Roleplaying Discussion Spotlight

• Character Goals - Do you give your character specific goals in a roleplaying session?
• What Gives It Meaning? - What is it that makes a roleplaying game or session truly enjoyable?
• How Can I Get In To D&D? - Help this Hub Member learn the ropes of tabletop gaming!
• All The Deets - How much detail do you establish for your character?
• Premade or Homebrew? - How do you decide what to run for your tabletop group?

Arts & Writing Discussion Spotlight

• When Doing Photoshop Stuff… - …how do you get started?
• List of Synonyms: Nice - For when you want to say something more kindly.
• List of Synonyms: To Say - For when your characters are speaking more specifically.

Click here to read the rest of this spotlight or join the discussion.

• Marauder Era Update – Oct 1, 2012
• Golden Era Update - Oct 3, 2012
• Legacy Era Update – Oct 10, 2012

As always, you can find these updates and more – plus some awesome, good old fashioned Harry Potter-inspired roleplaying at vault713.com!

• Embracing The Unknown - What are we up to this month? This post gives you the full low down as we get ready to celebrate all things spooky, scary, creepy, and horror-rific.

• Harnessing Fear - What better way to really kick your horror game to the next level than by figuring out what your players are afraid of and working it in? Manda talks about doing just that – and how to be respectful with your players innermost thoughts.

You can find these posts and more each week at CharismaBonus.com!

“Before the Mast” is officially twenty six months old!

Until now, we have written nearly 13,300 posts – or, more precisely, 438 threads, out of which 345 are already completed and 67 are ongoing. I am glad to see that more threads got finished this month, and it is remarkable, in comparison to most other sites, and we should be proud of ourselves to have only 6% unfinished threads.

Warm thanks to all the crew, to everybody who has made it possible for our writing community to flourish and for the story to get further!

As per the 1-st of October, statistics show that we have 59 male active characters and 25 female. This ratio is still OK, given that most of the females are secondary characters. Some inactive characters have been cleaned from the rosters, while others, being in temporary hiatus, duly announced, had been left in our lists, but this time, for the purpose of the statistics, only the writers who have posted in September are counted here. However, if they have posted only with one character out of several they have, all their characters are counted as active.

Click here to read the rest of this chronicle at Before The Mast.

That said, feel free to check out some of our latest news in case you missed it:

• Start of Term: Pre-Update Update - You read that correctly! Due to the mass amount of things we’ve introduced with start of term, this update includes the “starter course” on all of the new stuff we have, including the new Era set-up for the roleplaying forums.

• New Feature: Fixed Timeline Forums -  What could be better than roleplaying one day at a time in your favorite era? Having THREE eras to choose from, of course! This announcement outlines our new Fixed Timeline sections, which let you play in the Marauder Era and Next-Generation Era in addition to our existing boards that take place during Harry’s time in school.

• Character Creation Changes – Because of the new timeline set-up and a few other things, we’ve made some changes to how our character creation process works. If you’re thinking of making a new character and it’s been awhile, we recommend checking this out.

• Character Era Information – Plan to play your character primarily in the Marauder or Legacy era? Do us a favor and fill out this survey! You’ll be helping out the site and helping us get you your proper era bar in a timely fashion.

As always, you can find these announcements and more – plus some awesome, good old fashioned Harry Potter-inspired roleplaying at vault713.com!

• The Legend of Drizzt Board Game - When game night is cancelled, what do the +CB ladies do? Grab a board game and review it, of course! In this review, Kimi’s got the scoop on one of the latest “constructable dungeon” style board games from Wizards of the Coast.

• A Return To The Spanish Main - Remember those tiny boats that came in cards that you had to pop out and assemble years ago? Yeah, so do we! The Spanish Main is BACK – only this time with less tiny boats to put together.

You can find these posts and more each week at CharismaBonus.com!

• Iron Legacy an AU Song of Ice and Fire site, set approximately 100 years before the events in the first book. None of the book-canon characters are available for play, but they offer a wealth of feature characters already integrated into the game’s intricately woven storyline. Iron Legacy features a 3-2-3 rating from RPG-Rating.

You can always check out these sites and more by visiting our directory at http://directory.roleplayhub.com - you can even submit your own game, if you’d like!

• Distant Shores is a Pan-Historical roleplaying forum set in the distant world of Terra Nova, where Romans co-exist alongside bored 21st Century teenagers, devoid of their technology and distractions. Recently opened in late August 2012, they have a 3-2-3 RPG-Rating for maximum flexibility.

• Elementi Online is a unique elemental roleplay, where wars between clans cause chaos as crimes are committed in the name of their gods. All over the world, interclan hubs are being established as centers of peace between conflicting groups – New York City is one of them. Recently founded in September 2012, they have a 2-1-2 RPG-Rating.

You can always check out these sites and more by visiting our directory at http://directory.roleplayhub.com - you can even submit your own game, if you’d like!

• Following The Stars – Wars and Trek, That Is – Now that Gen Con is over, it’s time to recap some of our favorite things that we saw. What better to start with than a line up of some of the best Star Wars and Star Trek offerings?

• Fund It: Monte Cook’s Numenera – Recently on the lam from his stint working on D&D Next, famed game designer Monte Cook sat down to chat with us about his first original game from Monte Cook Games: the far, far future world of Numenera.

You can find these posts and more each week at CharismaBonus.com!

That said, feel free to check out some of our latest news in case you missed it:

• What’s Next? - Now that August is winding to a close, there’s a few important things you should take note of as we get ready for Start of Term, which is typically when the biggest changes of the year take place!

• Downtime Update -  Due to the pending upgrades to the site, it is necessary for us to take Vault 713 offline for a short period of time. Please view this announcement for more information.

As always, you can find these announcements and more – plus some awesome, good old fashioned Harry Potter-inspired roleplaying at vault713.com!