Hints, Clues, and Description
IcebergTitanic had a question that will...
Read MoreScott is an engineer turned gnome and game store owner. He lies awake at night building intriguing worlds and plotting your character's demise.
Posted by Scott Martin | Jan 20, 2012 | GMing Advice
IcebergTitanic had a question that will...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Jan 12, 2012 | Specific RPGs
I’m filled with curiosity about 5e, as I’m sure Wizards...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Jan 5, 2012 | GMing Advice, Specific RPGs
With our regular game canceled last week, we...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Dec 22, 2011 | GMing Advice
Fred Hicks linked off to an article by Stephen...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Dec 8, 2011 | Gaming Trends, GMing Advice
Recently, I’ve been reading the five Otori...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Nov 23, 2011 | GMing Advice
Last week, some friends were discussing...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Nov 11, 2011 | GMing Advice, Specific RPGs
The fight ended with a hurrah around the table;...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Oct 26, 2011 | Crock Pot
Dipping a ladle into our suggestion pot, I see...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Oct 11, 2011 | Specific RPGs, Spotlight
At our last roleplaying meetup, we cast about...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Sep 22, 2011 | GMing Advice
Caring about characters is a tricky thing. Many...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Sep 8, 2011 | Gaming Trends, GMing Advice, Specific RPGs
A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about...
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Aug 18, 2011 | GMing Advice
Pixedragon asked (in the suggestion pot) about several things that often tangle together into a big knot: mysteries, clues, and the GM’s spotlight versus the player’s flashlights.
One thing that a good railroaded adventure (or module) has going for it is coherence. Because the players don’t have many options, the GM can spend a lot of effort working on the scenes that they know will happen. Even in a less structured game, the GM is still (usually) the arbiter of scene setting. There are at least two paths a GM can take when the game starts grinding gears.
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Aug 4, 2011 | Gaming Trends
For the last year, the local organized environment featured just 4th Edition D&D. One Pathfinder Society GM ran a table, but had the same players show up consistently and wound up closing his table and running it as a campaign. A few home groups met publicly for a week or two to recruit an extra player, Call of Cthulhu recruited and filled two tables for months, but everything else sputtered and died. Until recently. … If your local store doesn’t have a thriving community, that can change quickly. It just takes one dedicated person. (Ideally, though, you’ll have a bench of other GMs ready in case it takes off–running every week can be grueling.)
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Jul 13, 2011 | Gaming Trends, Specific RPGs
Today a GM came in and asked to talk about laying out a new plot....
Read MorePosted by Scott Martin | Jun 21, 2011 | Gaming Conventions
This weekend, we organized and threw our first...
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