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…
Conducted by Carter Newton Jeffrey Johnson is a talented artist who has done a great deal of work for Hex Games. He may be best known for illustrating the cover of the ENnie Award-winning RPG Hobomancer and the Hobomancer Companion. Recently Jeffrey illustrated my novel Suicide Run: A Tale of the Hobomancers. I had some…
Conducted by Leighton Connor Carter Newton is not only a co-creator of the award-winning RPG Hobomancer but also the author of Suicide’s Run: A Tale of the Hobomancers. Suicide’s Run is the first novel Hex Games has published, and it is on sale now. I was Carter’s editor on Suicide’s Run, but, more importantly, I’m…
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…
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 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…
I realize now that I didn’t mention this back in November, but the lack of new posts for the last month and change was intentional. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, everyone’s busy, in a food coma, pissed off, depressed, or drunk–sometimes all of them at the same time–so I don’t want to write a blog…
A recent post on a gaming blog I follow mentioned an online tool called inklewriter, which basically lets you write your own Endless Quest books. The author had started using the site to make a tool to help new players make their D&D character and announced a contest where people make a gaming tool using the…
I usually try to avoid writing entries that are pure advertising, but this week I’m going to make an exception because (1) the thing I’m advertising is absolutely free of charge; (2) the thing I’m advertising is potentially useful even to people who don’t play QAGS; and (3) it’s been a long week and I…
