Shark Week: Sharkcano
As many of you already know, today is the official start of Shark Week (though if you’re like me you started early with the Rifftrax Live presentation of Sharknado 2 last Thursday). Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
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Running Convention Games
Since it’s con season, this week I’m going to talk about running convention games. For the most part, the tricks to running a good convention game are the same as for any other game: make sure everyone has fun, give each character a chance to shine, and give the characters a stake in what’s going…
Game Chef 2015
I’m still recovering from OMGCon, which keeps getting better every year, and getting ready for DieCon, so this week’s blog is another quick one. I’ve been wanting to submit something to Game Chef for a while, but always end up missing it. This year’s event kicked off on June 12th, the day I left for…
Influence Mapping Your Game
“The novel is a challenge to vulgarization: write something that looks new to you: someone will point out that the thrice-accursed Greeks said it long ago.”–Charles Fort As Fort observes, there really aren’t any new ideas. The best you can really hope for is to mix old story elements in a new and interesting way…
Disney Noir
A year or so ago, a game I was playing in had to go on a temporary hiatus because of the GM’s work schedule, so we started talking about what to play in its place. At some point, the idea of a Grindhouse-style game about Disney Princess came up, and after a while that evolved…
Role Playing on the Fury Road
If you’re like me, your news and social media feeds have been packed with stories about Mad Max: Fury Road for at least the past week. There are commentaries, reviews (here’s mine), and articles pointing out that THE DOOF WARRIOR IS THE AWESOMEST THING EVER!!!!! There are also a handful of misogynists whining that the…
Super-Heroes Without The Crunch
Last week I posted a new article on Hubpages called “Seven Rules Every Game Master Should Follow.” That explains why I didn’t post here last week, but I don’t have any excuse for the week or two before that beyond a combination of real life stuff and lack of ideas. I’ve written, co-written, or contributed…
Worldbuilding Vs. Storytelling Vs. Conflict-Based Plotting
Most gamers agree that players are responsible for creating the characters in a role-playing game, but the GM’s responsibilities are more nebulous. Usually we say that the GM is responsible for the world, or stories, or both. In QAGS, I think we said the GM was responsible for “everything else,” which is definitely overstating things….
Flash! Bang! Magic! Part 2
Last week, I talked about the need (or lack thereof) of special rules for magic in settings with flash-bang magic. The tl;dr version is that if everyone has a good understanding of how magic works in the world and and what a particular type of wizard can do and there are no setting conventions that…
Flash! Bang! Magic! Part 1
Before I get into this week’s blog, I forgot to mention last week that I recently the newest installment of my series of role-playing articles on HubPages, “Seven Rules Every RPG Player Should Know.” Also, just yesterday Hex released our first novel, Carter Newton’s Suicide’s Run: A Tale of the Hobomancers. Carter does a great…