Except under unusual circumstances, you won’t get time to prepare for character deaths — crappy rolls, bad luck and other spur-of-the-moment factors will make sure of that. Personally, I haven’t had many PC deaths on my watch, but thinking back I’m pretty sure I’ve...
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TT reader clem (who goes by clem in the comments, too) is running a seafaring campaign with advanced characters, and he’s finding that his players need different kinds of rewards for their PCs. He recently shared this with me via email: The characters are about as good at what they do as...
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Link roundups like this one make me feel like I’m behind… • Deeper in the Game: Chris Chinn has been back since July, and I didn’t find out until this week! Chris wrote the now-defunct RPG theory blog Deep in the Game, as well as the TT post Social Contracts for RPG Groups....
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TT reader Joaquim Ball-llosera (Quim in the comments), co-founder of the Spanish indie RPG company Maqui Edicions, emailed me this nifty idea. He was gracious enough to let me share it with you — thanks, Quim! – – – – – While designing my new Rifts campaign, I...
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My friend Don is really passionate about making characters — he pours a ton of detail into their backgrounds, and spends hours getting the mechanical details just right (or at least, that’s how he’s done it as long as I’ve known him). When you run a game, your...
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To celebrate TT’s new three-column layout (ahem), how about three GMing links? • Musings of the Chatty DM: Phil’s got some good stuff to say about GMing (and other topics, too) — try The Rule of Cool to get started, or dive into part one of his four-part series about...
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It can be tempting to include or encourage strong intra-party conflict when you start up a new campaign, partly because internal strife isn’t usually a part of most campaigns. Unfortunately, there’s a reason it’s often left out: it tends to sound sexier than it often turns out to...
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There are three reasons you might need to incorporate a new PC into an ongoing campaign: 1. One of the PCs dies or is otherwise permanently removed from play (goes insane, etc.). 2. To replace an un-fun PC. 3. A new player joins your group. Not penalizing players for bringing in a new PC is a...
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Alysia and I have gotten sucked into Showtime’s Californication, which is much better than its premise — washed-up writer has lots of one-night stands while trying to fix his life — suggests, largely because of David Duchovny. Before we started watching it, I read a review of the...
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Jolly Blackburn’s excellent “Knights of the Dinner Table” comic strip has tackled this topic, but it’s never come up on TT: What do you do when a player’s character dies and instead of creating a new PC, your player erases the “B” in Bob, fills in a...
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