You already imagine colorful characters inhabiting stunning settings, you bring them to life with your words. You already plot ambitious adventures and direct the pacing of play to precise peaks. You do this because you love to run games and create content, and you’re so much better at it than you...
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WHERE you play the game is important. I mean, it’s not as important as having good people, and a good game, but a well-thought-out game space can enhance the enjoyment of any event. Here are a few design principles that I’ve uncovered in the process of creating game spaces in my own home, and in surveying game spaces in other people’s conventions, stores, and homes.
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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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Not so far back, I wrote a fairly scathing critique of the Neverwinter entry in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. I stand by that. But I also think it fair to note that on the whole, D&D’s creators have been engaged in a long process to make the Forgotten Realms accessible again, to make it...
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5e Public Play: It’s all Adventurer’s League now A couple of weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast announced big changes to its organized play program. All of the adventures are now just Adventurer’s League; before, they’d been split between the new player geared Encounters and the continuing play...
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The third D&D encounter season features Out of the Abyss, the newest hardback adventure for D&D. The first three seasons of D&D Encounters took a published product–in this case Out of the Abyss–and separated the first few chapters to run as an introductory adventure. It...
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I get anxiety — often. I usually do a pretty good job of pushing those anxious voices out of my head and moving on with life, but November is especially rough because it is the anniversary of family deaths and some other well-rooted pieces of my past that ramp my anxious voices up to 11. The first...
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Is this going to be more work? If you are considering running an online game for the first time you may be asking yourself this question. The purpose of this article is to try to answer it, and perhaps put your mind at ease. We’ll look at the work involved before, during, and between...
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This is the first of what I hope to be a regular series of articles on the ‘classic’ stories that inspired early roleplaying games. More specifically, I intend to read these stories (many of which I haven’t read, or read so long ago as to have forgotten them) as a modern Game...
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Con season has begun; Walt’s already been to Origins, I enjoyed my first Kublacon over Memorial Day weekend, and the big summer shows, GenCon and DragonCon, are still to come. Summer can be a busy time for GMs, giving you even more sessions to prepare for than normal. (Hopefully, a con will...
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Written by a team of veteran Gamers and Gamemasters, Gnome Stew is a widely read gaming blog with multiple awards, ennies, and thousands of articles. We’re dedicated to helping gamers have more fun at the gaming table.
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