As many of my close circle of friends know, I was late to play the fifth edition of the world’s greatest role playing game. It’s a long story, but the fourth edition of the game burned me badly enough, I didn’t want to risk my time, energy, and money on the next version. I have...
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There was a tendency, when I was running years ago, to run into players that would use the following logic, “you can do anything in an RPG, so let’s do [insert thing not well supported by the game or setting].” Because I have been running a lot more roleplaying games that have a...
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I have a bad habit of overloading myself at conventions, and I know I’m far from the only one. There’s just so many games and so little time and I want to do it all. In particular, I tend to load my schedule with GMing. I can’t help it; I see the event registration open up and I...
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While I was at Queen City Conquest two weeks ago, I ran a handful of games during the weekend as well as got to play a few games. During the weekend, I was very happy to see how quickly people at the table would start making table tents for their characters. I have been doing this for a while at...
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We all start somewhere — many of us with D&D, although certainly there are a myriad of entry points to gaming. Whatever you start with ends up being the thing you’re most comfortable with, because it’s the thing you’ve been doing the longest. I started in D&D and...
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Back in March of this year, I wrote a series of three articles about PC backgrounds. You can find part one, part two, and part three with their respective hyperlinks. Today, I’m going to be talking about NPC backgrounds. You’ll notice that this is going to be roughly one-third the size...
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It would be a shame to not use all your toys in this situation simply because you reasonably limited your campaign to one rule system… Share43Tweet4Reddit1EmailIf you’re like me and play multiple games from different companies, you probably have multiple products for different...
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As a GM, do you really get to play like everyone else at the table? Do you get to enjoy the setting and the rules of a game in the same way? Do you experience the unexpected as deeply as you would from the perspective of a single character? Do you get to feel like you’re one of the party,...
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I am currently writing this post with my nose, as my arms are hanging uselessly from my sides like two of those sticky hands from grocery store vending machines; please forgive any typos. You see, being in the midst of what looks suspiciously like a full-fledged midlife crisis, I recently signed...
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Tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be obtaining my 46th level as a human being. I also received my very first RPG product (the Mentzer D&D red box set) a week or so after my 10th birthday. This means that this month, I’ll be bumping up to a level 36 RPG slinger with the archetype of...
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