Putting on a Play for your RPGers

If you are like me and your idea of preparation for a night of Roleplaying is leafing through the Monster Manual a few minutes before the players arrive then you might want to skip past this article. But if you want to change your situation and prepare a bit more, or perhaps you do a lot of preparation and like background, then this article is definitely for you. I have found a program that adds a small bit of atmosphere to your game with only a little bit of preparation and a cheap program (Found it is the bargain bin so it was cheap for me).

The program that I am talking about is called American Girls. It's basically targeted towards girls between the ages of 7 and 14 who are interested in a series of books called American Girls. It takes 6 girls at different periods in history and makes them characters in plays. And the catch is, you get to right the plays.

You may be throwing your hands out in front of you saying, "Wait a minute, Joe! Why are you looking at these kinds of products?"

It was 5 bucks at Staples! I look at anything that is cheap enough and I got it because of it's potential. I sat down one evening and installed it on my computer and began to play around (no pun intended). Within a few minutes I had three characters on the screen yelling at each other and going through different emotions. I thought to myself before I bought this program, Wouldn't it be great to make a short collection of scenes that would give players an idea of who or what they are looking at in a movie format. I thought that it would be harder to manipulate but then again it's aimed at the youngest 7 year olds.

The advantages of this type of program in games to me is obvious. Fast visual explanations of how towns people are acting or responses they would give to common questions. For instance, Did you see the Dragon when it flew over town? How does the Monarch collect taxes? Which way to the Stables? Another good advantage is you don't have to remember exactly what you said, the program is storing that information for you and instead of repeating the same thing over and over again, you only have to hit the play button. Also you can make specific characters from the program be the same NPC over and over again. That way the Players can recognize visually who they are talking to or looking at from a distance, and even by voice.

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