Category: GMing Advice

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...

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!...

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...

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...

Alignment has been part of role playing pretty much from the get-go. It’s been around so long that it feels baked right in. Modern approaches in gaming have bucked that trend, though. I consider this a good thing as I’ve never liked the cop-out of, “I’m doing it because...

There are quite a few books and source materials out there to generate cities of all sizes and some of these even include the amenities or businesses that exist within the urban area. These are great skeletons to build details onto. You have to know that there are three bakeries in the city before...

In continuing with a theme of how to use small details to make your worlds more interesting, I’m going to talk about plant matter to make things a little more deep and fun to play around in. I’ll openly admit that I’m not an expert when it comes to plants, herbs, spices, natural...