Combat That Isn’t a Slog.

I was asked for an article about this by my friend Malcolm and boy do I feel this. I’ve never been a fan of super long form combat that basically turns into a bunch of people waiting for a chance to do something that’s hopefully cool. So, how do we make combat dynamic and engaging,

Our First Session of Forbidden Lands: Review/Analysis.

I’m taking a break from GMing. I’ve been running at least one thing every week for… years, so it’s time for a break. I’m taking this as an opportunity to watch, learn, analyze, and to just play. Last night we played the first session of Marc’s Forbidden Lands game, and I found it really fun.

Three Ways to Surprise Everyone at the Table Including Yourself.

Here are some techniques you can use to make your games more flexible and surprising. These are all things you can use to reinforce the philosophy of “play to find out what happens” or as I described it before that phrase came around, “follow the players around to see what they’ll do.” 1. Have ideas

What can we learn? Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st edition.

Ok, full disclosure. Not only do I have fond nostalgic memories of this game, but I still love it, and I still play it. It takes very little to get me to run or play WHFRPG, especially 1st ed.* No shade on later editions, it’s just that I can run or play this edition in

One of my favorite kinds of games to play. The Overlay.

OK, what does that even mean? It means that you take the characters from a piece of media, and then put their basic ideas and personalities into a different setting or genre and then play that as a ttrpg. You find some kind of media that everyone playing is familiar with, and then you play

Five Ways to Change Up Character Generation.

Here we go with another short list style article*. This time It’s ways to challenge your character building and roleplaying skills by breaking up your normal patterns. One. Set some things to random. So you have a concept in mind. They’re a heavy fighter and strength is their number one stat. Cool. Now decide a

Borrowing Ideas About Structure From Other Media.

Judd Karlman has been talking about Using other media as a way to frame our games over at his excellent podcast https://anchor.fm/daydreaming-about-dragons. He’s talked about making book covers for games, using opening theme songs from HBO style tv shows, and framing the game like it’s a stage play. I love this kind of stuff. I

11 Things to Do Besides Killing Monsters.

Kill something, take its stuff, use that stuff to kill something more dangerous, rinse, repeat. I don’t know about you, but I got tired of that style of play pretty quickly. I wanted something more, or, at least, I wanted something to do above and beyond dungeon mucking and acquiring bigger and better loot so

How much planning are you planning on?

When it comes to running games that you can plan for, there are two extremes. At one end we have not planning at all, not even knowing where this is going, and just making everything up off the top of your head. At the other end we have planning every little last detail, including contingencies,

The Puzzling Part About Puzzles.

The party approaches the ancient temple door. sixteen paving stones bear sharp glyphs, and when trodden upon light up. Is there a pattern of steps that opens the massive doors? Within the dank cavern a statue turns, driven by some mechanism, There are words inscribed on the base. Massive stone doors slam shut, trapping the