Category: Gaming

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Twenty-two

    We are close to the end of 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, closing in on the final week. I hope folks have enjoyed this. I had and am having a lot of fun, and with the exception of a minor hiccup last week, I like having a constant stream of posts. It is very…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Twenty-one

    As we enter the final third of the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, we start to look at more “meta” questions. Questions like… What are your favourite books about game mastering? My hands-down favourite book on game mastering is Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering, written by Robin D. Laws and published by Steve Jackson…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Twenty

    Two-thirds of the way through, gentle readers. After today a scant ten entries lie between us and the end of the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge. I really hope you’ve found some of these posts useful. When this is over you’ll be able to read all these entries in one of two ways: either…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Fifteen to Nineteen

    Never fear, I haven’t abandoned the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge. But last week became busier than anticipated, so once again you get a blog post covering the last several days. I promise, tomorrow we go back to one topic a day. Until then, pour yourself a coffee and enjoy. Memorable villains: how do…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Eleven to Fourteen

    Moving into days eleven through twenty of the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, we focus more on how things run at the table. As a reminder, if you follow the link above and look in the comments section, you’ll see all the blogs taking part in the challenge. I encourage you to do so,…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Ten

    Ten solid days of the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge in the can! What are your tips for running a low/no prep game? As I said in an earlier post, I’m not the strongest improv GM. I’ve become better over time, but I’ve bolstered my meagre improv skills by being hyper-prepared behind-the-scenes. Every once…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Nine

    Have you met 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge? No? Well please get acquainted… Player “homework”: what do you ask of your players before and between sessions? As you can guess from my previous post on world-building, I prefer to focus the world/campaign on the player characters. Like characters on a TV show, the action…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Eight

    30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, etcetera and so on. How do you prep for each session? I know there are GMs out there that maybe don’t do a lot of prep between sessions. I respect GMs that can really work on the fly, because I am not one of them. I’ve gotten better at…

  • 30 Days of Game Mastering, Day Seven

    30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, yadda yadda yadda… How do you prep for the start of a campaign? Most of the Game Master prep I do at the start of a campaign was touched upon in yesterday’s post. To sum up, I heavily detail everything immediately around the party’s start location, because this is…

  • 30 Days of GMing, Day Six

    This is the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge, coming to you live! World-building: What’s your process? The Pathfinder RPG is about 70% of my gaming these days, so not a lot of world building involved. More like “world fleshing out” (a topic for another post). But when I do use my own campaign world, I…