There are times when a campaign gets long in the tooth. While the game play might still be enjoyable, there are times when the players and/or GM will get the urge to move on to the next campaign, the next system, or the next idea. It’s a natural progression of things, so if you’re...
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Hello and welcome to “Di’s 7 Swords of TRPG Design,” a highly egotistic [proclamation] on Tabletop RPG design and gamemastery. What I mean by this is that I plan to declare my views and opinions on what I believe makes a good game — be it from the design angle or the gamemastery...
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Recently, WizKids has released several sets of interlocking three-dimensional tiles (called WarLock) that can be used to physically build encounter locations. This is clearly their answer to Dwarven Forge tile sets, and while it isn’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination, it is also very,...
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Oftentimes, it’s the journey that makes the adventure. At least, that is the case with most tabletop RPGs. It’s about the friends you make and the struggles you encounter and work together to solve. When it comes to finding a way to play with others, the struggle can be a frustrating...
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It is now March 127th; in the meaningless blur of time that 2020 has become, I’ve picked up a new hobby that I will continue to inflict on all of you: making frankly unnecessary amounts of tabletop terrain. Since I’ve started, I’ve noticed a trend: nearly all of the...
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Today is my 47th birthday. That means that in about a week, I’ll be celebrating my 37th year as a role player since I got my first red box set about a week after turning 10. How times flies when you’re having fun, right? At this time last year, I talked about character birthdays and...
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GM: A red ball of flame hurls through the- Player: Fireball *yawn* GM: A greenish-yellow cloud of smoke appears from- Player: Cloudkill *yawn* GM: A purple arc of negative energy rips toward you from the sorcerer’s fingertips. Player: Eh? What the? I don’t know what the spell is. Run!...
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I recently started an Icons campaign and was working through character generation, including working on character backgrounds. I find character backgrounds in superhero stories to be very useful for the GM, as it gives you a lot of ideas of the NPCs in the character’s lives as well as how their...
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In the continuation of my “interesting” articles, I’m going to talk about rural locations today. Most folks conflate “rural” with “wilderness,” and this just isn’t the case. Yes, rural areas are on the verge of the wilderness, but it’s also...
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All of the Star Wars campaigns I’ve run have been set in the same version of the Star Wars Universe. What this means is, I’m assuming that whatever happened in a previous Star Wars campaign, those events happened in the next campaign that I facilitate. I’ve run campaigns set in the Knights of the...
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