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

Planning Ahead: NPCs and Baddies.

Whether you run a game off the cuff, or plan things out, having your NPCs and various adversaries at hand when the play goes down is always a good idea.* So, here are some ideas on how organize your NPCs for the best use during game. Find a way to keep them in front of

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

Let’s Make 2SR a Thing.

If you don’t know, OSR is a movement and a design philosophy that seeks to emulate the earliest rulesets of D&D. Their designs are inspired by the simplicity of the game in its earliest form. They say constraint fosters creativity, and there’s an awful lot of creativity going on there. But I have never been

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

Agendas, Playstyle, and… Winning?

There’s an old trope about people who play ttrpgs and people who don’t. Back before eveyone’s great grandparents knew what D&D was, there was this conversation you’d end up having a lot. “What’s a roleplaying game?” It’s like playing pretend, but with dice. “How do you win?” I’ve been thinking about that question a lot

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