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…
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….
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…
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…
It’s not unusual for RPG players to find themselves in situations where, if they’re being honest, the character they’ve established would make a choice that the player knows is a bad one. In these cases, a good role-player acts according to his character’s established background, goals, and personality even when it isn’t the most advantageous…
Sometimes, instead of a blog, you get a widget. This is one of those times. I made up a random generator script to generate one-shot (or if you’re really brave, campaign) ideas based on the tables in The Book of Dumb Tables 1 & 2. You can play with it on this ugly-ass page here….
I recently finished writing the section of M-Force that deals with conducting investigations. Since investigation scenes are common in all types of RPGs, I decided to share it here. Since the details are more about process than mechanics, it should be fairly easy to adapt this to other game systems if for some reason you…
I’ve mentioned numerous times that my usual method of planning for a game involves deciding what conflicts are going on in the world and then trying to figure out ways to get the characters involved in those conflicts. I haven’t really gone into the “get the players involved” part of the equation, so I’m going…
I rarely do very much planning for the games I run. One of the benefits of using a rules-light system is that it’s easy to make things up on the spot, so I don’t see the point of spending a lot of time drawing maps and looking up stat blocks that might or might not…
Sometime last year, I got involved in a reddit thread about women in gaming and ended up getting interviewed by Jamie from The Lonely d12. She posted the interview earlier this week, and I think I’m officially the first non-lady to be interviewed for their Ladies of Gaming series. Since I’m still easing back into…
