrow and joy, death and birth, treachery and loyalty in what has already been written of this tale. And now it is yours to continue, for great stories never end…

At Tacticon 2003 we implemented a new GM Rating System to replace the RPGA Scoring System (which they discontinued). The new system is based on the 5 Principles of Great GMing and information about the system can be found here at RP-Artisans.org.

You can download the new GM Rating Sheet for use at your own gatherings.

At Ben Con 2003 we ran our first event; a team tournament module named “For My Brood”. But Tacticon 2003 was our first big push to bring high quality games and a higher level of play back to Colorado. We ran four events over two days and had a great time.

Results of the 2003 Colorado Team Role Playing Championship. The big winners: team M.O.T.H.E.R. Read more for details!

Colorado Team Role Playing Championship 2003
Character Creation Rules

This year's competition will consist of two parts: character creation and
the role-playing scenario at Ben Con 03. This document details the rules for
character creation.