Roleplaying games are this sometimes weird mix of game and storytelling. In old games, story was almost a reluctant side effect of the game’s mechanics, so trying to recapture the magic of certain types of stories in RPGs could be a struggle. Over the years, RPGs have gotten much better about...
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Myself and six others gathered around a table strewn with red heart-shaped beads, plush fantasy animals, and adorable character sheets. We were here to play Golden Sky Age, a Dragon Age hack of Golden Sky Stories run by Modifier Podcast host Meghan Dornbrock. Golden Sky Stories is a game about...
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Recently I came across another video featuring the float test for testing die fairness. For those not familiar, the float test consists of floating your dice in a dense bath of salt water and repeatedly spinning, rolling, or shaking them and letting them settle to see if a certain face or set of...
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The big, bad villain. You know, your Black Knight, Puppet Master, Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes or Evil Mastermind. Not every adventure requires one. But if you’re stuck for ideas and you want to assemble a session that concludes on a memorable note, then you can’t go wrong having the PCs unravel the...
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Donna “Danicia” Prior is the Sparkly Princess of Social Media & Community Management. She is currently the Organized Play Manager for Catan Studio and the Executive Director of OrcaCon, the inclusive tabletop games convention. She has worked in both video games and tabletop games....
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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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Today’s guest article is a follow up to our sampling of podcasts article. Keith Garrett stepped into the guest gnome hat (we should really clean that thing after each use) and did a sampling of actual play podcasts! Check it out below! – Head Gnome John A while back we talked about...
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Genre is a powerful tool. Fantasy, Horror, Sci Fi, Historical Fiction, Anime… the definition of genre is broad and wiggly, but no matter how you’re defining it genre plays an interesting roll in how we tell our stories. While present in all media, genre is specifically a focus of...
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Our summer world-building exercise keeps zeroing in. We started with a broad overview, grabbing a continent and carving up land areas into nations. Now we’re ready to sketch out the PCs’ homeland. I’m selecting the territory in the center map, the one at the heart of the peninsula with a river...
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An interesting RPG related convergence happened this week. The incident brought into alignment the burgeoning spotlight of Actual Play entertainment, the continuing specter of character death, and the rising levels of toxic fan behavior. Yeah, I’m going to talk about some spoilers for a recent...
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