Want to write better adventures? Want to prep more efficiently? Sick of players skipping all of your best content? Prep Smarter, Not Harder, with Encounter Theory Encounter Theory: The Adventure Design Workbook is a fresh way to look at adventure design by Ben Riggs, the voice of the...
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Learn how Daniel Kwan fosters positive, collaborative relationships with the members of his gaming table with two resources that you might not find at your local game store.
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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, standing...
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It’s International Tabletop Game Day and I am lucky enough to be at a friend’s house to run a rousing game of Pasión de las Pasiones. I walk in to the smell of something delicious and the sizzle of a hot pan on the stove. Fellow gnome Camdon is standing in the kitchen and he’s got piles of...
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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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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about taking the first step to becoming a GM. It can be nerve wracking to cross the screen and run a game for the first time. Our organized play society, though, needs more GMs. I fear that if we ask our existing GMs to provide all the games that players want,...
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Experience tends to be the defining metric when discussing whether someone is a good or great GM. That precious commodity that’s measured in years, campaigns, or game systems. It’s also something that gamers new to being behind the screen tend to focus on too much. The reality being that within...
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I love it when my gaming interests intersect with real life – or at least – the lives of our family’s mini-mes. The First Born’s final class assignment for her social studies unit on the medieval period was to construct a catapult. So, armed with scrap wood from my shop, an instructional...
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One of the best ways to learn is by watching other GMs work. Being a player gives you perspective – often a better perspective than what’s offered from behind the screen. Good practices. Bad practices. You can learn from all of it. Here are some of things I’ve learned about the GMing craft by...
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First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with techniques used to prepare for a game. A broader look at the process is here. GMing is an art form; no two GMs will prepare in...
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Hey you. Yeah, you. Do you know about Gnomecast 21? Why isn’t it in the archives? What are they hiding? If you value your safety… don’t go searching for Gnomecast 21…
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Focal Point
Unframed
Odyssey
Never Unprepared
Masks
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Misdirected Mark Productions
Rockerboys and Vending Machines
Character Cache
Hydro Hacker Operatives