What Do Factions Do?

Factions, more than any other background element, should create story. When it comes to worldbuilding elements like places, NPCs, cultures, and objects, there are going to be some that just inhabit a space in between stories and are there mainly to reinforce the overall feel and texture of the game world. Not every peasant laboring

If There’s No Risk, Why Are We Doing this?

Have you ever come up against this kind of situation in a game, the characters are attacked, but because of some quirk of the rules, one or more of the party are immune to anything the bad guys can do to them? I find this particularly annoying both as a player and a GM when

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,

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

One Shots As Preludes.

I once ran a series of games. I want to say there were six of them. Each game was a different genre and setting, and each one was a one shot. In each of these games one character died at the end. One character for each member of my group at the time. So, six

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

Thirty Five Ways to Say “You Missed.”

This is a list of things that you can say in place of “I miss” or “they miss” when describing a failed roll in combat. As always, not only am I writing this for all of you, but for myself as well. I want to get into the habit of making descriptions during combat more