What are your White Whales?

In short, what are the games you’ve always been interested in playing, but, for whatever reason, you’ve never managed to run or play? Back in the days when roleplaying games were pressed into clay tablets* and dice were made of mammoth bone, one of the major hurdles to playing certain games was availability. If your

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.

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

8 Tips For Better NPCs

From the common passerby to the big villain of the piece, NPCs are an important component of a game setting. Whether you’re planning ahead and writing them up for a distinct purpose, or creating them on the fly, you’ll play a lot of NPCs as a GM, and sometimes as a player too. The question

Let’s Talk About Secrets

When do you keep a secret a secret? When I first started gaming, secrets were a big part of the game. We passed notes to each other, We had quiet confabs in other rooms. The GM took players aside to tell them things in confidence. Sometimes these secrets enhanced the game, sometimes they caused train

Basics #2 How to be a GM.

Note: For the purpose of this article I’ll be using the very generic term Game Master, or GM for short, as a stand in for any other game specific term like Dungeon Master, Referee, Storyteller, Control, Harn Master, and so on. I’m honestly not thrilled about the word master and the lofty weight it puts

Basics #1: Starting a Game

It’s a simple problem that happens more often than most people in the hobby think; someone wants to play, but they don’t know how to go about getting started. It happened to me in the early ’80s. I had a copy of red box D&D and no clue about what to do with it. I