When I play an RPG, it’s all about the story. Sure, I enjoy the mechanics and tactical stuff too, but if the narrative of the game is lacking, I’m going to lose interest. If there’s no reason for the PCs to be interacting with each other and the game world, then I figure I may as well be playing a...
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A Task in Need of a Tool Back in March, I was in a position I didn’t expect to be in. I was doing a lot of pre-work to have actual play and live streams of my new version of Iron Edda live for when the Kickstarter launched in July. (It’s live now, go check it out!) I’d run online...
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In our hobby and industry, there are quite a few terms of jargon tossed about. Not all of them are specific or unique to tabletop gaming, but for enough of them we gamers have our own definitions. SomeoneStor new to RPGs might need a little guidance on understanding what we’re saying when we...
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Summer. It’s that time of the year, where publishers launch new games during the major gaming conventions. With all sorts of new games hitting the market, we gobble them up, anxious to get them to the table. The problem is we already have a game we are playing. And so comes the age-old conundrum...
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Stealth GMing Over the past few years my game mastering to playing ratio has significantly shifted towards running games. I love both roles, but now that I understand more about GMing role playing games I am certain I have become a very different (read: better) participant overall. Sometimes when...
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For those of us who have gamed for a long time (I just hit 35 years of RPG experience myself), it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that not everyone is a gamer, or that “gamer” is really a spectrum. There are those folks that only like Yahtzee and Spades. There are folks that...
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At its core, the art of writing convention game descriptions for the preregistration website or booklet is all about setting expectations. They say brevity is the soul of wit, but it is also a necessity when it comes to writing convention descriptions where the word (or even character) count is...
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A continuation of last month’s article, where we took some maps, turned the one of Italy and the Mediterranean sideways, and created coastal outlines for a summertime world-building exercise. Next step: Define nations Geographically, that means establishing borders. You’ll often hear that natural...
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A few months ago, I posted an article on why I use Safety Tools. It was met with some mixed criticism and there were a number of respectful objectors with whom I engaged in a back and forth dialog about their perceptions of how safety tools are used at the table. What I learned was that there was...
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Having a common language between the staff at a pizza place fostered good teamwork. Share12Tweet8+11Reddit1Email When I was younger, I worked at all-but-one of the pizza joints in my hometown. I guess that was my thing. One of the key things I learned about teamwork in that situation is the...
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