Month: April 2020

The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create the Most Interesting Story for Your Character by James D’Amato

The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create the Most Interesting Story for Your Character by James D’Amato

The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is an excellent resource for anyone who is looking to create or improve their role-playing character back stories.

James D’Amato utilizes his training in impromptu theater to craft questions that guide readers through story creation. Some of the prompts are funny, most are entertaining, and all touch on essential elements of a character.

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The book is divided into character levels, so there’s something for beginners to the more advanced gamer.

Role playing games are fun because of the interaction between players and their characters. By taking the time to create a detailed backstory, you’re giving the gift of hours of entertainment for both yourself and your gaming buddies.

Highly recommended.

Peanuts Treasury by Charles M. Schulz

Peanuts Treasury by Charles M. Schulz

Some works of fiction, after enchanting countless readers, become classics, a touchstone of culture for generations. I would submit “Peanuts”, created by Charles Schulz, as one of these classics.

The existential struggles of the boy named Charlie Brown, the adventures (real and imagined) of his beagle, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang, seem timeless.

Charlie Brown wants to fly his kite, but it is always getting “eaten” by the “kite-eating tree.” He pitches for a baseball team that never wins. He tries to kick a football, but it is always removed at the last moment.

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And yet, Charlie Brown soldiers on.

I first read Peanuts in dusty paperback books kept in the spare bedroom at my grandparents’ house. Through lazy Sunday afternoons or the occasional sleepover, I learned the names of all the Peanut characters and their defining traits.

My favorite was Schroeder, the virtuoso on his tiny piano. I even had a watch with piano keys on the plastic band and Schroeder on the watch face, pounding out his music as the second hands ticked by. I loved that watch so much – I wore through the plastic wristband, replaced it, and wore through it a second time.

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When I read Peanuts Treasury, it transported me back to a time when my biggest concern was finishing my homework before the end of the weekend and to a sense of comfort that family members who loved me were just in the next room. It was a nice escape from the current reality, where my biggest concerns seem so impossibly out-of-my-hands and loved ones are all in their separate spaces.

Recommended for readers who are looking to spend a few hours away from this world and in the life of a boy who never succeeds and never ever gives up.