Tag: Role-playing

  • How Things Work: Gamer Edition

    There’s plenty of misinformation, myth, and outright cow-dooky floating around about how things worked in Medieval times. How armour worked, which swords were better, how they actually fought, all of these are fodder for at-the-table discussion and, let’s be honest, argument. After all, it isn’t like we all wear and use this stuff any more,…

  • Maps for the Weary Game Master

    I love maps for role-playing games, almost as much as I love dice. I can spend hours flipping through old game maps, remembering past sessions or dreaming up new ways to use a particular location. I haven’t knowingly thrown out a gaming map in over twenty years. I keep them all neatly organized in a…

  • Campaign Creation: Beginnings and Broad Strokes, Part 2

    In the first Campaign Creation post, we laid in a basic foundation for our campaign setting. Today we’ll expand that a little bit, focusing on the people around our characters. At this stage of the game I’m not looking to build fully detailed non-player characters. In fact, I usually avoid statting out NPCs until I’m…

  • Trail Rations: Hearty Slow-cooker Slaw Stew

    My regular Thursday night group has a long tradition of eating a shared meal before we game. It started when we gamed at our then GM’s house and his lovely wife (also a member of our motley band) would prepare dinner for us. We kept that practice intact until Scott and Sheila moved, then there…

  • Campaign Creation: Beginnings and Broad Strokes, Pt. 1

    Recent posts in the 30 Days of GMing Challenge got me thinking about campaign construction. Specifically, about how long it’s been since I built a campaign from scratch. I only have so much time in the day, so in recent years I’ve fallen back more and more on the use of pre-written campaign material when…

  • For the Players: Five Ways Your Characters Know Each Other

    At the start of every new campaign, players struggle to come up with interesting backgrounds for their characters. Most often their character is a lone wolf, who lived a varied and interesting life before meeting the other characters as a complete stranger. That is certainly fun, and the “band of strangers bonding through adversity” is…

  • 3 Resources to Help Build Future Gamers

    The promised dice tower construction tutorial has been delayed by a day due to technical difficulties. While I sort those out, I thought I’d talk a bit about kids and gaming. The last question in the 30 Days of Game Mastering Challenge is “How do we grow our hobby?”. You can read my extended answer…

  • Foreign Element RPG

    Yes, the title does mean that my next 30 Days of GMing post is delayed. Again. Bit busy finding my illness/work balance, and something had to give. But I wanted to take a moment to promote something cool I worked on. The Foreign Element RPG is a game for anyone who likes fast-paced, B-movie style…

  • 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…